Hong Kong

Here we are in Hong Kong, a 1000 km square city of 7 million people, consisting of Hong Kong Island ( which is where we stayed, with parts very hilly), Kowloon (which faces Hong Kong Island across the harbour), and around 200 islands of the New Territories. Hong Kong is apparently the most densely populated place in the world. In 1997 the British returned Hong Kong to China and gave them autonomy for 50 years. How nice of them! We took an overnight sleeper from Guilin to Shen zen (which is on the border), which took longer than anticipated. We planned to stay in Hong Kong for 4 nights. We had to walk across the border and were given an automatic 14 days entry without having to pay for a visa. We had already prebooked a small but comfy hotel over the internet. It was the beginning of the Autumn Festival, so there were a lot of activities happening. And just for some food info. -Cantonese food is the most commonly found cruisine here. It was sooooo hot - and sweaty! It was an expensive city, but we had already known this. Some of the interesting things we did were:

• Took the world's longest covered escalator - 800 meters. It is though not a continuous escalator, as you would anticipate.
• Took the Star Ferry across the harbour to Kowloon.
• History Museum - really interesting
• A Light Show to music from 12 buildings - not so interesting
• Saw the tail end of a dragon, as we were running around the streets trying to find it and then to get a decent sighting (which I didn't)
• The Victoria Peak Tram - 552 meters high - good view
• Stanley Bay - took a local bus. Bought an oil painting
• Repulse Bay - spent the afternoon on the beach and swam

We did loads of walking trying to find Ian some specific speakers for his MP4 player. Soooooo may electrical stores. He wanted to be like Jason who already had some, but I must say they are very groovy, and great to listen to music in your room. We didn't find any unfortunately.

Once we had crossed into Hong Kong it cancelled our China single entry visa, so we decided to take a flight from Hong Kong to Hanoi in Vietnam. This also meant that we would miss the terrible sounding border crossing which would have taken numerous modes of transportation and I'm sure much patience. The travel agent told us that we may be stopped at the airport and not allowed on the flight due to not having an onward flight out of Vietnam. They even made Ian sign his name four times after they wrote all over the receipt that they had informed us of this. We told them that we would take our chances, and that the worse case scenario would be that we would have to buy an ongoing ticket at the airport. Vietnam here we come. A new Country! And of course we didn't have any problems getting in!