🙂 Very safe City. Vibey.
🙁 Too crowded and very expensive.
Currency: Hong Kong Dollar
THREE things we did not know about Hong Kong:
- Hongkongers have longevity. HK men live the longest in the world, and our women the second longest, with an average life expectancy of 81.2 and 86.7 years respectively
- Tetraphobia is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit 4. It is a superstition in many East Asian countries including Hong Kong. The Chinese word for Four is very similar to death. Elevators skip the number 4.
- HK has the more skyscrapers than any other city in the world – 518 vs New York which has 300.
Sunday – 08 October, 1995
We arrived from Yang Shou at 09h00 by night bus in Canton. Bade farewell t Americans that we had met on bus who got a taxi to Hong Kong. We went in search of a bus – we may as well have tried to find transport to the moon! No one spoke English. Everyone ignored us. Paul ran back to our night bus driver who very kindly walked with us to the bus stop and helped. Finally found one … on arrival my Visa was declined! Bribery saved the day. All we wanted was a lovely hotel but the doorman denied us entry because we were not appropriately dressed!! Two finger sup to him. Taxi driver ripped us off and dropped us at an extortionate guest house…. ate coconut and mango for dinner – exhausted!!
Woke up early to go to Japanese Embassy – my visa had already expired so had to reroute and skip that portion of our trip. Met up with Mark and Rachel that we’d met in Thailand and went back to their s for mince on baked potatoes – she had gone into work so we listed to her on the radio – drank lots of beer- fun evening!
Next morning Paul went with Mark to take Bish, the cat to vet while I sorted stuff out. Our flights to Manilla were delayed by 4hours so we each had $90 to spend – hoorah!
Deffo need to come back to HK as not explored at all.
