The long goodbye

Monday 17^th October

Time to say (a long) goodbye

We got up extremely late, and were put to shame by Rachael going to work and Dave going out exercising. Still, our last day waking up without our small person alarm. We headed out to buy some last minute presents and to try to shake off the last –day malaise. Lunch followed at Prego with Dave, Rachael, and Sarah. We had New Zealand whitebait for the first time – smaller and tastier than their UK counterparts.

Sarah with a famous New Zealand pie

We headed back to Rachael and Dave’s for a small drink before leaving, and the next thing we knew, we had invited ourselves to their friends (next-door but one) Simon and Wing’s to discuss Coronation Street (RIP Betty) and look at their amazing art collection.

All too soon the taxi came, and after dropping Sarah at home, we headed, tearfully, for the airport. Flight went as well as could be expected in economy, and we landed in Hong Kong on time at 6am.

Tuesday 18th October

After a bit of argy-bargy (‘but I’m travelling first class!'), we discovered that in order to check in our bags we had to get the train from Hong Kong airport (which is on a different island from HK itself) to HK Central. Things went smoothly from there, and we emerged, dirty and blinking, into the sun of Hong Kong. After a breakfast overlooking the harbour, we went to find the famous Star Ferry, an amazing old boat which pitched and rolled its way over to Kowloon, giving us amazing views back over the city. We wandered around the waterfront of Kowloon, and down the Avenue of Stars, in amazingly hot weather (for which we were not dressed). 

Kowloon was a weird mixture of Chinese herbalists and tobacconists and high-class designer shops. It was hard to get a sense of the place in our befuddled and tired states, but we walked the streets taking in the sights and taking pictures.

The Star Ferry took us back to Hong Kong, and we decided to walk one of the tourist trails. The highlights were the streets of Chinese shops festooned with gory artefacts such as severed limbs and (fake) blood-stained clothing. We’re not sure if this was something to do with the Day of the Dead, Hallowe’en, or something completely different, but it certainly was striking. After a very European snack of muffins and croissants we went on to visit a Taoist Temple, which held the most incense I have ever seen in any one place.

Shattered and very hot by this point, we decided to take a taxi to Stanley, as we had heard that the waterfront was nice there. The trip was interesting – incredible how many people they pack into high-rise blocks here. It’s the absolute opposite of New Zealand, which has lots of land and not many people, and that’s possibly one of the reasons why we did not particularly enjoy our time here. Stanley was Blackpool with better views and better weather, but we found a German (!) bar overlooking the bay, and agreed that a couple of beers looking at the view was not a bad way to pass your layover in HK.

Taxi back to the station, a train to the airport, and to the lounge. Where we stayed, for six (count ‘em) hours until our flight left for the UK.