Planes, trains and buses

After many hours of flying, being driven around and assorted Hong Kong bar adventure, I’m finally in New Zealand now! Flights weren’t too bad, I think about 12 or so hours to Hong Kong and then a little bit less than that on to Auckland, hopefully that’s all my flying out the way for a long while.

Last Thursday at Heathrow airport was the first time that I met the people who I was flying with and I was a bit nervous beforehand because I didn’t know if we’d get on or not but we all get on really well, so that’s great. There’s 9 of us all together (6 girls 3 guys), from lots of places in Britain and it’s a good mix of people. We were quite quiet at Heathrow because we were fairly tired but once we got talking it’s been fine and we were all sat next to each other on the plane too.

Hong Kong – Part 1

We got into Hong Kong at about 8 in the morning Hong Kong time on Friday where we were met by Helen the tour guide person who took us to our hotel. There were some really nice views of Hong Kong and Kowloon as we left the airport, there’s a load of mountains and all the harbours and everything. Got to the hotel about half an hour after leaving the airport and as the bus was heading through some dodgy streets, we were a little concerned about how the hotel would turn out but it was fantastic, we reckon Bunac spent all our money on the hotel! It must have been 3 or 4 star at least, luxury for us! I shared a room with Matthew and Mark and the girls were split into three rooms, our room was the best one because it was bigger and had an advanced electronic toilet with buttons and jets and a heating seat and all that. It’ll be forever in our hearts. The girls’ rooms weren’t ready at the same time as ours so everyone just crashed in ours until they were and we all slept for a while.

We had a bit of a wander round the place, there was a huge tower thing called Times Square (wasn’t a square) that was the main shopping place with cafes and things like that, so we went in there. Later in the evening, everyone except Zoe and Holly (who were still asleep) went out to the harbour area over in Kowloon and took some photos and we went near where the Space Museum is, a building celebrating all the space exploration Hong Kong has apparently pioneered. Then we found some random restaurant where we had a meal, a partial game of pot luck menu was had because we weren’t fully sure what we were ordering but we did order far too much rice! They kept giving us this green tea which was really nice but we had to put up with some horrendous karaoke which was happening behind the screen next to our table. Anyway, the meal was really nice. Had more of a stroll around until we took the ferry back to the other side, I loved the ferry! All the public transport was so cheap and clean and really well run, I wish it was like that back home!

When we got back to the hotel we checked in on Holly and Zoe to see if they were ok and then later I went out with Matthew, Zoe and Holly to find a little pub or bar or something. After a bit of a random walk, we found a small back street pub and when we walked in, the waitress just through a small group off their table to make room for us! That was a bit strange. We had a few drinks in there, experienced a very watery toilet area and went back to the hotel and back to bed.

I’m going to end this little update here because we’re going out tonight, in about half an hour, and I’m running late as usual! I’ll fill in the rest of our Hong Kong stay sometime tomorrow and then bring you up to date with Auckland at some point. I know I’m behind schedule, I just hope I don’t forget everything before the next update!

In short though, I’m having a really great time and getting on brilliantly with everyone and can’t wait to get stuck into this whole traveling lark, we even have vague preliminary plans!