Nigel: Hong Kong was a destination which we had previously visited and the intention of this visit was to have a brief look around and to recharge our batteries. We were also flying out from here to South America. Originally, we had only planned to spend 3-4 days here but the cost of hotels in Macau (somewhere else we were going to go revisit) was so expensive we ended up changing our plans and spending 6 days in Hong Kong instead. We also decided to blow the budget a little and get a nice hotel. We choose one called Island Pacific, which is situated on Hong Kong Island. When we booked we had paid for a city view, however, when we checked in we asked for quiet room and to our joy we were upgraded to a harbour view on the 16th floor. The room was a bit on the small side, but the view of the harbour and the city across the water made up for this. Hong Kong is famous for, amongst other things, its skyline especially at night. Last time we were on the other side looking at the sky line but this time our hotel formed part of it.

As we had previously been to HK, and the intention this time was to relax, we didn't do or see much of the city . Alison will talk about what we did see and do but the most notable event was the Hong Kong protesters (aka Central Occupation). If you didn't read the papers or look at the news you wouldn't know anything was going on. On one of the nights it did get rather heavy and the riot police started to use pepper spray and tear gas. As a result parts of the roads and metro system were closed. Our hotel duly informed us of these restriction but in a very peculiar way. During the day a letter was posted through our door stating that there was a "special event" taking place and these restrictions would be encountered. Anyone who was oblivious to the protesters, may have thought that this "special event" may be worth a visit and head down there. They didn't affect our time there and we did go and visit the scene of the protesters during the day when we knew that nothing much would be going on. It was interesting to see and it certainly gripped the city. At the time of writing, the protesters are still present and a resolution doesn't appear imminent .

Alison: Hong Kong was just what we needed. We had a clean bed, warm water and a toilet that you can actually sit on instead of squat over.....what more does a girl need! It had lots of other nice things too but these were the most exciting for me! We spent our time here strolling around the streets and the many shopping malls in both Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island. The streets around our hotel were very traditional with small markets and shops. It seemed our street was the best place to buy dried food as every other shop sold a whole array of dried products. Although it was interesting to see these shops, the main dried thing they sold was dried fish and this was not a good smell.... especially in the morning :-/

One evening we went over to the Kowloon side of the harbour to view the famous Hong Kong skyline at night and to watch the light show which involves lots of the buildings around the harbour and apparently holds a Guinness World Record for being the biggest musical light show (or something like that!) . We missed out on this last time so were looking forward to it but unfortunately we didn't think it was that good. There was music, a few laser beams and some flashing lights on buildings but it didn't blow us away. We must have high standards in light shows!

The highlight of the trip was treating myself to a haircut in Tony and Guy. I last had my haircut in a random hairdressers in London the day before we left and the girl did a horrendous job. I didn't realise a trim could go so wrong! Every time I have dried my hair since London, poor Nigel has had to listen to me complain about what a bad job she did and humour me whilst I show him that the ends are all different lengths! I finally got it fixed in Hong Kong so now I can move on.....and complain about something else instead!

Hong Kong was so good for relaxing. The hotel was really nice and had everything that we needed to recharge our batteries. The only downside was that we had a taste of our old non-travelling lifestyle and we liked it! We reluctantly left our comfy 4 star hotel to head to the airport but the sadness didn't last for long. We were heading on our next adventure to a place we had never been before.....South America!