Mong Kok

Feeling better today - a nice lesiurely lie in and mooch about in the morning put us in a better mood before we ventured out. My jetlag wasn't too bad, although I did wake up at 4am (9pm BST) for an hour or so which was pretty horrendous, as all I could think about was home and it was getting me a bit upset. But I just had to remind myself, 10 months will fly by and there are people who have to leave their families to do much worse than 'travel the world' so I should suck it up and get happy! I think our sleep-deprived arrival in Hong Kong put a dampner on our spirits but that was yesterday and today I feel much more accomplished.

We wanted to go to Kowloon and so headed to the MTR. The fact we have mastered Hong Kong's version of the tube already makes me feel happy that we have accomplished something! After realising there are two stations with Kowloon in the name, and realising niether of us knew which to go to, we opted for Mong Kok on recommendation from my buddy Ed.

The MTR is GREAT! Oh man, at first I laughed when I saw Boris Johnson talking about his dream for new tubes with one carriage and air conditioning but NOW I want that to happen! The stations are nice and clean, the ticket machines are awesome (touch the stop you want to go on the map! TOUCH SCREEN! AMAZING!), on the train itself, the map of stops has lights and an arrow showing you which direction you are travelling in (absolutely fab for newbie tourists like ourselves) and the lights go off at each station as you pass them. Genius. And then another little light indicating which side the doors will open. These things seem like such simple ideas but when they are all in one place, you realise how great they are! That coupled with air con made it the most pleasant tube journey I've undertaken in my life! I would probably enjoy my commute to work a lot more if this kind of train ran in London.

After a quick change of lines - across the platform from each other, another major selling point of the MTR! - we went four stops to Mong Kok. Lots more shops in Mong Kok that were appealing to us i.e. not food shops! Saw the familiar ESPIRIT store front pretty early on which was pretty comforting. Walked around for a while, window shopping and taking in everything. Found a Starbucks in which we had a spot of lunch (Sam had her Vanilla Chai tea latte and a blueberry scone, I had an amazing iced tea lemonade and ricotta and spinach pie. Lahvely) before continuing on. If I was naturally a size 8/10, I think Hong Kong would do a lot of damage to my credit card. A lot of the clothes are really cute but you need to be about 5 foot nothing with no boobs to wear anything! Ah well, saving me pennies I suppose hehe.

After a detour, we finally found the YWCA where my brother Drew and his girlfriend Emily stayed earlier in the year. Just around the corner is the fabulously named Man Fuk road where I of course got Sam to take a brilliantly touristy pic of me pointing at the sign. Pretty cool that somewhere as far away from home as Hong Kong has now had two of Team Heatley standing on the same bit of pavement! Only Joe to go now :P

Decided to head home after 5 hours of walking around as, unfortunately, 4/5 years in an office job means I am now hideously unfit and coupled with breaking in new shoes means my lower back and feet are postively throbbing from our non stop walking. But it's all good and in training for our Australian adventure where I want to see as much as I can :) just got to ease myself back in a bit I guess. Have been standing on our cool marble floor tiles in our room to try and sooth my feet! Plimsol trainers tomorrow, me thinks. On our way back, we popped into a great smelling bakery and picked up a ham and mushroom roll each and I also got an interesting looking green tea donut type roll with jam and cream in it! Looks a bit gross but excited to try it :P Going to definitely get my chinese on and find some dumplings to eat tomorrow. I'm determined to get Sam to try one, as I've not yet met someone who doesn't like dim sum hehe.

Back at the hotel now, contemplating where to go next (actually going to Kowloon tomorrow and thinking possibly a trip to Disneyland before we leave!!!), about to relax with an episode of Glee. Good times.



Amazing lemonade iced tea. I will be writing a letter to Starbucks upon my return to the UK, advising them to pull the UK stores out of the dark ages and lets us have green tea frapps and iced tea. Ok, green tea frapps are maybe a bit too exotic for grey England, but why the hell do we not have some iced tea action going on? Not impressed. /rant



The least hideous pic of me at Man Fuk Road! Must rememember to do some power-walk arms with all this walking...



View of the YWCA. Random.