Hong Kong Island Plants & Animals

Tai Po Market Man Mo Temple Fu Shin Street
Tai Po Market
Hong Kong

Neighborhood : New Territories Aside from colourful shopping, Tai Po Market is worth visiting for this smoky temple, which not only honours the gods of Man (literature god) and Mo (military god) but also acts as a local gathering point for the area's elderly. The front courtyard, planted with palms, provides shade for those taking a rest on the benches, whilst just inside the temple itself there is usually a crowd in the midst of lively conversation. Large incense coils with red prayer plaques hang from the ceiling and add an all-pervasive scent to the atmosphere of this picturesque temple.

The journey to Po Lin Monastery is something of an experience, driving as you do through Lantau National Park. The position of the Big Buddha is such that it appears teasingly between hills at various points along the route, and then when it suddenly appears in all it's glory on the horizon there is a combined intake of breath from all the tourists on the bus, and a simultaneous raising of eyes and tutting from locals who have seen it a million times and wonder what all the fuss is about. The bus stops in a circular area near the base of the monastery, at the edge of which is a turnstile leading to hundreds of steep steps up to the base of the statue. In the center of this circular area is a raised platform with seating for those too shattered to do anything other than fall over after climbing all the way up and then all the way back down again. Access to the Buddha itself is free of charge, but for sixty Hong Kong Dollars you can also access the exhibition halls at it's base and are supplied with a vegetarian meal during your visit.
The first thing which amazes people when they visit the Buddha is how old it is. Ask the average tourist who hasn't done too much research and they'll guess that it must be ancient, but in fact construction of the Tian Tan Buddha only started in 1990 and wasn't completed until 1993, something which never ceases to blow people's minds - somehow, the idea that construction could be undertaken on such a vast scale for no monetary gain seems alien to people today, so they automatically categorise it along with ancient construction projects such as the pyramids. Tell people when the Tian Tan Buddha was built and they probably won't believe you.
Two hundred and sixty-eight steps lead up to the base of the statue, several landings giving you a chance to catch your breath on the way up. At the top you can walk around the base of the statue where eight smaller statues depict the gods, and then if you have paid the entrance fee you are allowed inside the base to where I am told you can inspect an ornate carved bell designed to ring 108 times a day - but as sixty Hong Kong Dollars was a bit steep for me given the length of the trip ahead of me and my budget, I had to reluctantly give this a miss. Po Lin Monastery itself, should you still be alive to explore it having walked up and down the 268 steps of the Buddha, is just as spectacular as you might expect having read my description of Wat Tham in Phuket and the temples in Bangkok last week. This time, however, there were sour faced old ladies on hand to shriek at us incoherently should we look as though we might be contemplating producing a camera within the confines of the temple. Not allowed you see, no sir. Take as many photos outside as you like, but take a photo inside and it's shrieking banshee time - not a pleasant experience, especially as the signs which are supposed to tell you this are written in such bad English that you couldn't possibly know you were doing anything wrong prior to being wailed at. Oh, and plenty of finger wagging. I forgot about the finger wagging.
Outside the entrance to the monastery is a giant cauldron which is inscribed to mark the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. Nearby, locals were lighting handfuls of incense sticks and planting them in smaller cauldrons, and inside the first building - Welto Temple - monastery tourists were shuffling respectfully past massive Buddhist statues protected behind glass. Beyond this first temple, a giant open courtyard was lined with trees in imminent danger of being set alight by more blazing cauldrons, and a pond and seats to one side offers a nice resting place to look up at the imposing form of the Big Buddha behind you. Steps lead up from the courtyard to the entrance to the much larger and far more elaborate Hall of the Great Hero, a much more imposing and beautifully crafted temple than Welto with the traditional double-roof design. Dragon statues adorn each side of the entrance, and you can walk around an external balcony before entering and admire the temple from all sides. Inside, the main room is dominated by statues of the past, present and future Buddhas, and this time there were many local people praying and sitting silently around the room. We all shuffled in silently through one side of the hall, made our way through looking the statues over with suitable amounts of awe, and shuffled out the other door. By the time I had looked around the temples and staggered up the steps of the Big Buddha and back down again, there was just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat from a vendor before getting back on the bus and heading home. I haven't quite sorted out what I want to do tomorrow, although I suspect I'm going to have to jump through hoops to get hold of a Visa to get into China later in the week.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Tai Po Market Man Mo Temple Fu Shin Street
Tai Po Market
Hong Kong

Neighborhood : New Territories Aside from colourful shopping, Tai Po Market is worth visiting for this smoky temple, which not only honours the gods of Man (literature god) and Mo (military god) but also acts as a local gathering point for the area's elderly. The front courtyard, planted with palms, provides shade for those taking a rest on the benches, whilst just inside the temple itself there is usually a crowd in the midst of lively conversation. Large incense coils with red prayer plaques hang from the ceiling and add an all-pervasive scent to the atmosphere of this picturesque temple.

The journey to Po Lin Monastery is something of an experience, driving as you do through Lantau National Park. The position of the Big Buddha is such that it appears teasingly between hills at various points along the route, and then when it suddenly appears in all it's glory on the horizon there is a combined intake of breath from all the tourists on the bus, and a simultaneous raising of eyes and tutting from locals who have seen it a million times and wonder what all the fuss is about. The bus stops in a circular area near the base of the monastery, at the edge of which is a turnstile leading to hundreds of steep steps up to the base of the statue. In the center of this circular area is a raised platform with seating for those too shattered to do anything other than fall over after climbing all the way up and then all the way back down again. Access to the Buddha itself is free of charge, but for sixty Hong Kong Dollars you can also access the exhibition halls at it's base and are supplied with a vegetarian meal during your visit.
The first thing which amazes people when they visit the Buddha is how old it is. Ask the average tourist who hasn't done too much research and they'll guess that it must be ancient, but in fact construction of the Tian Tan Buddha only started in 1990 and wasn't completed until 1993, something which never ceases to blow people's minds - somehow, the idea that construction could be undertaken on such a vast scale for no monetary gain seems alien to people today, so they automatically categorise it along with ancient construction projects such as the pyramids. Tell people when the Tian Tan Buddha was built and they probably won't believe you.
Two hundred and sixty-eight steps lead up to the base of the statue, several landings giving you a chance to catch your breath on the way up. At the top you can walk around the base of the statue where eight smaller statues depict the gods, and then if you have paid the entrance fee you are allowed inside the base to where I am told you can inspect an ornate carved bell designed to ring 108 times a day - but as sixty Hong Kong Dollars was a bit steep for me given the length of the trip ahead of me and my budget, I had to reluctantly give this a miss. Po Lin Monastery itself, should you still be alive to explore it having walked up and down the 268 steps of the Buddha, is just as spectacular as you might expect having read my description of Wat Tham in Phuket and the temples in Bangkok last week. This time, however, there were sour faced old ladies on hand to shriek at us incoherently should we look as though we might be contemplating producing a camera within the confines of the temple. Not allowed you see, no sir. Take as many photos outside as you like, but take a photo inside and it's shrieking banshee time - not a pleasant experience, especially as the signs which are supposed to tell you this are written in such bad English that you couldn't possibly know you were doing anything wrong prior to being wailed at. Oh, and plenty of finger wagging. I forgot about the finger wagging.
Outside the entrance to the monastery is a giant cauldron which is inscribed to mark the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. Nearby, locals were lighting handfuls of incense sticks and planting them in smaller cauldrons, and inside the first building - Welto Temple - monastery tourists were shuffling respectfully past massive Buddhist statues protected behind glass. Beyond this first temple, a giant open courtyard was lined with trees in imminent danger of being set alight by more blazing cauldrons, and a pond and seats to one side offers a nice resting place to look up at the imposing form of the Big Buddha behind you. Steps lead up from the courtyard to the entrance to the much larger and far more elaborate Hall of the Great Hero, a much more imposing and beautifully crafted temple than Welto with the traditional double-roof design. Dragon statues adorn each side of the entrance, and you can walk around an external balcony before entering and admire the temple from all sides. Inside, the main room is dominated by statues of the past, present and future Buddhas, and this time there were many local people praying and sitting silently around the room. We all shuffled in silently through one side of the hall, made our way through looking the statues over with suitable amounts of awe, and shuffled out the other door. By the time I had looked around the temples and staggered up the steps of the Big Buddha and back down again, there was just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat from a vendor before getting back on the bus and heading home. I haven't quite sorted out what I want to do tomorrow, although I suspect I'm going to have to jump through hoops to get hold of a Visa to get into China later in the week.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Tai Po Market Man Mo Temple Fu Shin Street
Tai Po Market
Hong Kong

Neighborhood : New Territories Aside from colourful shopping, Tai Po Market is worth visiting for this smoky temple, which not only honours the gods of Man (literature god) and Mo (military god) but also acts as a local gathering point for the area's elderly. The front courtyard, planted with palms, provides shade for those taking a rest on the benches, whilst just inside the temple itself there is usually a crowd in the midst of lively conversation. Large incense coils with red prayer plaques hang from the ceiling and add an all-pervasive scent to the atmosphere of this picturesque temple.

