Guilin to Hong Kong

We spent a few days in Guilin, which was quite a nice town, surrounded by crazy rock formations sprouting up at random. There wasn't a great deal to do, but we had fun relaxing and walking around the markets and the city centre. We spent a day in Elephant Park, a rock formation that supposedly looks like an elephant kneeling down to take a drink out of the river. We spent around 3 days here then took a sleeper train to Shenzhen.

From the train station in Shenzhen it was an easy walk to the Hong Kong customs. We were a bit wary of our accomodation in Kowloon, a huge building that was separated into guesthouses instead of apartments. Each floor would have 4/5 guesthouses on. There were quite a few shady characters hanging about trying to sell copy watches, bags and tailors services. We were also disheartened when we saw the quality of the room compared to what the same money would buy in mainland China. But we absolutely loved Hong Kong. We ended up not having to spend much time in our grotty room as there was so much to do. The weather was fantastic and the city didn't seem to sleep so we were always out and about and ended up spending a week here when we only planned to stay a few days!

We saw the Hong Kong skyline from the star ferry that crossed the bay, we climbed the Bank of China tower up to the 43rd floor and went up Victoria Peak on the peak tram for excellent views across the city. We watched the light show that happens every night from the Kowloon side (although it was a bit cheesy, all set to eighties muzac) and went out to Ngong Ping 360 on an awesome cable car ride that went round the south of Hong Kong island and over the new airport to the 'larges seated bronze buddha' in the world. We also spent a day at Ocean park not quite a theme park, but not quite an aquarium! We also met up with a friend of NIkki's Mum called Winnie who took us for a great meal in times square of dumplings (my favourite so far!). We wandered round the markets at night that didn't setup til about 8pm and did some much needed shopping! We also explored the bird, fish and flower markets which were all very interesting. During the week we felt we got the best out of the city and were sad to move on, but definately acheived everything we wanted to.

After a tip off from the guesthouse owners we then got the ferry across to Macau and spent an almost free day there! When we got off the ferry we got a free shuttle bus to the Venetian Casino where we put our bags into the free luggage store, then went to the gaming floor where we got free drinks (but didn't gamble!). We went and got dinner in the food court then wandered round the shopping arcade with its indoor canals before picking our bags up (that had been transferred to the front desk) and getting on the free shuttle bus to the airport! We had a fairly sleepless night in the departure lounge then boarded the plane to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) at about 7am.

Photos:

Guilin - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79549&l=87e60&id=720640428
Hong Kong & Macau - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79824&l=4a745&id=720640428