The big New Zealand holiday blog.. A fast paced day.

We woke up the next morning in Hong Kong, Sparks was feeling much better. We were flying back home that night so we went for a quick breakfast, packed our stuff and decided to check everything in at the Kowloon Station check in. This is the brilliant thing about Hong Kong. With one of the densest populations on Earth and the need to get people from A to B quickly, the transport system is top notch.

We left our hotel at about 10am, jumped on the Airport Express shuttle bus to Kowloon Station and checked our suitcases in for our flight, it's a brilliant system, we didn't see our cases again until we arrived back in Manchester. We called at the customer service dept and left our hand luggage with them, we would collect it later.

We were free to explore Hong Kong, with no baggage, just cameras. We caught the shuttle bus back to town and set off down the Avenue of Stars by the waterfront. We were heading for the Star Ferry to go across to the island. We took a few photos of the city high rises on the island from Kowloon and found a few new characters to photograph at the end of Avenue of Stars.
These new characters are called 'Fuwa' they are colourful, panda-like creatures in sporting poses. Fuwa are the symbol of the Olympics, there are 5 of them and they all have names, Bei-bei, Jing-jing, Huan-huan, Ying-ying and Ni-ni. When you put the names together Beijing huan ying ni, it means welcome to Beijing

We paid a couple of dollars (a few pence) and jumped on the Star ferry. Fifteen minutes later we were on Hong Kong Island. We mooched around the waterfront and then headed up to the markets. On crowded alleyways these little markets are superb. fresh fruit, flowers, meat, fresh fish and shellfish (it is still swimming in water filled tanks), Chinese herbs and bric-a-brac. We spent an hour wandering through the maze like alleyway markets.

We used our Octapus travel cards which we bought last year to travel on the trams and trains. We took the tram to Times Square and had a look around the big shopping centre there before taking the MTR (underground train), back to Kowloon via one of the cross harbour tunnels. Hong Kong really is a marvel of a place. There are so many subways and tunnels, each of which has shops down there. On the surface there are gravity defying skyscrapers, how Hong Kong doesn't just collapse in on itself, I'll never know.

Back in Kowloon, we went for our tea. We were both getting a bit footsore by then and needed a sit down. It was starting to get a bit dusky as we had our last walk through the brightly lit, crowded streets.

Here are some pics of Hong Kong Island skyscrapers, the Star ferry, The Olympic Fuwa and the alleyway markets..

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