If I had to describe Hong Kong as a movie it would be “Blade Runner” meets “Lost In Translation” - breathtaking sky rises, lots and lots and lots of rain, and lots of temples too! 

Our first priority in Hong Kong was staying awake to beat the jet lag!  So we headed straight up to The Peak.  Or rather we headed to the bottom of The Peak in a cab, but the queue for the tram was so long that we just went straight to the top.

It was there, surrounded by eagles, and bats and jungle noises that I realised we were in a rain forest. 

After we’d breathed in the skyline, been disappointed by the Symphony of Lights (the thunder and lightning show that nature put on was much more exciting!) and enjoyed a night cap and little bit of cheesecake at The Peak Lookout we finally got on the tram - and wow what a journey that was, seeing the lights of Hong Kong flying past.

And it was at the bottom that the rain started.  At first it was wonderful, the rain evaporating as it touched us.  As we headed through Central looking for the Foot reflexology centre the rain got heavier and heavier - but we weren’t worried, there are taxis everywhere and, after all, we’re London girls!

The plan was to enjoy an hour of reflexology then home to bed around 11pm, and hopefully get right into China time.  Well, the massage was wonderful and we left feeling relaxed and ready to sleep.  We asked them to call a cab, but they told us it would be easier to pick one up from the street.  Then we saw the rain.  We could barely make it across the pavement to even hail a cab - and they weren’t stopping.  In desperation we went back to the valet guy at Foot - no, he couldn’t get us a cab.  I called Traders Hotel (so much for not using my phone out there!) and after the most rambled conversation we had to give up.  We did manage to jump on a bus for a little way, but he didn’t really understand us and we didn’t understand him!  Finally we just had to walk, in the torrential rain, back to our hotel.  And we were only just able to manage that.  Our map and even the business cards of the hotel, which we had so carefully taken with us, were just disintegrating in the rain.

But luckily the Traders Hotel was in a straight line from where we were.  Finally we arrived back - there were about 10 people standing behind the concierge desk, on the phone, presumably trying to get cabs for people - not one of them looked us in the eye as we dripped past them.  (Well, until I asked them to send up some extra towels!)

A hot shower, a wringing out and hanging up of all our clothes, and a room service order of hot, spicy Thai soup later and we were finally ready for bed - around 1am.  I was worried that I might not sleep I was so over tired, but the bed was so comfy that I closed my eyes and that was it until 9am - perfect!

So Saturday, and our first stop was breakfast, in a shopping centre, and then on to the Chi Li Nunnery, which was a magical place to be.  As I had booked the Dolphinwatch tour on Sunday morning, Saturday was our chance to visit all the recommended places in Kowloon.  The day was racing by so our next stop was The Peninsular for afternoon tea, around 2pm but... the queue was so long that we gave up.  We tried the Langham round the corner, but lunch was over, we tried another restaurant in a shopping centre - 45 minute wait - so we wandered up Jordan Road (I really couldn’t see what the big deal was), and, of course, did I mention that the whole time it was raining?  Luckily umbrellas are for sale everywhere for about HK$20-40 (about £1.50-3.50) so we stocked up.  Finally we managed to find somewhere to eat, Light Vegetarian as recommended by my DK Eyewitness guidebook.  Normally we don’t bother too much with guide books for restaurants, but when every restaurant looked the same; busy, scary menu and big neon sign, it’s hard to recognise the good ones!

Mandy and I, despite enjoying the sweet buns, were kind of agreed, in the words of Cameron (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) that we just “hadn’t seen anything good yet.”  With the rain and the grey and tackiness of Kowloon, we just hadn’t been wowed (well apart from The Peak and the Chi Li Nunnery and the vegetarian Peking Duck and the sweet buns...)  Sadly our spirits sank even further when we visited the Tin Hau Temple, the Jade Market and the Temple Street Night Market.  It was all just so tawdry.  Between the shiny, soulless shopping centres and the nasty little stalls I couldn’t spot the fabulous shopping that Hong Kong is supposed to have.

We headed back over to Central, and tried to find a facial place that Mandy’s Luxe guide raved about - hmmm, we tried the shopping centre, we tried running up and down the numbers, we tried asking doormen and in shops.  In the end I gave up and told her to get the hotel to call them; we were both getting pretty grumpy at this point.  We jumped on a tram back to the hotel, arguing about which was the right one (before realising that all trams run in the same direction, because of, um the tram lines - at least in Central - as you get over to Wan Chai there are a couple of different routes.)  When we finally figured out how to get to our hotel from the tram line we realised it was only one little tiny side street over - if we had known the night before we could have just jumped on a tram and saved ourselves a wet walk! 

I headed out for another tram ride over to Causeway Bay, leaving Mandy to freshen up before we headed out for our Saturday night on the town!  It was a fun ride, seeing all the neon (and there is a lot) from the top of a tram.  The streets were heaving with people all enjoying their favourite activity - shopping.  The neon lights of Hong Kong are pretty full on - it’s as if you gave an 8 year old an unlimited budget and asked them to do your Christmas lights!

My plan was to jump on the tube and head back over to meet Mandy, but for the life of me I couldn’t find Causeway Bay tube station.  It was so noisy and busy, in the end I had to jump on a tram (not so fun this time as it was packed), before jumping off at Wan Chai for a one stop tube journey to Central... where I came out of the wrong entrance and it took me and Mandy 15 minutes and a few text messages to find each other.  (Don’t do this - it’s like saying I’ll meet you at the exit to Bank!)

