Hong Kong

The journey to Hong Kong was an interesting one, my first and hopefully last experiance of sleeper buses. A reclining chair would have been more comfortable, but the only bus I could get had what they called bunk beds, but I think they would be better described as rows of shopping trolleys with blankets in them. If you were over 5 foot tall and not very thin then Ithere was no chance of getting any sleep, it was hard enough just to fit in the bed without trying to be in any kind of comfortable position for sleeping. THe bus went to Shenzen, a city on the Chinese side of the border. I had been told that from where the bus stopped you could just walk across the border and get a train into the centre of Hong kong. Have no idea where I got off the bus, but it wasn't the border, just rows of buses and all the signs were in Chinese so I had no idea where I was or where I wanted to go. Walked around lost for a bit and then found someone who spoke English who explained that I needed to get a bus and then a train to get to the border. So eventually an hour or so later I made it to the border. Considering Hong Kong is suppossed to be part of China they have quite a strict border crossing where you have to fill in forms to leave China, then go through and fill in more forms to enter Hong Kong and then you have to go through customs. So despite it officially being the same country i soon realised that it really is a completly different place. For a start they speak a different language and have a different currency. Once across the border everything got a lot easier and I discovered all the things that I had been missing in China without realising it. Clean flushing toilets, running water, signs in English, useful information and maps, queues for tickets and generally everything was just organised. After the luxury of finding some bread for breakfast (they don't have bread in China) I got the train into Kowloon, on the mainland side of Hong Kong. Found the hostel I had booked and realised one of the downsides of not being in China any more. Most of the hostels in China have nice spacious rooms, with lounge areas and gardens, in Hong Kong for about 3 times the cost I'm staing in a tiny room on the 13th floor of a tower block. It is in a good location though, on one of the main roadds through the city.

Spent the rest of the day just walking round the city and deciding what I wanted to do for the next few days. One of the big advantages of Hong Kong is that it has a proper tourist information service where they actually provide useful information about things about what you ask them. In China everywhere has an information place but they don't actually provide useful information they jst say that everything you want to do isn't possible and that the best thing to do is go on there over priced day trips to places you don't want to go (not that they get comission or anything). Walking round the city was nice as despite Hong Kong being at least as busy as the rest of China it doesn't seem nearly so crowded, probably becasuse its just more organised and unlike China spitting, smoking and lilltering are heavily fined in all public places.

In the evening I found out the other disadvantages of being in Hong Kong. Food in China was always very good and very cheap, where as here the prices are more like you pay at home. After dinner, decided to go for a drink. In China beer was about 30-50p a pint and really not much more expensive than buying water. Here it cost me more like 3-4 pounds, so it looks like I'm back to drinking water.