Well all, this is the first entry from the 30 somthing traveller! After 4 days and 3 nights in HK I have arrived in Cottesloe, WA. I have a few things to say about Cott (as it is known by the Aussies) but first HK.

I had the unbridled joy of rocking up in HK at 8 am after landing at what should have been midnight UK time. Missing out on a whole night’s sleep I have discovered is not one of life’s greatest delights - especially in a city as intense as HK. I love Hong Kong with very little reservation. However, she is the sort of lover where you’d get 5 years down the line and wonder where your life had gone to and why you were a burnt out wreck of a human. There’s 7 million people packed into a space about the size of the Isle of Wight! The city itself is stunning, amazingly easy to get round with fantastic public transport but absolutely no personal space. Its a city of wierd contrasts. Its 95% ethnic Chinese and walk down the street, take a MTR (underground train) and all you see are millions of Chinese people. You can buy almost anything off the street from noodles to women! The experience of walking down Lockhart Road in Wan Chai at night is not one to be missed! As a 6′ 2″ bloke its also easy to see as the average height of the Chinese seems to be about 5′ 5″! However, step into a bar in Wan Chai, Lang Quai Fong or Soho and all you see are Expats. As my Chinese friend explained, Chinese work hard while the Europeans drink!

HK brings out lots of passion in me. The city feels wonderfully safe, the people are fantastic, friendly and very social. Everyone will chat to you when you’re out at night (including the ladies on the street in Lockhart Raod!) - unlike the UK where if you start chatting to someone in a bar you’re likely to get a kicking. However, the city’s also very intense. Life never seems to stop with the average working day going on until 7 - 8 pm, straight into bars and not home to well after midnight. For some reason they also deem it necessary to work on Saturday and the Government is actually having to bring in laws to try and stop this practice! The pollution is also unbelievable. It was bad enough when it was just HK polluting itself but now that the Chinese economy has taken off they add their pollution in as well. Some day the visibilty goes down to 100’s of yards and the smog catches in your throat, making you cough and your eyes water! All this leaves you feeling absolutely wiped out and somewhat stunned most of the time.

Anyway, after a brief interlude from arriving I finally got into my hostel room at about 2 pm. It was a lovely pad - the size of a single bed with a foot to spare on one side and an box en-suite. However, it was all my space! I spent my days in HK suffering from mad, bad jet lag, hitting a couple of bars (albeit very quietly due to the fact that I felt terrible most of the time) and getting out of the city. Suffice to say that the Henley alumni network is amazing. On arriving in HK they took me out for lunch, gave me numerous dinners and showed me loads of tourist sites. We walked over HK Island mountains, went to a sea food restaurant, visited the “Big Budda” and saw pink dolphins in Tai O fishing village.

The Big Budda was fab. Its a 35 m high bonze statue suprisingly enough of a Budda on Lantau Island surrounded by a Buddist temple. I was expecting it to be hundreds if not thousands of years old and was midly dissapointed to discover it was finally erected in 1989! However, it was still stunning and a real moment of reflection!

Tai O is a very old fishing village with most of the houses on stilts in the water. As with most places I saw in HK live fish are kept in small tanks on the street and chopped to death to order by Chinese ladies wielding large cleavers! Their chief form of income seems to be taking random tourists out on small fast boats to see the pink dolphins followed by a site seeing tour round the ricketty, smelly fishing village where you feel like a voieur as normal people get on with their like and you peer in.

Anyway, that was HK. After Tai O I was off back to the airport for another night flight, the loss of more hours and an 8.30 am arrival in Perth. I couldn’t wait to breath air without pollution!!!