Monday, December 22, 2008
Day 4 - Edinburgh
It was a very slow start today. The flights and non-stop nature of the last few days has taken its toll. We rose late (although you wouldn’t know it by the light… it’s gloomy most of the time here, even at 1pm) and walked through the city to get our bearings and see what was going on. Cute little Christmas market at the foot of Castle hill, busy shops and a nice medieval-feeling set of streets winding up to the castle where we got brunch. We did find a brilliant souvenir shop, which was also a tartan-making factory, and with some difficulty a supermarket. It seems the supermarket we found is the budget one, as we managed to eat a very large meal each tonight for around £5. This is a good sign for the weeks ahead, and means we should be able to stay within budget most of the time. The backpackers we’re in has a very well set up kitchen (except there were no forks!) and our room is about three times the size of the one in HK. Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow, so I guess we’ll just wing it.
Day 3 - London
We arrived in London after a long flight in the wee hours of the morning, being one of the first planes to land at Heathrow for the day. We immediately sampled the Tube, catching it into the city and finding a locker to stow our bags for the day. Public transport in London isn't up to the same standard as HK, but the sheer size and overlapping nature of the system means there's always a train not far away. In contrast to the culture shock we got when we arrived in HK, this almost felt like we were back home on one of the suburban lines, with open air train stations, brick suburban houses and semi-industrial areas. We went for a wander to the museum precinct at South Kensington, but alas, although we had been up for hours the museums weren't yet open. A quick look around found us Baden Powell House, named after the founder of the Scouting movement, which interestingly had a very cheap hostel inside it. In said hostel we came across a brochure advertising a free walking tour of the city, which sounded like a good way to kill time during the day. We dropped in to the Science museum for an hour, playing with the many hands-on physics demos before meeting our walking tour in Hyde Park.
Now is probably a good time to mention how many bloody Aussies there are here – we heard many familiar accents on the plane from HK, and our carriage on the Tube from the airport was shared with half a dozen blokes backpacking, who had just arrived from the US and lost one of their bags. Our walking tour was no exception – a couple about our age from Sydney, a girl from Wagga who was finishing up her working holiday, and a bloke (Nathan) who had just arrived from Vietnam and Beijing. It was slightly disheartening; we didn't come thousands of kilometres to talk to Australians, but on the flip side it made the tour very enjoyable as our friendliness seemed to break the ice and start conversation a bit. Our 'New Europe Walking Tour' guide was Pip, a shaggy looking Brit from a tiny town outside London, who was informative, fun, knew his city and its landmarks well, and most importantly knew his audience. Being advertised as a free tour, it tended to attract many more people like us (ie cheapskates). Pip gave us helpful advice about what was good value, what was overpriced, and some ways to make the most of your time in London. The two-and-a-half hour tour took us to all the major attractions – Hyde Park and the Wellington Arch, Buckingham Palace (where we stood in the crowd while the changing of the guard happened, a very underwhelming experience), the National Gallery, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, St Martins, the Royal Cavalry Museum, Downing St, and Westminster. At the end all Pip asked for was a voluntary tip, which everyone seemed more than happy to provide. We will investigate more of these tours, as this one was incredible value.
After the tour finished we joined up with Nathan and went to the National Gallery. The collection there is very impressive and there are some genuinely brilliant works, but our dedication waned after an hour and a half so we went across the road to St Martin-in-the-Fields, a famous church. There is a café underground in the crypt, with incredible bricked vaults, and we looked upstairs for a few minutes while a service was on, but obviously couldn't explore the chapel further.
Tired, partially due to the fact that it was almost dark by 4:30, we returned to Victoria Station, got a coffee and an all-you-can-eat from a greasy, very unsatisfying pizza place, and hopped on our bus to the airport. Another plane ride, another check-in, another security check, finally we were in Edinburgh. Although it was late at night, it wasn't as cold as I had thought it might be, although it was very windy, and disappointingly not snowing. In fact, London itself was very bearable, much like a Melbourne autumn or winter, and we were too tired to really care about the cold in Edinburgh. Our respective jackets will make this a lot better though.
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Day 2 - Hong Kong
A slow-ish start to our first morning in HK was a result of our exhaustion from the excitement and stress of packing. We went down the street for a Chinese breakfast of rather tasteless pork and good chicken with rice and toast. It continues to surprise us how the people here cook every meal, rather than having cold, raw ingredients. Breads and cakes are pretty rare to see in shops, except for the occasional branded outlet, but noodles and rice are an integral part of almost every dish. As a result of our high intake of these, we haven't had tea because we're just not hungry.
After breakfast we decided to sample the public transport system. A HK$55 (AU$11) card got us unlimited access to the trains for a day, which suited us very well. Public transport here is inescapable and puts Melbourne to shame. The trains ran every 2-3 mins on our line all day, and they have incorporated an electronic ticketing system (similar to MyKi will be in Melb) which works brilliantly. Trains are clean, pretty spacious (due to the large amount of standing room and small number of seats) and fast. Although they have to be – almost everyone travels by public transport here. Buses and taxis rule the streets; private cars are the exception. I don't recall seeing a single petrol station the whole time.
Anyway, we went up to see a relic of the old public transport in HK – the Peak Tram. This cable tram operates up the hill on Hong Kong island connected the city proper to the settlements on the mountain sides and ridges (collectively know as the Peak). The tram gets to an insane angle (at least 45°) in some places, and terminates at an iconic HK building with a roof platform that offers a 360-degree view of the island. The view over the city is stunning, and again reminded us how comparatively flat and spread out Melbourne is.
After our tram ride, we decided to head to one of the many street markets that populate the city. A short train ride to the Sham Shui Po district gave us a huge culture shock. We had thought the Kowloon district where we were staying was pretty busy, but this was something else. Stalls lined the streets in every direction, selling everything from iPods to fresh fish, and by fresh, we mean still swimming in the bucket!! It seems that "fresh" here means you have to see it get killed and filleted, which we did. Our lunch experience was interesting, where we came across a café where nobody spoke any English for the first time. There wasn't even any English translations on the menu, so flying in blind, we managed to order some pork and fried rice. On our third attempt since our arrival, the pork finally had a flavour, and the fried rice has yet again put Keeley in a bad mood because the Noodle Box at home just can't live up to it.
We looked around for a bit longer, before heading to the "Ladies Market" in the Mong Kok district. This was slightly more organised than the last one, and had a generally higher quality of stuff on offer, mainly clothing. It would be fun to come back and spend some time shopping, because there was a lot of value to be had. Some of the more interesting items on show included an elephant-themed g-string complete with trunk… guess what that's for boys… We also headed over to the Mens Market at Jordan, which was very similar to the Ladies Market but with obviously more mens clothes and some DVDs etc.
Our HK stopover is now over. I'm sitting in the airport now actually, waiting for check-in to open. It's a pity we only spent 36 hours here… you could easily spend a couple of weeks here shopping and exploring the culture. It's an exciting city and one that we'd definitely like to come back to. However, we're not too sad as this has been an excellent entrée to our real adventure. Bring on Europe!
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