OMG! Hong Kong is amazing...i want to live here for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever....I know muma dn jay will love it here and must must must come here on holiday. all i can say to everyone i know is this: YOU WILL LOVE HONG KONG! the hong kong dollar is the same exchange as the chinese yuan ($15 to 1 pound) but the prices to buy things is more expensive. its around $40 dollars for a pint of beer (which is about 2.10) compared to china where is was about 5 yuan! we have had to reivaluate our budget somewhat! we are still eating cheap instant noodles at night and trying to see everything by foot during the day, but its so amazing at night, with all the neon, we have been out. we found a cocktail bar which was buy one get one free, so it worked out at $30 dollard (2 pounds) for a cocktail, and we found an irish bar and had carsburg chips and onion rings...heaven!
it is so warm here we have been in vest tops, cotton trousers and sandals, and even at night just a pashmena when you are sitting down for a while and it gets a little chilly. at the harbour front, it is called boulevard of the stars, and has stars on the floor for each of the stars, and handprints, like in LA. we dont know many of them as they are the stars of asian films, but we know bruce lee (whose hands were not in the star as it was made after he died), jackie chan, jet li and chow yun phat! we were so excited by jackie and jet we had to put our hands inside their hands for a photo! tourists!!!
we went back to the boulevard at night, as at 8pm all the buildings have a laser show from their roofes, which is amazing, and just seeing them all lit up at night is spectacular! all the buildings have huge santas and reindeers and stars over the front of them in lights, i dont know how they got them up there! we tried to take pictures, but you just cant do it justice without a 5000 pount camers, as its hard to get through the smog and see it clearly, so i will have to buy some post cards which have the day and night view clearly.
Hong Kong Island. we came over to hong kond island to see victoria peak, the giant escalator, SoHo, the botanical gardens and St. Johns Cathedral...and everything was amazing. we took the escalator from the bottom to the top, but, although it is the largest escalator in the world, it isnt steep or scary, as it is broken up into about 12 differant escalators. each one seems to be at street level, as you go up the escalators between streets, then you are on a street! so their is no drop behind you or steep inclince next to you...its hard to explain, but i wasnt scard once! the escalator goes through SoHo so their are bars and cafe's and restaurants on each side. at the top we walked down the hill and down a big concrete viaduct. on one side was huge sky scrapers, and on the other side, was a forest of trees and flowers! with one big road through the middle! the trees are huge! due to the heat and the tendancy to typhoon they are huge tropical trees, with roots growing down the hill, over the road and over walls! they have build a botanical garden around where the trees are, allowing them to grow at random, but they have concreted over the floor between the trees where possible, to stop the danger of mudslides during the typhoon season. in the middle of all this, in the middle of the city is a small free zoo, with lemurs, gibbons, snakes, golden lion tamerins, golden foot tamerins...and they all had big enclosures to run around in with trees and swings and food. and the golden agoute's had free run around the bottom of all the cages! at one point, a cheeky bird flew out of the gibbons cage with a big piece of bread, that was so big it couldnt see where it was going and nearly flew into my head!
ooo...this computer is booked out, so i shall tell you more later!
xxx
