First Stop - Hong Kong!

View from Avenue of Stars, Kowloon

Hello from Lamma Island, Hong Kong!

I'm writing this from our first ever Couch Surfing host's home, situated on the leafy, village-feel, laidback, car free Lamma Island. But i probably should start from the beginning of our trip...

 

Flights were uneventful, stopover was predictably boring - bring a book if you are going to be stuck in Bandar-Seri-Begawan, Brunei airport for any length of time! We made our way to our accommodation, Cosmic Guesthouse on Nathan Rd in Kowloon, easily. Definitely not luxury and about the size of your average toilet cubicle but it was clean, the staff were friendly and it was cheap compared to other accom. We also had a great first meal in Ashley street. Our first evening in Hong Kong we watched the lights across the Harbour on the skyrises in Central - not so amazing as the fog/smog/cloud put a bit of a dampner on it but still fun and i got to try out my new tripod!



Scaffolding Hong Kong style

The next day we caught the Star Ferry to Central and walked around the City - looked for an internet cafe but quickly realised that as there is free wireless everywhere and everyone has smartphones no need for internet cafes! We've since worked out that Pacific Coffee shops have free internet when you buy a drink - so good luck for Tim who loves to get a caffeine fix! We spent the day up Victoria Peak, did the tram car ride up and then checked out the view and did the circuit walk. Even though it was very cloudy it was still pretty spectacular. We learnt that the birds of prey that we'd seen flying around were Black Kites, not sure what they eat though as we didn't see any other animals!

 

Mmm Crunky Nudes!

We made an executive decision to extend our stay at Cosmic as the weather wasn't looking great and we didn't want to risk camping - so we decided to do a day trip to Lantau island instead. The Ferry trip was pretty cool, seeing all the container ships and barges in the harbour, plus some teeny dinghys with locals fishing - game! We took the bus up to Ngong Ping and the Big Buddha which was up 260 steps, very popular location as it was a long weekend. We also visited the Tai O fishing village on Lantau, a definite change of pace from the big city lots of very fresh seafood, and some dried stuff as well - including an entire dried shark about 1.5m long! We also did the Cable Car ride over the peaks and down past the airport and over the water - pretty amazing. After we got back to Hong Kong Island we met up withTim's ex-workmate Johnny who is living in Shenzen, China at the moment and tried out a few of the ex-pat watering holes in Long Kwai Fong, they got the tick of approval but we all wondered where the locals drink.





New carnation dog breed!

Yesterday we just wandered up Nathan Rd for a look-see. Checked out the goldfish market, the flower markets and the bird garden - yep, lots of goldfish, flowers and birds. Then we headed off to Lamma island. We arrived at Pascale's house via her excellent instructions and walked straight into her daughters 8th birthday party! Before we knew it we had beers in hand and we're thoroughly enjoying the island hospitality... Today we walked from one end of the island pretty much to the other, views of the villages (and also the local coal plant and quarry) plus a great seafood lunch made for a very enjoyable day despite the 30 degree + heat!

So, yep, we are having a lot of fun already, although we keep having to tell ourselves that China will NOT be as well signposted as Hong Kong and that everyone will NOT speak english for the rest of our trip - i think we have been very spoilt at our first destination!