[lettie]

Our last day in Hong Kong was spent shopping and packing. We had spent the previous evening at Temple Street Night Market. This is a wonderful area with many different stalls selling just about everything. There are little street cafes which plonk plastic garden tables and chairs in the road and serve up fabulous, cheap food cooked in what appears to be unsanitary streetside kitchens.

We had been a bit of a curiosity that night, as we sat eating a whopping Chinese meal and supping a big bottle of Chinese beer at one of these eateries. looking around, it was quite obvious that not many westerners eat at these places. I don't know why not, the food was excellent (the best Chinese meal I've ever had), we didn't get food poisoning and it was half the price of the restaurants we'd been eating in.

We concentrated on the shopping purely because HK is such a good place to shop. I wanted a new camera and Sparks wanted billions of things.. We had limited space left in the cases so I'm afraid that Sparks had to curb his retail therapy somewhat, but he didn't do too badly.

We took a walk along the Avenue of Stars that evening so that I could test out the new camera, hopefully the pics have come out ok.

We flew home the following morning, it was so depressing. Thirteen hours on a flight back to the freezing cold UK. I was stopped and searched at Heathrow due to having a canned kangaroo in my hand luggage (a cuddly toy in a can which I'd got for the little princess). The x-ray machine had been unable to recognise it. The security people did comment on how much electrical equipment I was carrying. I had to tell them that I was carrying for Sparks as well and that he had already gone through... It was technically true.

So there we go. The Wobbly tour is finally over and we have started saving for our next trip. I have a funny feeling that we will be back to New Zealand next time as there is some cricket going on there next year.

Here are some night shots of HK with the new camera. hope they've come out ok.