Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday morning after a good flight with Finnair. I've never flown with them before, but I was pretty impressed. I managed to pass the 9 or so hours away by watching Slumdog Millionaire, Australia, & Quantum of Solace. My brother wasn't able to meet me at the airport as he had attended the Hong Kong sevens all day Saturday & had had a huge day/evening, he reckons he got in at something like 3:30am! However he had given me directions to his flat & I managed to find it without any trouble.

After getting some food Warren & I made our way to the stadium for the finals day of the sevens. It was an enjoyable day, despite NZ getting knocked out in the quarter-finals. Warren was suffering a bit from the day before so we boycotted the infamous south stand where his friends were continuing to party, & instead had some nice family time high up in the east stand. Fiji ended up beating South Africa in the final. They played some fantastic rugby throughout the day & thoroughly deserved the title.Today was fairly chilled. Warren is still teaching this week, so I pottered around his local area. I visited a couple of fantastic shopping malls, one of which was 6 stories high with its own ice-skating rink! I also had a wander around the very trendy SoHo area, & travelled on the worlds longest escalator/travelator. It takes people from the central city up to the wealthy mid-levels residential area. I rode it for 18 minutes! I also went up to the viewing platform on the 43rd floor of the Bank of China building; the cities 3rd highest building. I was also planning on heading up to the peak for the famous vista over the city, but the queue for the tram was a bit long for my liking. I'll do it when I get back from China.

Tomorrow I head to Beijing for 4 days, & then Xian for one, to see the Terracotta warriors. I'm really looking forward to Beijing in particular, my brother raves about it as a city & has hooked me up with a few things to do/places to eat. I've been enjoying the food over here, but will probably be a bit sick of rice by the time I go home...

The view above is from the roof terrace of Warren's flat. He's got a nice 3-bed apartment in a great location on Hong Kong island, close to everything you could possibly need. However it's cheap because it's on the 5th floor & the building doesn't have a lift!