Hong Kong!

After a long, long, flight arriving into HongKong was quite special. We were obviously late arriving, but could still see the islands, and mountains etc from the plane. Didn't realise how hilly all this area is. The airport is now on reclaimed land, looking like it is in the middle of the sea! I thought, my god we can't land on that, it looked small and surrounded by sea, but land we did quite smoothly. you get off and then into trains that take you a way to the arrival terminals (this is before you get your baggage).
You then still have to go through customs ( a mission, - they seriously check everyone carefully, we saw some Africans and a lady in a full burga? get taken away to security). We were fine, then still had to find our luggage, then out! No xray machines of luggage or us or anything! Quite strange considering how carefully they were vetting arrivals with passport controls etc.
Any way then, .... no shuttle awaiting us! Our travel agent had booked one, but remember we were 2 hours late, so a problem now. Eventually we found the right transport desk and got sorted so arrived by a big shuttle bus at our hotel after another one and half hours. By then it was dark, and we got some amazing views of the lights of HongKong on the way. Quite spectacular, and exciting considering how tired we were.
Luckily we were the first ones off, our hotel is just off Nathan road, big shoppping area, so good location. The heat was so hot, even at night, it was like a blasting furnace in your face, and the humidity was max. Hotel is a Novotel one, and excellent. The first thing that hit me was the air-con, so lovely and cold, and the service is great. Very helpful and talk English well. So nice room, lots of space, and bed huge. ....... off to sleep at 9.30pm utterly exhausted.
Then , both of us wide awake at 3am! we read, watched TV until 5am and tried to sleep again. I did, but Dave still awake.
  Big Buffet breakfast, we had hardly eaten for 24 hours (miserly plane food by the way). Funny having noodles, and dimsims for breakfast!
Then we went for a walk around the shops , the first thing that hit me was the heat, then the disgusting smell of dead fish past shops with them in the full sun, and the people! everywhere! push, push, push! Dave kept getting asked if he wanted a suit made by these Indians (tailor shops with quick making of suits everywhere) honestly, every few min. someone would come up and accost him. At first he was very polite, no thank you, then after about 10 of them, it became no, then later on it was a wave of the hand! talk about harass the tourists, esp. the white ones!
We walked around for about 2 hours, got sore feet, sweaty body and discovered very quickly the prices werent much cheaper than at home. this is for authentic stuff, like Ipads etc. Was quite surprised.
AFter an hour on the bed in the cool recovering, we then went on a tour that was quite cool.
 It was a bus tour, picked you up from the hotel (yay) went up to the top of Victoria Peak, (highest hill in HongKong,) took in the view and could get a good orientation of the place. Lots of high rises, office buildings and apartment blocks. More people live in Kowloon, where our hotel was, and it is the touristy, shopping area, the commercial area is HongKong island, more room than Kowloon, but has less people living there.

After that we went to a fishing area, Aberdeen harbour, and went on a motorised sampan to look at the harbour.

cool lanterns in our sampan

this is a huge floating resturant

one of the very few birds we have seen here

 in amongst the poor boats, some amazing rich as boats. lots of money in Hongkong

another super cruiser

After that was small beaches (man made by the looks) looking out over the South China sea, where there were lots of ship waiting to come into port. The Beaches all had shark nets around them, app. there were some shark attacks a few years ago.

Then it was to Stanley Bay, now a market area. So more shopping in a market, even then the prices weren't cheap, cheap, so not really buying anything. Thankgod all this was done in an air-conditioned bus, was very grateful to get back on it each time. Our tour guide was a youngish gir, who looked very serious and geeky, but was really funny! Spent the whole time talking and earning her money, full of statistics (much more women than men in HongKong, so need some men to come over and marry some girls, no 1 child policy in Hongkong, seperate rules for Hongkong than China, very low taxes, one of the highest pop./area density (not much land, too many people), increase in pop. mainly from immigrants from mainland China wanting to come over and make their fortune, and have some freedom of choice etc) quite interesting. England still has its influence with street names etc and they seem ok about this, not seeming to want to change them to the Chinese names. Also most signs are still in English, with Chinese underneath. This makes it easier for us touristy types. So we finish our tour about 6.30pm, get dropped off near the wharf and start our second tour at 7.30pm which was a night cruise on the harbour to see the sights, and lights. they used to have fireworks each night over Victoria harbour, but now it is just a laxer light show. We watched this from the boat, wasn't as great as Disneyland!, and then went up the harbour to see all the lights of the buildings etc. these were much more exciting (or maybe that was the free drinks on board taking their toll!)

full moon and clear night - gorgeous

We walked back again in the heat and humidity. Took about 15 min but felt like 3 hours! Decided the temp. only drops by a few degrees at night, so when we moan about hot nights in summer at home again, I will laugh! I am talking about 28 degrees at night , up to 35 degrees during the day here. Obviously we came at a really good time!