The journey to Po Lin Monastery is something of an experience, driving as you do through Lantau National Park. The position of the Big Buddha is such that it appears teasingly between hills at various points along the route, and then when it suddenly appears in all it's glory on the horizon there is a combined intake of breath from all the tourists on the bus, and a simultaneous raising of eyes and tutting from locals who have seen it a million times and wonder what all the fuss is about. The bus stops in a circular area near the base of the monastery, at the edge of which is a turnstile leading to hundreds of steep steps up to the base of the statue. In the center of this circular area is a raised platform with seating for those too shattered to do anything other than fall over after climbing all the way up and then all the way back down again. Access to the Buddha itself is free of charge, but for sixty Hong Kong Dollars you can also access the exhibition halls at it's base and are supplied with a vegetarian meal during your visit.
The first thing which amazes people when they visit the Buddha is how old it is. Ask the average tourist who hasn't done too much research and they'll guess that it must be ancient, but in fact construction of the Tian Tan Buddha only started in 1990 and wasn't completed until 1993, something which never ceases to blow people's minds - somehow, the idea that construction could be undertaken on such a vast scale for no monetary gain seems alien to people today, so they automatically categorise it along with ancient construction projects such as the pyramids. Tell people when the Tian Tan Buddha was built and they probably won't believe you.
Two hundred and sixty-eight steps lead up to the base of the statue, several landings giving you a chance to catch your breath on the way up. At the top you can walk around the base of the statue where eight smaller statues depict the gods, and then if you have paid the entrance fee you are allowed inside the base to where I am told you can inspect an ornate carved bell designed to ring 108 times a day - but as sixty Hong Kong Dollars was a bit steep for me given the length of the trip ahead of me and my budget, I had to reluctantly give this a miss. Po Lin Monastery itself, should you still be alive to explore it having walked up and down the 268 steps of the Buddha, is just as spectacular as you might expect having read my description of Wat Tham in Phuket and the temples in Bangkok last week. This time, however, there were sour faced old ladies on hand to shriek at us incoherently should we look as though we might be contemplating producing a camera within the confines of the temple. Not allowed you see, no sir. Take as many photos outside as you like, but take a photo inside and it's shrieking banshee time - not a pleasant experience, especially as the signs which are supposed to tell you this are written in such bad English that you couldn't possibly know you were doing anything wrong prior to being wailed at. Oh, and plenty of finger wagging. I forgot about the finger wagging.
Outside the entrance to the monastery is a giant cauldron which is inscribed to mark the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. Nearby, locals were lighting handfuls of incense sticks and planting them in smaller cauldrons, and inside the first building - Welto Temple - monastery tourists were shuffling respectfully past massive Buddhist statues protected behind glass. Beyond this first temple, a giant open courtyard was lined with trees in imminent danger of being set alight by more blazing cauldrons, and a pond and seats to one side offers a nice resting place to look up at the imposing form of the Big Buddha behind you. Steps lead up from the courtyard to the entrance to the much larger and far more elaborate Hall of the Great Hero, a much more imposing and beautifully crafted temple than Welto with the traditional double-roof design. Dragon statues adorn each side of the entrance, and you can walk around an external balcony before entering and admire the temple from all sides. Inside, the main room is dominated by statues of the past, present and future Buddhas, and this time there were many local people praying and sitting silently around the room. We all shuffled in silently through one side of the hall, made our way through looking the statues over with suitable amounts of awe, and shuffled out the other door. By the time I had looked around the temples and staggered up the steps of the Big Buddha and back down again, there was just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat from a vendor before getting back on the bus and heading home. I haven't quite sorted out what I want to do tomorrow, although I suspect I'm going to have to jump through hoops to get hold of a Visa to get into China later in the week.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Hong Kong consists of three main areas - Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Lantau - and a number of smaller islands. I'm staying in Discovery Bay which is a high rise area of Lantau, the biggest of the islands, and is where you will find many ex pats living a reasonably western lifestyle full of McDonalds and pubs. A short ferry ride on the famous Star Ferry takes me across to Central which is the main hub of Hong Kong and from where buses, trains, taxis and rickshaws will happily take you wherever you want to go. The Star Ferry, in fact, is one of the highlights of the whole Hong Kong experience for me - not only can you get a ferry to any of the outlying islands to experience everything Hong Kong has to offer for next to nothing, but the fact is that my place of residence while I'm here in Discovery Bay means that I am actually forced to sit back and relax for the 30 minute ferry crossing to Central every morning before I can even think about going anywhere. An early morning ferry ride really sets you up for the day! Of the other two main areas of the region, Hong Kong Island itself contains all the markets, the zoological gardens, the Hong Kong Peak with it's almost vertical tram to the top and most of the nightlife. Hong Kong Island is where you will find Central, as well as a reasonable selection of shops and restaurants and the intriguingly out of place town of Aberdeen - where you can visit Ocean Park, a marine park not dissimilar to Sea World in Florida, and the Middle Kingdom which is a huge Theme Park full of Japanese Pagodas and water gardens. It is here that, on my last visit to the territory, I was sucked into a demonstration of local dance and forced to gyrate madly with beautiful Chinese girls in front of a laughing audience. Wan Chai, the nightlife district, gained notoriety as the red light district back in the days of Suzie Wong. Nowadays, however, there isn't very much about Wan Chai that could be considered seedy - it's full of McDonalds, Irish Bars and Nightclubs. The most popular bar at the moment (1998) is Carneigies, which is a rock and roll Bar and is packed to the hilt nightly by people dancing precariously on the bar and the balcony to rock from the Seventies and Eighties. The few "Girlie" bars that do exist in the area display their presence via huge neon signs but usually offer little more to the sleazy traveller than a woman in her seventies pretending to be in her twenties and a huge bar bill at the end of the night. The days of Suzie Wong are long gone. Getting around Hong Kong is easy. Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and Lantau are all joined by a clean and highly efficient subway train service called the MTR. The first challenge which greets new arrivals to Hong Kong is working out how to find their way around, and once the seemingly complex subway map has been mastered this becomes as easy as pie - as long as you don't set out in the rush hour, when slightly less than the population of North America all decide to swoop down on the system and try to board a train at the same time, getting around is a doddle and you can even switch to the overland railway and travel right up to the border with China as I will be doing later in the week. The ticketing system on the MTR also beats any I have seen elsewhere hands down. Using a system called Octopus, You buy a special train ticket with a microchip embedded in it and then keep it for as long as you like. The original Octopus ticket costs you a small deposit to cover the cost of the microchip technology should you lose it, but this is returned to you if you turn the ticket in later. Octopus is essentially a reloadable ticket, and you can add as much cash value to it as you like at any station by either going to the ticket office and handing it over or using the ticket machines you see everywhere you turn. When you walk through the turnstile onto the platform at the beginning of your journey, the system reads your Octopus automatically as you walk through without even requiring you to take it out of your bag, and then when you pass through the corresponding turnstile at your destination it deducts the cost of the journey and a little screen lights up telling you your balance. As an added bonus, you can make a journey of any length to use up whatever remains on the ticket - so if you only have a few cents left on your Octopus, you can use it to travel all the way across town which I think is a nice touch. Once again, Hong Kong is ahead of the pack on technology - why don't we have ideas like this back home (1)? Octopus can also be used just about anywhere - Taxis have a reader to swipe it, so do buses, you can even use it in McDonalds to buy a Big Mac! Today, I started my trip around the sights of Hong Kong by making my way up to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, known imaginatively as "The Peak". There are two ways to get up there, one of which is by using one of the most fascinating innovations I have ever come across, an escalator which runs right up the street from sea level to the peak. This moving staircase runs in stages between each street which crosses it all the way to the top, and you can make your way all the way to the top by jumping onto the lowest escalator and then just taking a few steps onto the next each time a road crosses your path and the current escalator is forced to stop. Each section is covered with a canopy in case it rains, and they have the system set up so that the stairs all move downward in the morning and upwards in the afternoon so that people can come down from the hillside to work and then return home later with the absolute minimum of effort. Only in Hong Kong would they think of something like this!
The other way to the Peak, and the one I took today, involves walking from Central for a few blocks until you arrive at the base station for The Peak Tram. The tram is pulled at a ridiculously steep angle up the hillside to the peak, stopping twice on the way to let people on and off at intermediate stations, and arrives, unlike the escalators, right in the heart of the Peak Tower. This is a combined shopping and entertainment complex full of both expensive boutiques and local souvenir shops, and there are fairground attractions and a lookout point from which you can obtain the famous view of the neon metropolis by night. A large restaurant also allows you to eat and look at the view at the same time, which I suspect brings a lot of romance-seekers up here late at night. There are the usual assortment of loud bars and pubs for those who just want to get drunk somewhere different. Right next door is the Peak Galleria, an even bigger shopping complex on three floors with altogether too many modern boutiques for it's own good, and outside the Galleria is an enormous fountain set into the pavement with jets which shoot water high into the air at just the right intervals so that you don't notice and scare the willies out of yourself walking across them and getting soaked to the skin. A return ticket on the Peak Tram will set you back about 28 Hong Kong Dollars, which is about £2.50 (2), but this often includes entrance to some of the attractions when you get to the top. The Peak also includes extensive gardens and walks, which a lot of people manage to totally miss as they aren't very well signposted. A visit to the Peak without taking a walk through the gardens and exploring the different nature trails laid out for you would almost be a sin and a pleasant afternoon can easily be spent just wandering aimlessly before getting hopelessly lost trying to find your way back to the Peak Tram and coming back down on the escalator instead! A trip to Hong Kong Island is never complete without at least one trip to a local street market, of which the best balance between ethnic and touristy are to be found by going on the MTR to Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po where the stall holders are happy to bargain with you as most of the prices are hugely inflated to start with. The best and most extensive market on the island for tourists is at Stanley, and this is where you can get hold of all those local handicrafts you're dying to pore over - A fairly long bus ride on Route 260 from Central takes you into Stanley and drops you off practically on the doorstep of the market, ensuring however that you have to walk past a couple of little coffee shops on the way which will try to entice you in for refreshments. Stanley market is far more than just tacky souvenirs, however; I managed to pick up a beautiful painting on fabric of boats on the harbour which I actually got to watch the artist putting the finishing touches to and which now takes pride of place on my living room wall... and let's face it, this is the only place in the world you can actually get genuine local crafts and not be remotely bothered about finding a "Made in Hong Kong" sticker on the bottom! If you're looking for a taste of the local markets, there are so many that you could spend all week wandering around them and still not come close to seeing everything. There are bird markets, fish markets, flower markets, clothes markets, fruit markets, the ladies market, the list goes on. There are markets selling nothing but Jade, markets selling nothing but candles or incense or Chinese medicines. Whatever you want, it's here. It really does sound like a get-out, but there are so many markets to be found in Hong Kong that there's little point in listing them all here - just grab a guidebook and explore and you'll be pleasantly surprised what you can find littering the tiny side streets, especially after dusk when the Temple Street night market opens and you find yourself surrounded by stall holders selling watches and men's clothing. In a grubby corner of Mong Kok, you'll find the Bird market, a fascinating but slightly worrying part of town where lonely old men come to buy and sell caged birds of every variety from mynahs to budgies, or just to show off their birds to each other (and not in the sense you're thinking, either!). Here, if you're not going deaf at the sound of a million shrill tweets from every direction, you're jumping a mile in the air because a small snake has escaped from the live bird food stalls and slithered up your trouser leg! Not being a huge fan of seeing animals caged up, the bird market doesn't exactly float my boat, and the same goes for the Goldfish market at which you will find nothing but endless varieties of fish hanging from tiny plastic bags as though they are at a fairground and with a life expectancy of about 5 minutes - unfortunately, the Chinese believe that goldfish add to the fung shui of a property so this isn't likely to stop anytime soon. At the Jade market in Yau Ma Tei, accessible from the MTR, you can bargain for Jade, Amber and Lapis carved into every shape imaginable until you realise just how much you're being ripped off compared to the locals. The only problem, in fact, with the infinite options for shopping in Hong Kong is that there is so much more space allocated to shopping centres and so little to actually getting inside. Builders here seem to build until they've created a shopping complex the size of a small town and then slap a small door onto one corner of it as an afterthought - you can literally walk around for hours looking for a way into a concrete monstrosity several blocks in size before finally discovering that you have to go down into an MTR station to get into it, or up a small flight of steps marked "Bakery - this way" One of the things that often gets mentioned about Hong Kong is the fact that many shopping centres in certain areas quite openly sell pirated computer software, something which constantly gets right up the noses of the software giants. This has always been a major problem, because as a communist country where the idea of individuals owning anything is totally unknown, China doesn't have any copyright laws as such and is not in a position to tell anybody off for making copies. From what I have been led to believe, it is alleged that the system has always involved the local Hong Kong police occasionally turning up at a well known pirate store, the owner handing over a large amount of money and them going away again - although, of course, this is purely hearsay. Recently it seems that the US government has finally thrown its dummy out of the pram and had something of a hissy fit with the Chinese stance on piracy - and whatever they've done, it seems to have worked as the local papers have been reporting a heavy downturn in the sale of pirated software in the region recently. My own experience of the situation doesn't quite tie up with the official line that piracy is going away. On my last visit to Hong Kong, I strolled into the large computer centre in Mong Kok - a shopping centre devoted entirely to computer equipment and software - and was immediately pounced upon by a man who had been waiting just inside the door. Clearly he had been put there to wait for any Westerners who looked as though they might have some money, and he didn't waste any time at all in getting to business. Upstairs, he told me, I would find hardware and PC accessories. Downstairs, there was everything I could possibly want for my PlayStation or Nintendo Console. Oh and if I wanted the "special" department then I should walk down the street for two blocks, go up a flight of dirty steps between a bakery and a Chinese Medicine Centre, and into a room where a queue of people would be lining up to ask a dodgy looking guy at a desk for copies of just about anything! I followed the directions he gave me and, although I wasn't about to partake myself (as a software designer myself, wouldn't that be just a bit hypocritical?), I observed the man at the desk sending a runner off to some secret location to collect orders as they were placed. As I walked back to the computer centre afterwards, I looked back and saw everybody leaving - which I took to mean that the police were on their way and the location would simply be casually moving somewhere else. If you want a real taste of China, you could do worse than pull up a stall and plonk yourself down at one of the gutter restaurants you'll find everywhere - and yes, gutter restaurants are exactly what it says on the box, restaurants in the gutter. If you're longing for local quaintness extends to eating something you can't quite identify on a rickety table perched under an umbrella in the gutter while a collection of soggy cats and flea infested rats stare up at you hungrily, this is the place to be! And if you go home without having contracted the plague, you can consider your holiday a success...

