Ian Rambles
Hong Kong - or at least Kowloon - impressed me in all the wrong ways. Every few yards I was offered fake watches or tailored clothing or implored to enter yet another store. I was, genuinely, looking for a replacement camera but wanted to talk to someone who knows abour cameras, not a dubious salesman whose only interest was making a sale. Eventually I found a store where the staff offered intelligent advice rather than unbelievable discounts and flexed my credit card - and bought exactly the same camera again, even though it is an older model.

When I got back to our room and started to collect batteries and chargers to use with the new camera - the broken camera started working again!! So now we have two.

I went to the station, while Fi took the boys to the science museum, to book our train to Xi'an. I had to do this through an agent but it was fairly painless - apart from the multiple visits to the ATM for cash - and our first hurdle in China was crossed.

Fiona's Journal
We caught the local bus service to Kowloon which was crowded, with frequent stops, but cheap and easy to use. The minute we alighted at our stop, a swarm of opportunists descended. They wanted to carry our bags, get us a taxi, show us to a good hotel, sell us all fake Rolex watches and measure us up for a complete new wardrobe. I found myself almost batting them away like mosquitoes as I hefted my rucksack onto my back and head-down charged after Ian and the boys. We are, once again, in a high rise hostel, like the one in Taipei, this time two very clean and comfortable, air-conditioned rooms on the 15th floor.

Hong Kong, ringed by its horizon of mountains, is a dramatic and beautiful city in some ways but there is not much, on a human scale, to get fond of. Looking across Victoria Harbour from Kowloon is a skyline reminiscent of New York, the skyscrapers of Central Hong Kong proudly declaring the multinational businesses they house, in neon.

After dark, when all the many coloured lights are operating, it is rather magical. We watched the 8.00pm nightly “Symphony of Lights”, in which they synchronise the rhythms of all these buildings' individual lighting patterns with a popular classical music medley over loud speakers. I didn't really feel this added anything much to the unsynchronised, unaccompanied version.

On the Wednesday we went to the Science Museum and found that Wednesdays are “free entry” days, which was good and bad. The queue was very long but well managed so the museum was not overcrowded and it was well worth the long wait. There was much to admire and wonder at and their Hall of Mirrors was by far the best of the many I have visited. Ian went to the station and got our train tickets from HK to Xi'an while we were queuing and caught up with us later.

The next day we headed for the Museum of Art (Ian's and my choice) but arrived to find they are open every day except Thursdays. The boys were less than desolate about this and dragged us of to a shopping centre, where we bought a camera. This was less whimsical than it sounds because our faithful Pentax Optio had died suddenly a week ago, of no known cause. A recharged battery and a new memory card had failed to revive it. We ended up buying exactly the same model again (for half what we had paid the first time), because it has been so good.

In the afternoon we took a Harbour Tour on the Star Ferry which was a pleasant and leisurely way of getting another view of the city. Ian was particularly impressed by the bamboo scaffolding being used on all the building sites.

When we returned to the hostel later in the day Ian grabbed the old camera to remove its battery and memory card and it came back to life! So now we have two!!

We ate well in Hong Kong, particularly at a small, cafe in the back streets behind our hostel, where we were the only non-Chinese customers on both occasions. We also went to a rather upmarket Italian Restaurant on our last night and I had the first glass of wine I have drunk for over a month.

We continued to fend off hustlers every time we emerged onto the streets, but many of the regulars got to recognise us and stopped bothering us much. We largely gave up on the lifts, which were always jam-packed and took ages to arrive. There were only two lifts to service 14 floors, each floor accommodating several hostels and heaven knows how many residents.

We took to the stairs which were slightly bizarre. At floor three you had to exit the stairwell, through a door, out onto the tiled floor of a corridor whose other wall (and the rest of the building) had not yet been built! At the far end of this tiled floor you went back into the completed part of the building, into another stairwell, and continued all the way up to floor 15.

In summary, we had some fun in Hong Kong but I feel no desire to come back here. Unlike Japan, Taiwan and Thailand that box is firmly ticked. I am most grateful, however, for the 4 day respite from mosquito bites that the city has given me!

Arthur's Log:
HONG KONG
We were off the train from Chiang Mai by 7 and in Bangkok air port by 9 with near 5 hours to spare. We found a coffee shop showing Mr Bean and drank lots of coffee very slowly to pass the time.

The flight was boring like all flights are except they had cameras built into the nose and hull of the plane which was amusing for take off and landing.

Arrived on the airport island on the outskirts of Hong Kong and bussed into the center. We are staying at Chung King mansions which is a tower block in Kowloon. We got off the bus and in the very short walk to our hostel we were bugged by every sort of street salesman you could think of. The main ones were fake watches (like phoney Rolexes and so on) and taylors of all things, but like always you blank them and they give up farly quickly.

The next day we had no clue were we wanted to go so we spent the first half of the day just wandering around. It is the most multi cultural place I have ever been. People from every country you can think of and the same with all the places to eat Thai, Italian, American, English and loads and load whih Ii had no clue about. I suppose its because this has been a main traiding post for hundreds of years.

Me and dad have got good at beating off the street sales men. Dad generally starts talking to them too fast for their english to follow on and I make them think I'm interested then, when they go into their bag to show me some examples, I disapear.

At 8 o'clock they have the worlds biggest daily light show on the water front on both sides of Victoria Harbour. A total of over 80 buildings are used.I enjoyed it but were using the crapiest gameshow style music you have ever heard.

We bought another of the same camera (i forgot to mention our optio broke in Thailand). We took a boat trip around victoria harbor and that was allright Me harry and george went to the internet cafe and most of the rest of the day disapeared - apart from going to a italian retarant at georges request.