Hong Kong:
We caught our very first sleeper bus from Guilin to Shenzen, which is the departure point into Hong Kong. The experience was not a good one as firstly the horrible hostel workers in Guilin failed to tell us we could catch this bus from Yangshuo, so on the day in question we travelled the two hours back to Guilin, only to catch the bus back to Yangshuo before it continued on it's way! The bus drivers were on some kind of delivery racket which meant that we could not put our bags underneath in the storage compartment, and we had the seats on the floor at the back of the bus and the aisles soon got crammed with everyone's luggage. My seat was in the middle, was the smallest on the bus and was directly over the engine with no air con, bags on either side and I was feeling more than a little claustrophobic! I vowed I would never catch a sleeper bus again!
When we finally arrived the bus dropped us to the wrong part of town so we shared a cab to the train station with some nice English guys we met up with, one of which had a huge Chinese hat which he had bought as a souvenir for his dad. The thing was bigger than him, and he still managed to nearly leave it at the travellers bureau, luckily the girl ran after him to return it!
Hong Kong is a world apart from China in every single way, the trains were spotless and on time, we made our first faux paux when took to eating a snack lunch, wondering why everyone was staring at us, only to realise about two days later that eating is prohibited on the train! That afternoon we trailed around the famous HK cheap electronics stores and Karl bought me a camera for my birthday from Mr Li's store. Some sight seeing was in order so we wandered around the town and it's strange because there are so many westerner's who all speak English, the architecture is mostly modern with some old stuff thrown in there and you could easily imagine that you are walking around the back streets of London.
We had some hugely overpriced Kronenbourg 1664 in an Irish bar (which we had been missing terribly!) and then braved the outside of the Chongking Mansions looking for a curry house for dinner. The Mansions in a huge building with retail shops and restaurants, but not any conventional building you may be thinking of. Outside there are hoards of Indian guys fluttering
their menu's in your face, and the second I took a cursory glance at one, all of them crowded round us offering us special prices on beers and food if we picked them. When we had selected one which we thought sounded good, we followed him up in the elevator and came out to what can only be described as a floor with flats which had been converted into restaurants. Anyone who watches Little Britain will know what I'm talking about; imagine the scene when Walliams comes home to find his Thai Bride has turned their flat into a Thai Restaurant! The food was good though and we had been longing for curry for a long time so we were satisfied! If you're in HK and need some beach action, head out to Lama Island which is just a 40 minute boat ride away. You can catch the ferry to one side and head out of the other which allows a really nice walk across the island with some stunning views across the ocean to boot. The people on the island were all really friendly and relaxed and although we didn't test the water out it looked sparkly and blue and everyone was having a good time. That night we watched the famous HK light show in which about 20 large buildings across the river “perform” to music by showing off their high tec lasers and flashing neon lights for about 20 minutes, that was pretty cool but we thought it wasn't a patch on the great light and water show we watched in Xi-an, which surprised us as HK is so much more advanced in many ways.
We then decided to absorb some local culture by checking out the Fire Dragon dance festival in
which loads of men light thousand of incense sticks and make the body and head of a dragon and then dance it through the streets. They also create huge fire balls and dance around with them. It was a real sight to behold and the locals were loving it but we were overwhelmed by the smell of the incense burning so only stuck around for half and hour or so. Maccau:
The journey to Maccau takes around 1&½ hours by boat and although it is back on the China mainland it really does feel like you've travelled to Portugal (well what I imagine it to be like anyway!). It was colonised by the Portuguese for many years and they have their own currency and the religion is predominantly Catholic, which means there are some really nice churches to
visit and the architecture is very interesting and quaint. The old fort which contains a fab museum all about Maccau's history was so well laid out we really enjoyed it as a refreshing change in comparison to stuffy old museums we had visited. Maccau is mostly known for it's casino's so we took a cursory look around one of the original ones which was all gilded gold and retro chandeliers and mosaics, to be honest the décor made us both want to puke so we just looked around and then used a free shuttle to get back to the ferry dock! It would have been nice to check out the bigger newer casinos on the other side of the bridge but we couldn't really afford to play any tables so we thought better of leading ourselves into temptation and got the ferry back reasonably early.
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