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

(1) Well, now we do - in London, at least. Sort of. Octopus has been almost totally "borrowed" by Transport for London and given a name so amazingly similar in thinking that you really do have to rub your chin and go "Hmmm". Oyster, as it is called in London, does suffer from the British tendency to want to make as much money as possible - not only does it not contain the option to make a journey of any length on the remaining balance, or even any remotely similar incentive, but it is actually more expensive to use an Oyster card than it is to buy a daily travelcard which allows a whole days worth of travel anywhere in London for 6 pounds. Every trip you take using Oyster is billed at the full single fare, meaning that compared to Octopus it is almost totally worthless. Another shining example of taking somebody else's idea and totally messing it up. Oyster, currently, cannot even be used anywhere other than on the train. Come on Mr Mayor of London, get your finger out! (2) Well, all things change. The current price, as of October 2007, is now 33 Hong Kong Dollars for Adults return or 22 if you don't fancy going back. For Children, it is 15 Return or 8 Single. If you fancy access to the Sky Terrace as part of your ticket, you now have to pay 48 HKD for an Adult or 23 for a child - this includes a return on the Peak Tram. Current attractions include Madame Tussauds and the EA Gaming Experience - for the latest information, check out http://www.thepeak.com.hk . This has been a public service announcement on behalf of nobody in particular.

