Since I was awake half the night being OCD about my photos, I was only getting to sleep when Andrea was getting up for her early flight. And then I woke early myself and had to get my own stuff together for today's travels. I hate backpacks. I seriously hate the freaking things. I don’t see ANY benefit from them compared to my lovely wheelie suitcase. Well, they don’t make noise on cobblestones, but THAT’S IT. They’re both difficult to get up stairs, but at least you can leave a suitcase DOWN for a minute and catch your breath. Backpacks are stuck to you the entire time. And it’s not like they’re neat and tidy. I’m on a train now with streamers of straps hanging in my face. Bloody nightmare device. I want wheels.

And a Sherpa .

To make life easier for everybody, I brought the backpack to Hung Hom first thing. It’s always great fun lugging it round packed subways; it’s why I do it so often. And I simply adore when I get to change trains, or walk to a connecting station underground. Ain’t travel great?

I had McCafe in the station for breakfast after all the weightlifting, and then went back to my favourite station in the world, Tsim Sha Tsui. I love it so much because I always have to transfer to Tsim Sha Tsui East whenever I get there, and it’s at least three miles through an underground warren in the wrong direction no matter where I’m coming from or going to.

Dammit... I meant to get a Hong Kong flag, I just remembered... I’m currently sitting on a train that’s tilting sideways. And I’m back in mainland China. Oh, yaayy...

I wanted to see a proper electronics shop in Hong Kong, so I went to a Fortress branch in Times Square (which is a building, not a patch of ground) . Good news for my wallet: I’m all caught up on the latest 'leccies. Ew, I hate that word... Well, there IS a fabulous Pentax camera that I’ve been admiring from a distance, but what it doesn’t know can’t hurt it, right? I took a stroll around Causeway Bay while I was there, then went to the General Post Office in Central. Although I have nothing but praise for the Hong Kong postal service – it’s one of the best in the world, I swear – it’s next to impossible to find postcards in this town. I finally found a couple in the Philatelic Centre, but there wasn’t even much choice. I think they were all even taken by the same person. In the same helicopter. On the same day.

Anyway, the far more interesting part is that I do believe the walkway outside the GPO is the one they used in The Dark Knight when Morgan Freeman gave Christian Bale the prototype of my phone! Woo! So I took a few photos to compare it when I get a DVD player again. I do wonder though, how on earth they managed to clear that bridge long enough to film anything. Even if it wasn’t that bridge, clearing anywhere in Hong Kong must be a massive undertaking. There was a footpath outside my hostel that was dug up the first day I was there, and was all put back together the next morning. I know our councils are run by lazy crooks, but it really rubs it in when you see how fast and simple their job really is.

Thinking I had everything done (stupid flag ...), I went to Mong Kok to see what it was all about. The clutter of signs overhead, the relative shabbiness of the buildings and the feeling of cheapness that pervaded it were worthy of a few pictures, but I felt like I’d seen it all before. There were massage parlours, massage parlour leaflet hand-outers, dodgy electronic shops, cheap clothes booths and "Rolex" stores everywhere. It was busier than most places I’ve been, but it was quiet, and no one was hassling me, which was a nice change. I wandered through the Ladies Market, which was ... well, boring... and I decided to move on. I walked along Nathan Road to whatever the next station was, and got stuck in a secondary school badminton team.

Actually, just a quick aside – some schools here actually have proper uniforms! I’ve seen girls walking round in skirts and ties and blazers... maybe I’ve seen boys too, I can’t recall... but it’s not (just) the shiny 80’s tracksuits! When I was in Macau I thought there was a Brazilian team walking around until I realised that it was yet another glaringly bright uniform. But... I saw kids there in shirts and ties too. It’s something else I don’t actually know: maybe they’re from private schools, and maybe private schools aren’t so common on the mainland. Another thing to find out. I’ll be an expert by the time this is over.

So after Nathan Road, it was back to a hike through TST and on to Hung Hom . I thought I was really early, but then I passed a (legitimate) massage parlour where I could have been having a thirty minute neck and shoulder massage for under €8, and I cried. Then I discovered that the toilets were squats – in preparation for the mainland, I suppose – and I cried a bit more. Well, not really, but it wasn’t the highlight of my day. I got a salmon and dill Panini in Starbucks and a delightful Toffee Nut Latte, which is part of their “get ready for Christmas!” range. They even have trees and ornaments up. Well... Hallowe’en is done and dusted now... Anyway, my bag storage cost as much as the massage (I suppose it lasted longer...), and its size FINALLY came in useful when I walloped a few queue jumpers in the face with it. HAHAHAHAHA! Revenge is so sweet.

Passport pages 3 and 4 now have eleven and a half stamps from this country and its Special Administrative Regions (the half is where one blotted onto the opposite page. Messers.) and I’m back in the smelly, concrete, hazy, polluted, badly lit mainland. I simply can’t WAIT for dinner. Mmm, my favourite pastime.

(Insert elevator music here)

Had to get off the train there and spend about 79 hours in a quarantine queue, a passport queue, a customs queue, a search queue and a barbeque. There were a lot of African men trying to get through and they took about three times as long as everyone else, then got stuck at “Items to declare” . I won’t even hazard a guess. Yen met me with a little page with my name on it. Yay, I’m one of those people now! Woo! We bumped cheeks and went down to meet Wang in the car, who then took us to the Ramada. I didn’t have the heart to tell any of the naively optimistic kids at the hostel that I was staying here when they were rattling on about their hostels in Guilin and the overnight buses they were going to take, but HAW HAW. I totally win.

I’m on the seventeenth floor with a marvellous view over the Pearl River. There’s a giant twisty building across from me, like a colourful piece of penne pasta, and apparently there’s an island nearby where all the rich and posh folks live. I’ve only seen the city in the dark, but it looks shiny. No idea what I’ll do with myself tomorrow though... (edit: The tower is actually the Guangzhou TV and Sightseeing Tower that's 610 meters high, and the second tallest freestanding structure in the WORLD. After the Burj Dubai - which, to mess with our heads further, has since been renamed the Burj Khalifa . But I still saw it.)

Wang and Yen checked me in, and a friendly and curious porter tried to carry my bag up for me. I know it’s heavy, but neither he nor Wang were very good at manoeuvring it. Wusses. The porter (let’s call him Mike) couldn’t figure out which way was up, so he left the shoulder straps flailing weakly in the air. All I wanted to do was wash my face and change my clothes, since Wang and Yen were waiting for me downstairs, but Mike insisted on pointing out all the sites outside the window, showing me how all the furniture worked (chair, bed, desk, TV...), and cross checking all my answers to his questions in the lift. I eventually managed to get across that my friends were waiting for me downstairs and I had to get ready fast. No more than in Dubai, it’s the overly-helpful ones that freak me out. It’s not like I’m incapable of using a chair. I don’t need you to pull it out and explain its uses, ta very much.

We went to a restaurant across the road and had a nice selection of platters (no thanks to me), which included: beef covered in almonds, some lettuce-y thing, sweet corn soup, sweet bean dumplings, and pork tofu. And I liked it all! This is a first! I’ll accept this awesome room and international news channels as a prize, thank you, thank you. And yes, you read that right – I have BBC, CNN, HBO and a few others. But of course “Bad weather may affect the reception of the above channels/Weak signal and non-broadcasting period may affect domestic channels during the day”. Like the time BizAsia came on, gave a rundown of the headlines, then cut out just as the lady said “But first-“ and came back on as a man said “Thank you. And now to (whatever it was)”. It’s not too hard to read into, is it?

Ah China. It’s you.