Hong Kong

Saturday, October 6th

We set off to explore central Hong Kong - the areas on either side of Wan Chai where our hotel is situated. We bought a day travel pass and took the MRT (underground railway) east to Causeway Bay. It was a daunting maze of shopping malls, shopping strips, and shopping alley ways. The only respite was nearby Victoria Park which was actually quite lovely, if still affected by the noise of the nearby freeways.

Unsatisfied, we headed west to Central, on the other side of Wan Chai. It looked like a clone of where we'd just been, and shopping malls weren't why we'd come to Hong Kong. So we headed up the "famous" kilometre long escalator and moving walkway that takes you into the middle level apartment blocks that ex-pats appear to prefer. For this reason, it was dotted with restaurants and bars that actually looked quite nice. So nice, that on the way back we booked dinner for tomorrow night.

Feeling tired and needing to relax, we headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately, Rob wanted to satisfy his urge to take a double deck tram - big mistake! It was crowded, hot and the only exit was at the front (we blamed the British).

On the way back we saw another of the various events being organised for Chinese National Day (today?!).

So far, it has been the only picture opportunity for the day (unless you like shopping malls).

Being a holiday on the "mainland" explains the rather large number of Americans, most with children, that we've seen everywhere, including at our hotel. We reckon they're taking a break from China and spending some time out in Hong Kong. Bad timing for us, unfortunately.

In the evening we visited the (very crappy) Temple Street market across the bay in Kowloon, and then had Peking Duck in a (very authentic) local Chinese restaurant. We resisted the shark fin and birds nest soups.