In 2003, Tanya and I embarked on a second worldtrip - this time taking in some of the places we had missed on our tour the previous year and adding New Zealand into the mix. This time our stopping off point on the way to the other side of the world was Hong Kong, and we wanted somewhere to stay which was close enough to the main islands to explore in the limited time we had available, and yet away from the bright lights of the city. Lamma seemed the perfect choice. Lamma Island is generally considered to be Hong Kong's hippy community - as you can tell just by looking at the community website (see below) which, at the time of writing, is covered in pictures of guys in local rock bands with long hair and guitars, adverts for new age stores, psychedelic photos of the locals and stories about the official court photographer! When I say that Lamma is a hippy community, I don't mean to suggest that it's just a bit laid back - this place is seriously stuck in the 70s and loving it. The website is one of the best community sites I've seen in a long time and really gives you a feel for Lamma - in fact the island is one of those places which is very hard to describe without photos, but looking at the community portal has brought so many memories back for me that I just want to get on the next plane! Connected to Central by ferry, Lamma is relatively untouched and criss-crossed by a handful of walking trails, and the only vehicles to be found are small motorised Tuk-Tuk style carts used to collect heavy sacks or luggage from the ferry. The main jetty is to be found at the small town of Yung Shue Wan, where visitors will immediately feel as though they've stepped into a strange mix of 70s community life and small town China. Leaving the jetty via a path which crosses a small metal bridge connected to the edge of a cliff, you enter Yung Shue Wan along a sea front dirt track littered with open fronted restaurants serving Thai, Japanese and Chinese food as well as stores with displays of recently caught and strong smelling fish in large boxes outside. There are also tanks in some of the restaurants, from which you are expected to select the catch of the day and watch while somebody hauls it out and slaps it onto a pan for you - this is not a place for the squeamish! Yung Shue Wan is also full of bars, and there's even an internet café and a cash machine - but don't think for one moment that this makes the town in any way modern, as the feeling here is very much of having gone back to a simpler time. Leaving the ferry with heavy backpacks strapped to us, Tanya and I made our way slowly into town and asked at the first bar for directions to our accommodation. The bar, like most of the stores in Yung Shue Wan, appeared to have no front and was nothing more than a couple of stools at a makeshift counter in the corner of a shack. The locals sitting outside at wobbly tables were all English, smoking and talking amongst themselves until they saw us coming at which point they stopped to watch the newcomers with interest. A friendly young man at the bar clicked his tongue and tutted when we told him where we needed to get to, and said that if we kept on the same path for about half an hour we would either get there or keel over from the weight of our packs. He wasn't joking. The path continued up the hill, the sea on one side and more bars and restaurants on the other. Peering between the buildings, small paths seemed to wind up to the doors of houses that looked as though they were about to fall down, or off into the forest where they probably connected with a beach or village somewhere. Dogs trotted up to sniff the strangers in town (although Lamma has its own animal rescue centre so there are a lot less strays than in other parts of China), and people looked up from their drinks or games of Mah-Jongg as we passed. After a couple of minutes we moved away from the sea and into the main town where the road forked and haphazard collections of shacks selling newspapers, vegetables and assorted groceries appeared on both sides. It was here that Tanya and I found a small pizza restaurant run by a local woman, and spent our evenings on Lamma sitting out the back at a rickety table enjoying the sunset. Restaurants here will happily serve you things you've never heard of before in your life, but places such as the Deli Lamma will manage to produce a full English breakfast on demand. This is also the place to come if you're looking for that authentic souvenir which you won't find elsewhere - melted and flattened coke bottle, anyone? We were staying at the Concerto Inn, which appears to be the only official holiday accommodation of any sort on the island. Situated at Hung Shing Yeh beach, it's not the cheapest hotel in the world - but considering we were staying right on the beach and had an ocean view we weren't complaining. The walk to the hotel, as I said earlier, was long and exhausting - but the staff at the hotel were very accommodating and took our luggage back to the ferry at the end of our stay on the back of their Tuk-Tuk. We still had to walk. Concerto Inn, of course, is the fantasy Island option of Lamma - if you really want to be a true hippy, there would probably be no shortage of locals willing to put you up in the middle of town in amongst the bars, shops and clouds of suspicious smelling smoke! If, on the other hand, you want to go and enjoy the hippy lifestyle by day and relax on your own beach a few yards from your own beach restaurant in the evening, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds from Hung Shing Yeh. Lamma is only 13 square Kilometres in size but still manages to be littered with small villages, most of which have a single village shop and a handful of people living there. On the path from Yung Shue Wan to the hotel, we came across what looked like a bus-stop on one side of the path - complete with upright sign and seats opposite. However, within the shelter were bars to which people had chained their bikes - so I'm guessing that this was some sort of Bike Park, and it explains how people get around over here. Lamma isn't a place to be if you're unfit as proper exploration requires a lot of walking, so I'm already exercising in preparation for my return. Unfortunately, we were only here for two days and spent most of that rushed to do everything we wanted on the mainland - and Lamma is a holiday in itself. The nightlife here consists of socialising and mingling at the local bars, but if this is your destination then you're probably not looking for the bright lights of the mainland. From what I've seen, you wouldn't be able to get back anyway - the ferries don't run all night, so any visit to a nightclub on Hong Kong Island would almost certainly end up with you finding yourself stranded!

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

if you get a chance go this is a great city to visit if you like to eat out there is every sort of food you can think of. even a big mac next to the dock take a cable car up to the top of the island the veiw of hong kong is breath taking if you go to the jade market barter like mad dont get ripped off ocean park on the island is well worth a day out . has rides , killer whales , sharks and a cable car that takes you right round the other side of the island etc.. i had the chance to play golf on one of its three courses at the royal hong kong golf course. not many can say they have hit the ball onto the green over a tropical jungle. the old course is open to anyone . if you know a member i played the eden course was very good if you need to get about taxi are not that bad but take the tube its as busy as see on tv

