$60! For one beer??????

  Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Tuesday, August 17, 2004

A... Hong Kong is a great place to visit, with plenty of home comforts to keep you happy, and enough Chinese culture to keep it interesting. We spent nearly 2 weeks there while waiting for the Indian embassy to give us a Visa, which was plenty long enough to work out that those Western comforts come at a price. Yep, a beer in Hong Kong can be had for the same price as a hotel room in Eastern China. At least the menu is in English though, so you know exactly how much they're fleecing you for!






A break from the shopping for tea at the Peninsula, darlings.

One great thing about Hong Kong though is that it is easy to escape from - you can just hop on a ferry and half an hour later be on a virtually lovely quiet island sitting on a beach. Admittedly you may be sharing the beach with a power station, but you can`t have everything!





Hong Kong is a shoppers Mecca, though sadly our funds didn`t let us take full advantage of the fact. Still, Caroline decided it would be a good opportunity to replace her scratched glasses much more cheaply than at home. Unfortunately the shop chosen (recommended by the Lonely Planet, no less) turned out to be run by a guy who wore a big hat, rode a horse to work, jangled his spurs and said `howdy` a lot. This meant we got to enjoy the Star ferry lots as we sailed back and forth across the harbour until he produce a pair of glasses that no longer made Caroline walk into things.







Suprisingly, there are loads of things in Hong Kong that you can do for free. Many shopping centres have free internet terminals, we got a free sailing junk cruise round the harbour courtesy of the tourist office, and a free ride on a tram across Hong Kong Island. Unfortunatley we got a tram to take us to where we picked up the free tram ride, and the free ride promptly took us back the same way. Once we reached the place where we`d originally got on the first tram we decided against staying on the free ride to take us back along the same road a third time!









Hong Kong is just great for wandering round and looking up at the tall buildings and the bright lights though. And you really can`t beat the view from the peak.