Hopefully from now on we will be able to write more regularly. However as you’re probably aware most of our time till now has been spent travelling. So we are now in Newquay Cornwall and I finally have both the combination of being awake enough and have the time to type.
So from the Start. – I’ll cover Hong Kong in this post and then do England separately.
May 6th we flew to Auckland (staying at Citylodge) and spent the day with my friend Greg, who took us to a cafe in Northcote which was excellent and we visited the Auckland Museum, very impressive. Our visit coincided with Greg having a group of friends over for dinner, very nice people, good time had by all. Greg certainly seems to be doing well and we hope to see him in the UK soon.
May 7th we flew to Hong Kong (with Cathy Pacific) arriving at hotel (Royal Plaza) midnight local time (4am for us). This included the stressful incident of our itinerary not matching with our airport transfer ticket and booking. I had requested Park Hotel but the transfers had Royal Plaza not yet sure who got this wrong. Unfortunately due to the transfer ticket taking so long to arrive at travel adjacent Nicky had to pick it up from the travel agent at the last minute and we didn’t pick up this error. So the Park Hotel staff helped us get a taxi and $10 NZD later we at least had somewhere to sleep if not the hotel I expected. This turned ended out ok as the Royal Plaza turned out to be attached to a mall which was very helpful to acclimatise and get food.
As the Royal Plaza was in an area called Mongkok just North of the main Kowloon area they run a free shuttle downtown. So each day we took advantage of this. Our first day included a walk through the avenue of stars, a sandwich in Kowloon Park, and star ferry across to Hong Kong Island. Then a Rickshaw sightseeing bus tour of about 30-40mins on the heritage route. Which most of the time felt like the slums tour of Hong Kong Island, several areas where we would not have liked to be on foot. At 5pm we took a free walking tour through Mongkok (offered by the Hotel), this included the bird garden/market, flower garden, goldfish market and finished at the ladies market.
Day 2 was all about Ocean Park, this was a bit of a hike from the hotel, (shuttle, walk, ferry, bus). The park was rather spread out and the map wasn’t always that helpful so this was a very tough day in 32+ degrees and 90% humidity. Highlight was the Giant Pandas and Nicky got a very close up look and a few great photos, check out our flickr. Bit of a panic when our bus back didn’t return to the ferry but stopped somewhere called admiralty west apparently 25mins walk from the ferry. So we had to get another bus and despite running we just missed a ferry which meant we missed our shuttle by about 5mins and had to take the MTR train and walk to get back to the hotel to check-out.
Hong Kong security must be a bit better than Auckland because as we went through the scanner they pulled my little terrorist Nicky aside and started asking to see things they had seen on the scan!!!! Turns out she had scissors and they were a bit concerned about something else which turned out to be the tent pegs. Oops, the Chinese security guy wasn’t very impressed however we were allowed through with a warning that the tent should be in checked baggage next time.
So despite some minors hiccups we arrived sleep-deprived but otherwise fine in Heathrow at 5.30am on the 10th of May.
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