Hong Kong consists of three main areas - Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Lantau - and a number of smaller islands. I'm staying in Discovery Bay which is a high rise area of Lantau, the biggest of the islands, and is where you will find many ex pats living a reasonably western lifestyle full of McDonalds and pubs. A short ferry ride on the famous Star Ferry takes me across to Central which is the main hub of Hong Kong and from where buses, trains, taxis and rickshaws will happily take you wherever you want to go. The Star Ferry, in fact, is one of the highlights of the whole Hong Kong experience for me - not only can you get a ferry to any of the outlying islands to experience everything Hong Kong has to offer for next to nothing, but the fact is that my place of residence while I'm here in Discovery Bay means that I am actually forced to sit back and relax for the 30 minute ferry crossing to Central every morning before I can even think about going anywhere. An early morning ferry ride really sets you up for the day! Of the other two main areas of the region, Hong Kong Island itself contains all the markets, the zoological gardens, the Hong Kong Peak with it's almost vertical tram to the top and most of the nightlife. Hong Kong Island is where you will find Central, as well as a reasonable selection of shops and restaurants and the intriguingly out of place town of Aberdeen - where you can visit Ocean Park, a marine park not dissimilar to Sea World in Florida, and the Middle Kingdom which is a huge Theme Park full of Japanese Pagodas and water gardens. It is here that, on my last visit to the territory, I was sucked into a demonstration of local dance and forced to gyrate madly with beautiful Chinese girls in front of a laughing audience. Wan Chai, the nightlife district, gained notoriety as the red light district back in the days of Suzie Wong. Nowadays, however, there isn't very much about Wan Chai that could be considered seedy - it's full of McDonalds, Irish Bars and Nightclubs. The most popular bar at the moment (1998) is Carneigies, which is a rock and roll Bar and is packed to the hilt nightly by people dancing precariously on the bar and the balcony to rock from the Seventies and Eighties. The few "Girlie" bars that do exist in the area display their presence via huge neon signs but usually offer little more to the sleazy traveller than a woman in her seventies pretending to be in her twenties and a huge bar bill at the end of the night. The days of Suzie Wong are long gone. Getting around Hong Kong is easy. Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and Lantau are all joined by a clean and highly efficient subway train service called the MTR. The first challenge which greets new arrivals to Hong Kong is working out how to find their way around, and once the seemingly complex subway map has been mastered this becomes as easy as pie - as long as you don't set out in the rush hour, when slightly less than the population of North America all decide to swoop down on the system and try to board a train at the same time, getting around is a doddle and you can even switch to the overland railway and travel right up to the border with China as I will be doing later in the week. The ticketing system on the MTR also beats any I have seen elsewhere hands down. Using a system called Octopus, You buy a special train ticket with a microchip embedded in it and then keep it for as long as you like. The original Octopus ticket costs you a small deposit to cover the cost of the microchip technology should you lose it, but this is returned to you if you turn the ticket in later. Octopus is essentially a reloadable ticket, and you can add as much cash value to it as you like at any station by either going to the ticket office and handing it over or using the ticket machines you see everywhere you turn. When you walk through the turnstile onto the platform at the beginning of your journey, the system reads your Octopus automatically as you walk through without even requiring you to take it out of your bag, and then when you pass through the corresponding turnstile at your destination it deducts the cost of the journey and a little screen lights up telling you your balance. As an added bonus, you can make a journey of any length to use up whatever remains on the ticket - so if you only have a few cents left on your Octopus, you can use it to travel all the way across town which I think is a nice touch. Once again, Hong Kong is ahead of the pack on technology - why don't we have ideas like this back home (1)? Octopus can also be used just about anywhere - Taxis have a reader to swipe it, so do buses, you can even use it in McDonalds to buy a Big Mac! Today, I started my trip around the sights of Hong Kong by making my way up to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, known imaginatively as "The Peak". There are two ways to get up there, one of which is by using one of the most fascinating innovations I have ever come across, an escalator which runs right up the street from sea level to the peak. This moving staircase runs in stages between each street which crosses it all the way to the top, and you can make your way all the way to the top by jumping onto the lowest escalator and then just taking a few steps onto the next each time a road crosses your path and the current escalator is forced to stop. Each section is covered with a canopy in case it rains, and they have the system set up so that the stairs all move downward in the morning and upwards in the afternoon so that people can come down from the hillside to work and then return home later with the absolute minimum of effort. Only in Hong Kong would they think of something like this!
The other way to the Peak, and the one I took today, involves walking from Central for a few blocks until you arrive at the base station for The Peak Tram. The tram is pulled at a ridiculously steep angle up the hillside to the peak, stopping twice on the way to let people on and off at intermediate stations, and arrives, unlike the escalators, right in the heart of the Peak Tower. This is a combined shopping and entertainment complex full of both expensive boutiques and local souvenir shops, and there are fairground attractions and a lookout point from which you can obtain the famous view of the neon metropolis by night. A large restaurant also allows you to eat and look at the view at the same time, which I suspect brings a lot of romance-seekers up here late at night. There are the usual assortment of loud bars and pubs for those who just want to get drunk somewhere different. Right next door is the Peak Galleria, an even bigger shopping complex on three floors with altogether too many modern boutiques for it's own good, and outside the Galleria is an enormous fountain set into the pavement with jets which shoot water high into the air at just the right intervals so that you don't notice and scare the willies out of yourself walking across them and getting soaked to the skin. A return ticket on the Peak Tram will set you back about 28 Hong Kong Dollars, which is about £2.50 (2), but this often includes entrance to some of the attractions when you get to the top. The Peak also includes extensive gardens and walks, which a lot of people manage to totally miss as they aren't very well signposted. A visit to the Peak without taking a walk through the gardens and exploring the different nature trails laid out for you would almost be a sin and a pleasant afternoon can easily be spent just wandering aimlessly before getting hopelessly lost trying to find your way back to the Peak Tram and coming back down on the escalator instead! A trip to Hong Kong Island is never complete without at least one trip to a local street market, of which the best balance between ethnic and touristy are to be found by going on the MTR to Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po where the stall holders are happy to bargain with you as most of the prices are hugely inflated to start with. The best and most extensive market on the island for tourists is at Stanley, and this is where you can get hold of all those local handicrafts you're dying to pore over - A fairly long bus ride on Route 260 from Central takes you into Stanley and drops you off practically on the doorstep of the market, ensuring however that you have to walk past a couple of little coffee shops on the way which will try to entice you in for refreshments. Stanley market is far more than just tacky souvenirs, however; I managed to pick up a beautiful painting on fabric of boats on the harbour which I actually got to watch the artist putting the finishing touches to and which now takes pride of place on my living room wall... and let's face it, this is the only place in the world you can actually get genuine local crafts and not be remotely bothered about finding a "Made in Hong Kong" sticker on the bottom! If you're looking for a taste of the local markets, there are so many that you could spend all week wandering around them and still not come close to seeing everything. There are bird markets, fish markets, flower markets, clothes markets, fruit markets, the ladies market, the list goes on. There are markets selling nothing but Jade, markets selling nothing but candles or incense or Chinese medicines. Whatever you want, it's here. It really does sound like a get-out, but there are so many markets to be found in Hong Kong that there's little point in listing them all here - just grab a guidebook and explore and you'll be pleasantly surprised what you can find littering the tiny side streets, especially after dusk when the Temple Street night market opens and you find yourself surrounded by stall holders selling watches and men's clothing. In a grubby corner of Mong Kok, you'll find the Bird market, a fascinating but slightly worrying part of town where lonely old men come to buy and sell caged birds of every variety from mynahs to budgies, or just to show off their birds to each other (and not in the sense you're thinking, either!). Here, if you're not going deaf at the sound of a million shrill tweets from every direction, you're jumping a mile in the air because a small snake has escaped from the live bird food stalls and slithered up your trouser leg! Not being a huge fan of seeing animals caged up, the bird market doesn't exactly float my boat, and the same goes for the Goldfish market at which you will find nothing but endless varieties of fish hanging from tiny plastic bags as though they are at a fairground and with a life expectancy of about 5 minutes - unfortunately, the Chinese believe that goldfish add to the fung shui of a property so this isn't likely to stop anytime soon. At the Jade market in Yau Ma Tei, accessible from the MTR, you can bargain for Jade, Amber and Lapis carved into every shape imaginable until you realise just how much you're being ripped off compared to the locals. The only problem, in fact, with the infinite options for shopping in Hong Kong is that there is so much more space allocated to shopping centres and so little to actually getting inside. Builders here seem to build until they've created a shopping complex the size of a small town and then slap a small door onto one corner of it as an afterthought - you can literally walk around for hours looking for a way into a concrete monstrosity several blocks in size before finally discovering that you have to go down into an MTR station to get into it, or up a small flight of steps marked "Bakery - this way" One of the things that often gets mentioned about Hong Kong is the fact that many shopping centres in certain areas quite openly sell pirated computer software, something which constantly gets right up the noses of the software giants. This has always been a major problem, because as a communist country where the idea of individuals owning anything is totally unknown, China doesn't have any copyright laws as such and is not in a position to tell anybody off for making copies. From what I have been led to believe, it is alleged that the system has always involved the local Hong Kong police occasionally turning up at a well known pirate store, the owner handing over a large amount of money and them going away again - although, of course, this is purely hearsay. Recently it seems that the US government has finally thrown its dummy out of the pram and had something of a hissy fit with the Chinese stance on piracy - and whatever they've done, it seems to have worked as the local papers have been reporting a heavy downturn in the sale of pirated software in the region recently. My own experience of the situation doesn't quite tie up with the official line that piracy is going away. On my last visit to Hong Kong, I strolled into the large computer centre in Mong Kok - a shopping centre devoted entirely to computer equipment and software - and was immediately pounced upon by a man who had been waiting just inside the door. Clearly he had been put there to wait for any Westerners who looked as though they might have some money, and he didn't waste any time at all in getting to business. Upstairs, he told me, I would find hardware and PC accessories. Downstairs, there was everything I could possibly want for my PlayStation or Nintendo Console. Oh and if I wanted the "special" department then I should walk down the street for two blocks, go up a flight of dirty steps between a bakery and a Chinese Medicine Centre, and into a room where a queue of people would be lining up to ask a dodgy looking guy at a desk for copies of just about anything! I followed the directions he gave me and, although I wasn't about to partake myself (as a software designer myself, wouldn't that be just a bit hypocritical?), I observed the man at the desk sending a runner off to some secret location to collect orders as they were placed. As I walked back to the computer centre afterwards, I looked back and saw everybody leaving - which I took to mean that the police were on their way and the location would simply be casually moving somewhere else. If you want a real taste of China, you could do worse than pull up a stall and plonk yourself down at one of the gutter restaurants you'll find everywhere - and yes, gutter restaurants are exactly what it says on the box, restaurants in the gutter. If you're longing for local quaintness extends to eating something you can't quite identify on a rickety table perched under an umbrella in the gutter while a collection of soggy cats and flea infested rats stare up at you hungrily, this is the place to be! And if you go home without having contracted the plague, you can consider your holiday a success...

