Sarah & Richard's Travels

After four days back in Bangkok at our favourite hostel, Lub D we flew up to the bustling city of Hong Kong and what an amazing place!

There are high rises towering everywhere and you are constantly bombarded by neon lights, advertising, traffic and people, yet somehow it's all great. It has such an energy and great vibe to it.

We were lucky enough to stay in a friends apartment overlooking Happy Valley Race Course, our first stop on the Wednesday night the day we arrived. It was great fun - completely packed with locals and expats alike, all enjoying a few drinks, the races and of course putting a few dollars on to bet. Unfortunately we didn't make our million here at the races, but a great evening was had in a party like atmosphere and it was cheap to get it - only 10 Hong Kong Dollars or around 1 pound which you could use your Octopus card (transport card for travelling like Oyster Card in London and can also be used to pay for small items in 7 Elevens and other stores) to pay for. Crazy sums of money were bet that evening in betting completely government run, so all proceeds go back to the community. During our time we saw that the Zoo and Uni accommodation (among plenty of other things I'm sure) was sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Being such a big city with very little land all the horses live in high rise buildings. At first I thought this was a joke, but it's true, they live in high rises complete with air con and are taken down to the track for workouts daily! Think I'd prefer to be a New Zealand racehorse really.

The rest of our six days in Hong Kong was spent exploring all the different areas, from central to Lamma Island to Kowloon, Stanley Bay and the New Territories which is what the locals call the countryside. Stanley Bay was a cool chilled out beach side town with markets and good little cafes etc and was extremely busy on the Sunday we were there, there's some pretty cool high rise apartments over this way as well. We had lunch with our friend at a tiny village not far from Stanley Bay, a place few tourists venture as it's not easily accessible without a car and loved the quaint streets with the low rise buildings, a quiet village feel, which felt miles from central Hong Kong, despite being just 10 - 15 mins drive away.

We discovered a lot of walking routes in Hong Kong and had we had more time we could have ventured onto some of the many incredibly steep hill tops in the 'country' to try these out. However we opted for the lazy routes of taking the worlds longest covered escalator (800m) up to the midlevels area (mostly residential high rise apartments). We people watched as we passed the restaurants and bars lined along the way and peeked into a couple of shops as we passed by before heading up the Peak by tram.

The tram climbs 363m and feels like you are being pulled up almost vertical at some points! We arrived just before sunset and enjoyed the view, though it was a bit hazy to see too far and not long later the sun dropped and we could see all the lights of Hong Kong below. The city is awesome during the day, but at night the lights look amazing.

Down on the harbour at Kowloon or Central the lights were stunning and they had a Christmas themed 'Symphony of Light' playing every night with laser lights, walking Santa's, Christmas Bells and Baubles illuminating the buildings, as well as some lights for the East Asian Games (a regional version and downsized version of the Olympics) which were being held while we were there.

And that was Hong Kong! We felt we'd got to see the city pretty well in six days, but there is so much more to explore and we look forward to having more stop overs in Hong Kong soon!