Hong Kong

Sunday, 24 July 2011

I arrived in Shenzhen after over twelve hours on the hard seat, having slept very little - not a good start. Then I had to move through customs to leave China and enter Hong Kong - I still don't quite understand what the deal is with Hong Kong, according to my visa I left China to enter it, and it has its own currency, but is still technically a part of China, I think at least (same with Macau also - more stamps on the passport at least). I just about managed to get out of China after having my passport photo scrutinized for about ten minutes by one of the supervisors at the border crossing. With the help of my driving license he reluctantly accepted it was me and so I proceeded to leave the country by lift.

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I caught up with Maddy and her friend Flora who had come to Hong Kong for the weekend from Shanghai, where she was working at the moment. After a short nap we headed out to explore. Wandered around loads of different shopping malls and ended up going to watch the last Harry Potter film - I liked it. I was still pretty broken from the night before so after taking a few photos of the amazing skyline we got a good nights sleep, on a bed, that wasn't moving - bliss.

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The next day we headed to one of the main attractions in Hong Kong, the cable car up to the giant buddha statue. The cable car gave some amazing views and was really fun, and the buddha was cool but it was all a bit too touristy - we had to queue for ages to get on the cars which isn't really something we've experienced alot on this trip.

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On the Monday we were leaving Hong Kong to head over to Macau for the day. After having so much fun jumping off stuff, I decided to see how far I could take it and set off with the intention of doing the world's tallest bungy jump off Macau Tower! It was quite expensive to get over to Macau, and after I paid for the jump I wasn't getting the money back so I felt obliged to go through with it after that. Despite that when we actually got to the top I was terrified (maybe a tiny bit excited too), it seems alot higher when you're actually up there. After what felt like no time at all I was in my harness and out on the platform being strapped up, before I knew it I was on the edge - no time to think about what I was about to do, probably the best way. The jump itself was intense - going off the edge at the start was utterly terrifying but after that it was quite a euphoric sensation and I couldn't stop laughing. It was all over pretty quickly, I was pleased when I realised I was still alive! To celebrate we headed back to Hong Kong and ate at an amazing sushi restaurant that was all you can eat and drink, with beer included. One of the best restaurants we've been to on the whole trip, sushi is fast becoming one of my favourite foods. Here is a video of my jump.


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The last day in Hong Kong was spent doing some more exploring and wandering around. We went up the world's longest outdoor escalator (which, disappointingly, was more of a series of escalators, rather than one big one), checked out some temples, went up the Bank of China tower, ate at the cheapest Michelin starred restaurant in the world (wasn't that great to be honest) and went up the peak tram in the evening. We got some absolutely amazing views of Hong Kong from up there, and some pretty good photos too.

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The next day we left Hong Kong to head to Shanghai, thankfully on a sleeper train. Hong Kong was amazing - one of my favourite places we've been to so far but in a different kind of way. I could see myself coming back here to live for a little while, it's quite similar to London, but maybe feels like ten years in the future or something like that. Everything is so clean and the service is so good. Most people speak English here too, it was a massive culture shock to go from China into this which did basically feel a bit like being back in England - bizarre. The touristy things weren't mindblowing, we just really liked the city.

I was revisiting quite a lot of heavy, angry stuff on the ferry over to Macau, trying to get myself fired up and ready to throw myself off a 233m building. Doesn't come much better than this; Refused - New Noise.

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