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We only had a short 4 days in Hong Kong but managed to pack a fair bit in.

We arrived around lunchtime on the Wednesday and found our way successfully onto the airport bus and down towards Tsim Sha Tsui to find our hostel in Chungking Mansions.  After the amazing hostels in Japan which were always really clean, fairly spacious with really friendly staff it was a bit of a shock and disappointment.  The staff were a bit rude to us and the room was far from clean.  But we didn’t let that ruin our trip and figured we weren’t planning on spending much time in the room anyway.  So we headed off to get refuelled and then wandered around the Nathan Road area nearby - again another thing we had been lucky to not have in Japan was all of the people hassling you to go to their shop to buy something.  I’m not sure where we would wear a suit a rolex watch anyway!

On Thursday we took the Star ferry across to Central and then headed for the Peak tram to get up to the Peak and take in the view from there.

After a much needed iced lemon tea at the top we took the tram back down and then wandered through Hong Kong Park and stumbled across a huge aviary with hundreds of different birds inside.

We met Aideen and Ben for dinner - they took as for a yummy curry around Lan Kwai Fong then it was back across to Kowloon Bay exhausted after our first day in real heat!

Friday we took the ferry to Lantau Island where we went to visit the Giant Buddha statue there.  I hope my photo conveys the size of it - there were a lot of steps to the top!

Dinner with Aideen and Ben again on Friday night where we had Cantonese on the Knutsford Terrace.  Then we headed up to the night market.  There were so many bargains to be had here but knowing that we didn’t have much room in our rucksacks we restrained ourselves.

On Saturday morning we attempted to join Aideen & Ben on a hike but after panting my way to the first set of steps we gave up and decided to take the bus around to Stanley on the south side of Hong Kong Island to meet them there.

As it was our last night in Hong Kong Aideen took us out to an amazing French restaurant in Wan Chai where we had so much yummy food and wine I thought I was going to burst!

It was a quick trip to Hong Kong but a great one all the same and an interesting contrast to Japan!