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

(1) Well, now we do - in London, at least. Sort of. Octopus has been almost totally "borrowed" by Transport for London and given a name so amazingly similar in thinking that you really do have to rub your chin and go "Hmmm". Oyster, as it is called in London, does suffer from the British tendency to want to make as much money as possible - not only does it not contain the option to make a journey of any length on the remaining balance, or even any remotely similar incentive, but it is actually more expensive to use an Oyster card than it is to buy a daily travelcard which allows a whole days worth of travel anywhere in London for 6 pounds. Every trip you take using Oyster is billed at the full single fare, meaning that compared to Octopus it is almost totally worthless. Another shining example of taking somebody else's idea and totally messing it up. Oyster, currently, cannot even be used anywhere other than on the train. Come on Mr Mayor of London, get your finger out! (2) Well, all things change. The current price, as of October 2007, is now 33 Hong Kong Dollars for Adults return or 22 if you don't fancy going back. For Children, it is 15 Return or 8 Single. If you fancy access to the Sky Terrace as part of your ticket, you now have to pay 48 HKD for an Adult or 23 for a child - this includes a return on the Peak Tram. Current attractions include Madame Tussauds and the EA Gaming Experience - for the latest information, check out http://www.thepeak.com.hk . This has been a public service announcement on behalf of nobody in particular.

In 2003, Tanya and I embarked on a second worldtrip - this time taking in some of the places we had missed on our tour the previous year and adding New Zealand into the mix. This time our stopping off point on the way to the other side of the world was Hong Kong, and we wanted somewhere to stay which was close enough to the main islands to explore in the limited time we had available, and yet away from the bright lights of the city. Lamma seemed the perfect choice. Lamma Island is generally considered to be Hong Kong's hippy community - as you can tell just by looking at the community website (see below) which, at the time of writing, is covered in pictures of guys in local rock bands with long hair and guitars, adverts for new age stores, psychedelic photos of the locals and stories about the official court photographer! When I say that Lamma is a hippy community, I don't mean to suggest that it's just a bit laid back - this place is seriously stuck in the 70s and loving it. The website is one of the best community sites I've seen in a long time and really gives you a feel for Lamma - in fact the island is one of those places which is very hard to describe without photos, but looking at the community portal has brought so many memories back for me that I just want to get on the next plane! Connected to Central by ferry, Lamma is relatively untouched and criss-crossed by a handful of walking trails, and the only vehicles to be found are small motorised Tuk-Tuk style carts used to collect heavy sacks or luggage from the ferry. The main jetty is to be found at the small town of Yung Shue Wan, where visitors will immediately feel as though they've stepped into a strange mix of 70s community life and small town China. Leaving the jetty via a path which crosses a small metal bridge connected to the edge of a cliff, you enter Yung Shue Wan along a sea front dirt track littered with open fronted restaurants serving Thai, Japanese and Chinese food as well as stores with displays of recently caught and strong smelling fish in large boxes outside. There are also tanks in some of the restaurants, from which you are expected to select the catch of the day and watch while somebody hauls it out and slaps it onto a pan for you - this is not a place for the squeamish! Yung Shue Wan is also full of bars, and there's even an internet café and a cash machine - but don't think for one moment that this makes the town in any way modern, as the feeling here is very much of having gone back to a simpler time. Leaving the ferry with heavy backpacks strapped to us, Tanya and I made our way slowly into town and asked at the first bar for directions to our accommodation. The bar, like most of the stores in Yung Shue Wan, appeared to have no front and was nothing more than a couple of stools at a makeshift counter in the corner of a shack. The locals sitting outside at wobbly tables were all English, smoking and talking amongst themselves until they saw us coming at which point they stopped to watch the newcomers with interest. A friendly young man at the bar clicked his tongue and tutted when we told him where we needed to get to, and said that if we kept on the same path for about half an hour we would either get there or keel over from the weight of our packs. He wasn't joking. The path continued up the hill, the sea on one side and more bars and restaurants on the other. Peering between the buildings, small paths seemed to wind up to the doors of houses that looked as though they were about to fall down, or off into the forest where they probably connected with a beach or village somewhere. Dogs trotted up to sniff the strangers in town (although Lamma has its own animal rescue centre so there are a lot less strays than in other parts of China), and people looked up from their drinks or games of Mah-Jongg as we passed. After a couple of minutes we moved away from the sea and into the main town where the road forked and haphazard collections of shacks selling newspapers, vegetables and assorted groceries appeared on both sides. It was here that Tanya and I found a small pizza restaurant run by a local woman, and spent our evenings on Lamma sitting out the back at a rickety table enjoying the sunset. Restaurants here will happily serve you things you've never heard of before in your life, but places such as the Deli Lamma will manage to produce a full English breakfast on demand. This is also the place to come if you're looking for that authentic souvenir which you won't find elsewhere - melted and flattened coke bottle, anyone? We were staying at the Concerto Inn, which appears to be the only official holiday accommodation of any sort on the island. Situated at Hung Shing Yeh beach, it's not the cheapest hotel in the world - but considering we were staying right on the beach and had an ocean view we weren't complaining. The walk to the hotel, as I said earlier, was long and exhausting - but the staff at the hotel were very accommodating and took our luggage back to the ferry at the end of our stay on the back of their Tuk-Tuk. We still had to walk. Concerto Inn, of course, is the fantasy Island option of Lamma - if you really want to be a true hippy, there would probably be no shortage of locals willing to put you up in the middle of town in amongst the bars, shops and clouds of suspicious smelling smoke! If, on the other hand, you want to go and enjoy the hippy lifestyle by day and relax on your own beach a few yards from your own beach restaurant in the evening, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds from Hung Shing Yeh. Lamma is only 13 square Kilometres in size but still manages to be littered with small villages, most of which have a single village shop and a handful of people living there. On the path from Yung Shue Wan to the hotel, we came across what looked like a bus-stop on one side of the path - complete with upright sign and seats opposite. However, within the shelter were bars to which people had chained their bikes - so I'm guessing that this was some sort of Bike Park, and it explains how people get around over here. Lamma isn't a place to be if you're unfit as proper exploration requires a lot of walking, so I'm already exercising in preparation for my return. Unfortunately, we were only here for two days and spent most of that rushed to do everything we wanted on the mainland - and Lamma is a holiday in itself. The nightlife here consists of socialising and mingling at the local bars, but if this is your destination then you're probably not looking for the bright lights of the mainland. From what I've seen, you wouldn't be able to get back anyway - the ferries don't run all night, so any visit to a nightclub on Hong Kong Island would almost certainly end up with you finding yourself stranded!

