Hong Kong

(Picture by Richard Huckvale)

Let me start with Hong Kong is a complete contrast to China although technically in China it's not part of China and is classed as its own country somehow!! Not sure how it all pans out really but it's vastly different.
We only had 4 days here as we wanted to get to Vietnam and the surrounding South East Asian countries sooner rather than later as China had left a bad taste in the mouth, Now we didn't do much in Hong Kong as the humidity was stupid I mean you couldn't walk a few feet without dripping in sweat! You craved air conditioning 24 hours a day. The place is really expensive unless you have McDonald's that was cheap and they do free delivery too :)

We decided a 3 star hotel with an outdoor pool, gym and restaurant was the cheapest option in Hong Kong yes CHEAPEST at £197 for a city view room for 4 nights was cheaper than getting 2 beds in a hostel and don't get me started on the hostel private room prices.

We were right on the top of a hill too so the views over the city from the room were unreal and the pool views were even better.

We looked round the shops and spent most of the time just walking round the city, as it was very over cast the few days we were there the attractions were not worth it as they were all mainly for the views and once you got to a certain height you could see nothing so would have just been a waste of money. We had a few bits of local food from famous places recommended to us by our handy free internet device thingy me bob that came with the hotel room.

We ate in the hotel one night and the food was pretty basic and bland for the price, I even went to the local supermarket to buy stuff to make sandwiches etc but the price of meat and cheese and bread was outrageous, again we stuck to McDonald's delivery as the cheapest form of eating.

We found a decent bar in the town centre which had an all day happy hour and it sold Guinness at a reasonable price although it was the vibrating can Guinness not on tap, but any sort of Guinness is better than no Guinness in my opinion (my god how many times did I write Guinness then)

They also had the biggest apple store I've ever seen it was 3 floors of shiny Steve Jobs related greatness, needless to say I stayed in there for a large period of time.

The whole atmosphere of Hong Kong was more relaxed, friendlier and fun compared to China the people were a complete contrast. It amazed me how it was so much different but I guess if you take away the peoples rights to do what they want then it's going to be pretty shit, you can tell in Hong Kong that life is a whole lot better there and they all seem happier too.

The only thing that annoyed me here was when booking the hotel through booking.com it advised that you paid on arrival and that the card details added would not be used to take payment over the internet it was to secure the booking, but the hotel decided to try and take payment without all the card details and proceeded to send me emails to tell me if I did not email them my card details they would cancel my booking, after a few choice words via email they agreed to hold the booking for me to pay on arrival. Now I am not sure if this was booking.com's fault or the hotels but either way it was resolved.

This post is a little boring as we really didn't have time to do much but Hong Kong is certainly a place I will return to in the future.

Take Care

Richard :)