First we headed to the M Bar at the top of the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong (not The Landmark Mandarin Oriental) - can you see how Hong Kong gets confusing?  It was a decent view, and the cocktails were sublime (and expensive) but the bar was a little bit soulless - full of groups of businessmen.  It was on our way out that I stumbled upon their ground floor bar - live music and a completely different clientele - I wanted to stay!  But we were starving, so then began the great restaurant hunt.  We were following the Luxe guide, so we tried to find about 3 restaurants, until we finally ended up in the hallway of a dingy apartment building with me putting my foot down.  Frankly even if Mandy had found a restaurant at the end of the corridor I didn’t want to eat there.  So we used my DK guide to find Yung Kau Kee, which was in the next street, where we were shown up to a higher floor than the more casual ground floor entrance (they clearly spotted our slightly posh evening wear - and of course my neon pink raincoat, and decided we were more up market.)  It’s an impressive place, the first ten pages of the menu given to all the awards they have won since the 60s, and the menu ranged from affordable spring rolls to very expensive seafood dishes.  In the end I had some rather bland pork and some spring rolls, whereas Mandy decided to be adventurous and order the meat hot pot.  I’m sure it was very good quality, but, when it turned up at the table sizzling so much that it looked like the octopus was still alive, it topped my list of the most disgusting food I’d seen in Hong Kong!  (I did try a bit of the tofu in it and it was ok.)

I had to get up at 7am the next morning so was really relieved when Mandy suggested we head home rather than hitting any more bars!

Sunday morning, and the sun made a tentative appearance.  I was taking no chances so packed my sun tan lotion, sunglasses, raincoat, umbrella - my camera was okay as it’s waterproof - but I certainly didn’t think my underwater video camera would be necessary for just taking photos in Hong Kong.  I headed off for my Dolphinwatch trip - which turned out to be one of the highlights of Hong Kong!  Finally I felt like I’d seen something worth coming all the way to Hong Kong for!

Then I jumped on to the Ngong Ping cable car to Po Lin, where I met up with Mandy.  This time the torrential rain, although it made things slippy, also made my time at the Big Buddha incredibly atmospheric and special - watching the clouds rolling by against the hills and mountains - it made me excited to be going to Huangshan.

We would have loved to have visited the west side of Lantau Island, but we had booked in for the junk trip at 6pm, so had to head back.  (I know it seemed like we had booked a lot for the Sunday, but the pink dolphins and Aqualuna were only available then, which is why we ended up with such an itinerary!)  We only had time to look out of the steamy windows of the bus as we drove to Mui Wo, and jumped on the ferry back to Central.  The clouds and rain were coming in again and we had low expectations of the junk trip - we even worried that it was going to be cancelled, but they don’t cancel unless it’s a level 4 typhoon!!  Well I’m so glad they did - again this was another incredible highlight of our trip - even with the wind and the rain - or perhaps because of it!

All that was left on Sunday was my trip to the spa - sadly I did get a bit stressed and hassled, trying to find somewhere to eat something light in the shopping centre at 1IFC - everywhere decent seemed to have a long queue - so we ended up... in Pret A Manger - but their tiger prawn noodle soup was actually really good.

Mandarin Spa, Hong Kong is probably the best spa I have ever visited.  But I’ll let you read the full review.  Mandy instead went for a massage at Foot, which she didn’t really rate this time (I think they went a bit too hard on her.)  I lucked out with a great cabbie - which was good as all my cards with the address of Traders Hotel in Chinese had disintegrated.  I’d forgotten my glasses, my swimwear, and could barely talk I was so relaxed, so I wandered back into the room a blurry mess, mumbled my apologies to Mandy and collapsed.

The next morning the sunshine was brilliant, so we threw our stuff in our bags and headed down to try and figure out our exact plans for the day.  Sad to say the concierge, although very sweet, and very happy to take my used chick lit English novel, couldn’t really give us as much or as accurate advice as we’d have liked on getting to Shenzhen for our next flight, or on getting to and from Lamma Island - but we gave it a go!

After stopping off at the top of the Bank of China Tower (fabulous view of the harbour) we tried to find some dim sum - only to find that a lot of the places only start at 11am - well, we had things to do.  So I tucked into some more energy bars as soon as we had landed (at a run) on the ferry to Yung Shue Wan.  It was another beautiful journey, a far cry from our trip back from Mui Wo.  The town was a world away from Central - and it wasn’t a surprise to see so many ex-pats heading out from here on their way to work (I think I’d live here if I was in Hong Kong.)  A pit stop at the Green Cottage for some hash browns and a green tea mocha latte (don’t.) and we were ready to hike to the beach for a quick plunge, and then over the hills, drinking in the view, until we rounded the corner into Sok Kwu Wan, a bustling restaurant town with the huts on the water Hong Kong was once famous for.  As soon as we arrived we realised we had to jump on the next ferry to Aberdeen, or we might miss our flight - which was such a shame as this is reckoned to be one of the best places to eat seafood.  With tummies rumbling we headed back to Hong Kong Island and public transport.  We jumped on a bus, went a bit too far, jumped on a tram and got back to our hotel just in time to get into a big discussion about how to get to Shenzhen.  See The Flight to read this nightmare story!

I was so sad to leave, feeling that I was finally discovering the real Hong Kong. I wish we’d skipped Kowloon and instead visited more of the outlying areas and temples; Dragon’s Back and Shek O on Hong Kong Island, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery, Tai Long Wan, or just to have had more time on Lantau or Lamma Island.

After so many different experiences in Hong Kong it was hard to sum up - there were moments when I really thought “is this it?” and moments when I felt so privileged and honoured; like I was in the most special place in the world.  There was a line that kept popping into my head as we schlumped around Kowloon, or pulled out yet another disintegrated piece of paper from our bags, and then turned and saw a skyline, modern or natural that would make you weep.  Finally, when we were hiking on Lamma Island, I remembered that it was from the Desiderata.  Reading the whole poem now, I think in fact, it is very good advice for all travellers (especially in China.)

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