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

if you get a chance go this is a great city to visit if you like to eat out there is every sort of food you can think of. even a big mac next to the dock take a cable car up to the top of the island the veiw of hong kong is breath taking if you go to the jade market barter like mad dont get ripped off ocean park on the island is well worth a day out . has rides , killer whales , sharks and a cable car that takes you right round the other side of the island etc.. i had the chance to play golf on one of its three courses at the royal hong kong golf course. not many can say they have hit the ball onto the green over a tropical jungle. the old course is open to anyone . if you know a member i played the eden course was very good if you need to get about taxi are not that bad but take the tube its as busy as see on tv

Hong Kong consists of three main areas - Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Lantau - and a number of smaller islands. I'm staying in Discovery Bay which is a high rise area of Lantau, the biggest of the islands, and is where you will find many ex pats living a reasonably western lifestyle full of McDonalds and pubs. A short ferry ride on the famous Star Ferry takes me across to Central which is the main hub of Hong Kong and from where buses, trains, taxis and rickshaws will happily take you wherever you want to go. The Star Ferry, in fact, is one of the highlights of the whole Hong Kong experience for me - not only can you get a ferry to any of the outlying islands to experience everything Hong Kong has to offer for next to nothing, but the fact is that my place of residence while I'm here in Discovery Bay means that I am actually forced to sit back and relax for the 30 minute ferry crossing to Central every morning before I can even think about going anywhere. An early morning ferry ride really sets you up for the day! Of the other two main areas of the region, Hong Kong Island itself contains all the markets, the zoological gardens, the Hong Kong Peak with it's almost vertical tram to the top and most of the nightlife. Hong Kong Island is where you will find Central, as well as a reasonable selection of shops and restaurants and the intriguingly out of place town of Aberdeen - where you can visit Ocean Park, a marine park not dissimilar to Sea World in Florida, and the Middle Kingdom which is a huge Theme Park full of Japanese Pagodas and water gardens. It is here that, on my last visit to the territory, I was sucked into a demonstration of local dance and forced to gyrate madly with beautiful Chinese girls in front of a laughing audience. Wan Chai, the nightlife district, gained notoriety as the red light district back in the days of Suzie Wong. Nowadays, however, there isn't very much about Wan Chai that could be considered seedy - it's full of McDonalds, Irish Bars and Nightclubs. The most popular bar at the moment (1998) is Carneigies, which is a rock and roll Bar and is packed to the hilt nightly by people dancing precariously on the bar and the balcony to rock from the Seventies and Eighties. The few "Girlie" bars that do exist in the area display their presence via huge neon signs but usually offer little more to the sleazy traveller than a woman in her seventies pretending to be in her twenties and a huge bar bill at the end of the night. The days of Suzie Wong are long gone. Getting around Hong Kong is easy. Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and Lantau are all joined by a clean and highly efficient subway train service called the MTR. The first challenge which greets new arrivals to Hong Kong is working out how to find their way around, and once the seemingly complex subway map has been mastered this becomes as easy as pie - as long as you don't set out in the rush hour, when slightly less than the population of North America all decide to swoop down on the system and try to board a train at the same time, getting around is a doddle and you can even switch to the overland railway and travel right up to the border with China as I will be doing later in the week. The ticketing system on the MTR also beats any I have seen elsewhere hands down. Using a system called Octopus, You buy a special train ticket with a microchip embedded in it and then keep it for as long as you like. The original Octopus ticket costs you a small deposit to cover the cost of the microchip technology should you lose it, but this is returned to you if you turn the ticket in later. Octopus is essentially a reloadable ticket, and you can add as much cash value to it as you like at any station by either going to the ticket office and handing it over or using the ticket machines you see everywhere you turn. When you walk through the turnstile onto the platform at the beginning of your journey, the system reads your Octopus automatically as you walk through without even requiring you to take it out of your bag, and then when you pass through the corresponding turnstile at your destination it deducts the cost of the journey and a little screen lights up telling you your balance. As an added bonus, you can make a journey of any length to use up whatever remains on the ticket - so if you only have a few cents left on your Octopus, you can use it to travel all the way across town which I think is a nice touch. Once again, Hong Kong is ahead of the pack on technology - why don't we have ideas like this back home (1)? Octopus can also be used just about anywhere - Taxis have a reader to swipe it, so do buses, you can even use it in McDonalds to buy a Big Mac! Today, I started my trip around the sights of Hong Kong by making my way up to the highest point on Hong Kong Island, known imaginatively as "The Peak". There are two ways to get up there, one of which is by using one of the most fascinating innovations I have ever come across, an escalator which runs right up the street from sea level to the peak. This moving staircase runs in stages between each street which crosses it all the way to the top, and you can make your way all the way to the top by jumping onto the lowest escalator and then just taking a few steps onto the next each time a road crosses your path and the current escalator is forced to stop. Each section is covered with a canopy in case it rains, and they have the system set up so that the stairs all move downward in the morning and upwards in the afternoon so that people can come down from the hillside to work and then return home later with the absolute minimum of effort. Only in Hong Kong would they think of something like this!
The other way to the Peak, and the one I took today, involves walking from Central for a few blocks until you arrive at the base station for The Peak Tram. The tram is pulled at a ridiculously steep angle up the hillside to the peak, stopping twice on the way to let people on and off at intermediate stations, and arrives, unlike the escalators, right in the heart of the Peak Tower. This is a combined shopping and entertainment complex full of both expensive boutiques and local souvenir shops, and there are fairground attractions and a lookout point from which you can obtain the famous view of the neon metropolis by night. A large restaurant also allows you to eat and look at the view at the same time, which I suspect brings a lot of romance-seekers up here late at night. There are the usual assortment of loud bars and pubs for those who just want to get drunk somewhere different. Right next door is the Peak Galleria, an even bigger shopping complex on three floors with altogether too many modern boutiques for it's own good, and outside the Galleria is an enormous fountain set into the pavement with jets which shoot water high into the air at just the right intervals so that you don't notice and scare the willies out of yourself walking across them and getting soaked to the skin. A return ticket on the Peak Tram will set you back about 28 Hong Kong Dollars, which is about £2.50 (2), but this often includes entrance to some of the attractions when you get to the top. The Peak also includes extensive gardens and walks, which a lot of people manage to totally miss as they aren't very well signposted. A visit to the Peak without taking a walk through the gardens and exploring the different nature trails laid out for you would almost be a sin and a pleasant afternoon can easily be spent just wandering aimlessly before getting hopelessly lost trying to find your way back to the Peak Tram and coming back down on the escalator instead! A trip to Hong Kong Island is never complete without at least one trip to a local street market, of which the best balance between ethnic and touristy are to be found by going on the MTR to Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po where the stall holders are happy to bargain with you as most of the prices are hugely inflated to start with. The best and most extensive market on the island for tourists is at Stanley, and this is where you can get hold of all those local handicrafts you're dying to pore over - A fairly long bus ride on Route 260 from Central takes you into Stanley and drops you off practically on the doorstep of the market, ensuring however that you have to walk past a couple of little coffee shops on the way which will try to entice you in for refreshments. Stanley market is far more than just tacky souvenirs, however; I managed to pick up a beautiful painting on fabric of boats on the harbour which I actually got to watch the artist putting the finishing touches to and which now takes pride of place on my living room wall... and let's face it, this is the only place in the world you can actually get genuine local crafts and not be remotely bothered about finding a "Made in Hong Kong" sticker on the bottom! If you're looking for a taste of the local markets, there are so many that you could spend all week wandering around them and still not come close to seeing everything. There are bird markets, fish markets, flower markets, clothes markets, fruit markets, the ladies market, the list goes on. There are markets selling nothing but Jade, markets selling nothing but candles or incense or Chinese medicines. Whatever you want, it's here. It really does sound like a get-out, but there are so many markets to be found in Hong Kong that there's little point in listing them all here - just grab a guidebook and explore and you'll be pleasantly surprised what you can find littering the tiny side streets, especially after dusk when the Temple Street night market opens and you find yourself surrounded by stall holders selling watches and men's clothing. In a grubby corner of Mong Kok, you'll find the Bird market, a fascinating but slightly worrying part of town where lonely old men come to buy and sell caged birds of every variety from mynahs to budgies, or just to show off their birds to each other (and not in the sense you're thinking, either!). Here, if you're not going deaf at the sound of a million shrill tweets from every direction, you're jumping a mile in the air because a small snake has escaped from the live bird food stalls and slithered up your trouser leg! Not being a huge fan of seeing animals caged up, the bird market doesn't exactly float my boat, and the same goes for the Goldfish market at which you will find nothing but endless varieties of fish hanging from tiny plastic bags as though they are at a fairground and with a life expectancy of about 5 minutes - unfortunately, the Chinese believe that goldfish add to the fung shui of a property so this isn't likely to stop anytime soon. At the Jade market in Yau Ma Tei, accessible from the MTR, you can bargain for Jade, Amber and Lapis carved into every shape imaginable until you realise just how much you're being ripped off compared to the locals. The only problem, in fact, with the infinite options for shopping in Hong Kong is that there is so much more space allocated to shopping centres and so little to actually getting inside. Builders here seem to build until they've created a shopping complex the size of a small town and then slap a small door onto one corner of it as an afterthought - you can literally walk around for hours looking for a way into a concrete monstrosity several blocks in size before finally discovering that you have to go down into an MTR station to get into it, or up a small flight of steps marked "Bakery - this way" One of the things that often gets mentioned about Hong Kong is the fact that many shopping centres in certain areas quite openly sell pirated computer software, something which constantly gets right up the noses of the software giants. This has always been a major problem, because as a communist country where the idea of individuals owning anything is totally unknown, China doesn't have any copyright laws as such and is not in a position to tell anybody off for making copies. From what I have been led to believe, it is alleged that the system has always involved the local Hong Kong police occasionally turning up at a well known pirate store, the owner handing over a large amount of money and them going away again - although, of course, this is purely hearsay. Recently it seems that the US government has finally thrown its dummy out of the pram and had something of a hissy fit with the Chinese stance on piracy - and whatever they've done, it seems to have worked as the local papers have been reporting a heavy downturn in the sale of pirated software in the region recently. My own experience of the situation doesn't quite tie up with the official line that piracy is going away. On my last visit to Hong Kong, I strolled into the large computer centre in Mong Kok - a shopping centre devoted entirely to computer equipment and software - and was immediately pounced upon by a man who had been waiting just inside the door. Clearly he had been put there to wait for any Westerners who looked as though they might have some money, and he didn't waste any time at all in getting to business. Upstairs, he told me, I would find hardware and PC accessories. Downstairs, there was everything I could possibly want for my PlayStation or Nintendo Console. Oh and if I wanted the "special" department then I should walk down the street for two blocks, go up a flight of dirty steps between a bakery and a Chinese Medicine Centre, and into a room where a queue of people would be lining up to ask a dodgy looking guy at a desk for copies of just about anything! I followed the directions he gave me and, although I wasn't about to partake myself (as a software designer myself, wouldn't that be just a bit hypocritical?), I observed the man at the desk sending a runner off to some secret location to collect orders as they were placed. As I walked back to the computer centre afterwards, I looked back and saw everybody leaving - which I took to mean that the police were on their way and the location would simply be casually moving somewhere else. If you want a real taste of China, you could do worse than pull up a stall and plonk yourself down at one of the gutter restaurants you'll find everywhere - and yes, gutter restaurants are exactly what it says on the box, restaurants in the gutter. If you're longing for local quaintness extends to eating something you can't quite identify on a rickety table perched under an umbrella in the gutter while a collection of soggy cats and flea infested rats stare up at you hungrily, this is the place to be! And if you go home without having contracted the plague, you can consider your holiday a success...

