Update!

Hello All,

This post has been a while coming, but what with all the moving around I've done in the past week I simply haven't had time (or the internet facilities!) to sit down and write a blog. So here I am, sat in bed in a hotel in the Old Quarters of Hanoi ready to write about the past week and its adventtures.

HONG KONG (13-18 April)

Despite all my fears, the flight to Singapore was pretty uneventful. I took my sedative plus a couple of Nytol and was pretty spaced out for most of it. I was sat next door but one to an Australian guy (there was an empty seat between us) who drank countless little bottles of the free (awful) red wine we were offered and proceeded to get pretty inebriated and tell me all about how much he hated his ex-wife, refused to babysit for his children and had moved to Sweden to get away from them all! Unfortunately he was unable to elicit a coherent response from me, I quickly made my excuses when we got to Singapore! The 9 hour wait at the airport was pretty dire, I was still really groggy and couldn't sleep in the more comfortable departure lounge because I had to pick up my luggage and go through customs in order to be able to check in for my flight to Hong Kong later. So I sat around in the lobby section, drinking coffee and listening to one of the audiobooks I'd put on my iPod, waiting. Eventually met Stu at Hong Kong airport about 8.30pm local time, exhausted and starving, and succumbed to the temptation of Burger King at the airport. I slept for most of the bus journey into Hong Kong itself and awoke to the crazy lights of Nathan Road (think Oxford Street on speed!), I wasn't prepared for the sheer number of signs there were on the road, countless numbers of them. We arrived at the hostel which was in a small apartment block andwhich looked like a total hole from the outside and went up to the 8th floor in the death trap cunningly described as a lift that creaked and shuddered all the way. Our room wasn't bad; absolutely tiny but totally spotless, I had my first encounter with the type of showers that you just have to hold over your head with the toilet for company, very strange.

The next day we caught the ferry onto HK island itself (we were staying on the mainland which is where most people live) taking in the view of all the skyscrapers lined up along the coast and tried to get used to the humidity. There's lots of low mist/fog too and the result is you end up feeling clammy all the time, less than pleasant. Looking back we didn't even know the meaning of humidity then! We caught the pernicular/tram thing up the mountain on HK island which was surprisingly steep, so steep that the seats can only face one way or you would literally fall out of them. I think they built it to encourage people to live on the peak and so reduce congestion in the city but it doesn't seem to have worked! When it stopped we assumed we were at the viewing platform, but we first had to go through literally 7 or 8 levels of gift shops before getting to the platform which the people who built it obviously hadn't thought about much at all. The attitude in HK seems to be 'why have one gift shop when you can have 40', and they all sell exactly the same thing! We walked around the island just exploring for ages before the afternoon rains arrived and we sought refuge in various bars, unfortunately we were in the equivalent of the West End so it was all pretty expensive, not that it stopped us at the time! Unfortunately my jetlag seemed to kick in at this point and I couldn't sleep until 6am which was pretty annoying.

Unfortunately due to lack of sleep the next day was a bit of a write off, we just went to find the most authentic Chinese food we could and found somewhere that had nothing written in English (which is actually a pretty hard task!). I had some sort of beef noodle soup which I proceeded to badly burn the roof of my mouth with- not the best start! Went to see the HK version of the avenue of the stars without realising that they'd all be Chinese film stars we didn't recognise! We also saw the 'symphony of lights', where all the skyscrapers on the opposite bank of the water light up and shoot out these funny lasers to music, which was actually quite impressive, though also hilarious.

It was Stu's turn to get no sleep that night but we still somehow managed to get up and get the ferry to Lantau Island (about an hours journey) to see the Giant Buddha and Po Lin Monastery. It was a boiling day, not just in terms of humidity but also sunpower! The Buddha is the largest reclining Buddha in the world and made of solid bronze, we assumed it was old but actually it was only constructed in the 90's. The monastery was really gorgeous, just slightly marred by all the tourists and the fact that we couldn't go all the way in as we obviously weren't there to pray. Apparently I don't have Buddhist written all over me! Also, if anyone knows why Buddhas have long ears could they please tell me, its been puzzling me for a while now and no one seems to know! After this we were the only people stupid (or brave!) enough to walk the Lantau trail in the heat. It wasn't particularly long or demanding in itself just a fair amount of uphill walking in the glare of the sun. It was worth it in the end though, we got to a fair altitude I think, we were higher than the cable car and the hills/mountains were covered in mist. The views were lovely and at one point we could hear the sound of monks chanting drifting to us with the breeze! Our last night in HK was spent funnily enough in a Japanese restaurant that served really tasty and very cheap food!