Day 2: Hong Kong

Wow what a night! We slept from 4pm until 6am with only a quick peak at the time at about 2am. With no window in the room its difficult to tell night from day. We tried out the dodgy shower which turned out to be nicely hot and powerful.

We popped over the road to the supermarket and bypassed the usual butter croissants and orange juice and headed for the hot noodle counter and iced tea. We took our breakfast to Victoria Park which is a stone throw from the hostel. It was a huge green area with beautiful gardens with hundreds of locals randomly dotted about under tree shelter performing tai chi. We found shelter from the spitting rain and tucked into our food with our chop sticks.

After taking a long stroll round the park we headed back to the room to relax for an hour as it was still only 8am and being Sunday our plans for today were not open until 10am. We took the MTR (underground) to Ngong Ping Village where we embarked on a 6km high speed cable car up to the highest peak on the Island. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy so we could not see a great deal at all which was a shame.

Arriving at the top we took a walk through the village and along the wisdom path to the base of the Tian Tan Buddha Statue. We climbed the 100steps or so up to the Buddha which is the largest outdoor Buddha in the world. Being a lover of Buddha’s I wanted to climb up and rub his belly but it was too big! We spent a while soaking up the views as the cloud was lifting slightly, took way too many photos then walked down and over to the Po Lin Monastery. There were millions of incense sticks burning from tiny to absolutely huge where locals where visiting and praying.

We made our way back to the city and unbelievably we were tired again! We went back to the supermarket and had rice with sweet and sour chicken takeaway which we ate in our room. We really want to see the city at night and so calculated it would be best to sleep for about 4 hours this afternoon so we could stay awake tonight. Needless to say our body clocks are all over the place.

We headed back out to see the 8pm sound and light show where all the high rises along the river were lit as if the skyline was dancing to the music. The view was amazing and probably my favourite sight in Hong Kong. We then walked along Nathan Road and onto Temple Street Night Market both were buzzing with people and neon lights and thousands of stalls selling copy bags and copy watches!

Back on the MTR we went to city central where we got on the mid levels escalator which is the longest in the world being 800m! When you thought you were there, it just kept going! It was fun at the start but the higher we went the further we had to climb steps back down! On the dismount we took a short breather in the Soho bar region.

Hong Kong in 2 days has been exhausting, interesting and very memorable. It has been odd being tall enough to see over the crowd and see scaffolding made from bamboo and twine. This country has our thumbs up.