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

(1) Well, now we do - in London, at least. Sort of. Octopus has been almost totally "borrowed" by Transport for London and given a name so amazingly similar in thinking that you really do have to rub your chin and go "Hmmm". Oyster, as it is called in London, does suffer from the British tendency to want to make as much money as possible - not only does it not contain the option to make a journey of any length on the remaining balance, or even any remotely similar incentive, but it is actually more expensive to use an Oyster card than it is to buy a daily travelcard which allows a whole days worth of travel anywhere in London for 6 pounds. Every trip you take using Oyster is billed at the full single fare, meaning that compared to Octopus it is almost totally worthless. Another shining example of taking somebody else's idea and totally messing it up. Oyster, currently, cannot even be used anywhere other than on the train. Come on Mr Mayor of London, get your finger out! (2) Well, all things change. The current price, as of October 2007, is now 33 Hong Kong Dollars for Adults return or 22 if you don't fancy going back. For Children, it is 15 Return or 8 Single. If you fancy access to the Sky Terrace as part of your ticket, you now have to pay 48 HKD for an Adult or 23 for a child - this includes a return on the Peak Tram. Current attractions include Madame Tussauds and the EA Gaming Experience - for the latest information, check out http://www.thepeak.com.hk . This has been a public service announcement on behalf of nobody in particular.

In 2003, Tanya and I embarked on a second worldtrip - this time taking in some of the places we had missed on our tour the previous year and adding New Zealand into the mix. This time our stopping off point on the way to the other side of the world was Hong Kong, and we wanted somewhere to stay which was close enough to the main islands to explore in the limited time we had available, and yet away from the bright lights of the city. Lamma seemed the perfect choice. Lamma Island is generally considered to be Hong Kong's hippy community - as you can tell just by looking at the community website (see below) which, at the time of writing, is covered in pictures of guys in local rock bands with long hair and guitars, adverts for new age stores, psychedelic photos of the locals and stories about the official court photographer! When I say that Lamma is a hippy community, I don't mean to suggest that it's just a bit laid back - this place is seriously stuck in the 70s and loving it. The website is one of the best community sites I've seen in a long time and really gives you a feel for Lamma - in fact the island is one of those places which is very hard to describe without photos, but looking at the community portal has brought so many memories back for me that I just want to get on the next plane! Connected to Central by ferry, Lamma is relatively untouched and criss-crossed by a handful of walking trails, and the only vehicles to be found are small motorised Tuk-Tuk style carts used to collect heavy sacks or luggage from the ferry. The main jetty is to be found at the small town of Yung Shue Wan, where visitors will immediately feel as though they've stepped into a strange mix of 70s community life and small town China. Leaving the jetty via a path which crosses a small metal bridge connected to the edge of a cliff, you enter Yung Shue Wan along a sea front dirt track littered with open fronted restaurants serving Thai, Japanese and Chinese food as well as stores with displays of recently caught and strong smelling fish in large boxes outside. There are also tanks in some of the restaurants, from which you are expected to select the catch of the day and watch while somebody hauls it out and slaps it onto a pan for you - this is not a place for the squeamish! Yung Shue Wan is also full of bars, and there's even an internet café and a cash machine - but don't think for one moment that this makes the town in any way modern, as the feeling here is very much of having gone back to a simpler time. Leaving the ferry with heavy backpacks strapped to us, Tanya and I made our way slowly into town and asked at the first bar for directions to our accommodation. The bar, like most of the stores in Yung Shue Wan, appeared to have no front and was nothing more than a couple of stools at a makeshift counter in the corner of a shack. The locals sitting outside at wobbly tables were all English, smoking and talking amongst themselves until they saw us coming at which point they stopped to watch the newcomers with interest. A friendly young man at the bar clicked his tongue and tutted when we told him where we needed to get to, and said that if we kept on the same path for about half an hour we would either get there or keel over from the weight of our packs. He wasn't joking. The path continued up the hill, the sea on one side and more bars and restaurants on the other. Peering between the buildings, small paths seemed to wind up to the doors of houses that looked as though they were about to fall down, or off into the forest where they probably connected with a beach or village somewhere. Dogs trotted up to sniff the strangers in town (although Lamma has its own animal rescue centre so there are a lot less strays than in other parts of China), and people looked up from their drinks or games of Mah-Jongg as we passed. After a couple of minutes we moved away from the sea and into the main town where the road forked and haphazard collections of shacks selling newspapers, vegetables and assorted groceries appeared on both sides. It was here that Tanya and I found a small pizza restaurant run by a local woman, and spent our evenings on Lamma sitting out the back at a rickety table enjoying the sunset. Restaurants here will happily serve you things you've never heard of before in your life, but places such as the Deli Lamma will manage to produce a full English breakfast on demand. This is also the place to come if you're looking for that authentic souvenir which you won't find elsewhere - melted and flattened coke bottle, anyone? We were staying at the Concerto Inn, which appears to be the only official holiday accommodation of any sort on the island. Situated at Hung Shing Yeh beach, it's not the cheapest hotel in the world - but considering we were staying right on the beach and had an ocean view we weren't complaining. The walk to the hotel, as I said earlier, was long and exhausting - but the staff at the hotel were very accommodating and took our luggage back to the ferry at the end of our stay on the back of their Tuk-Tuk. We still had to walk. Concerto Inn, of course, is the fantasy Island option of Lamma - if you really want to be a true hippy, there would probably be no shortage of locals willing to put you up in the middle of town in amongst the bars, shops and clouds of suspicious smelling smoke! If, on the other hand, you want to go and enjoy the hippy lifestyle by day and relax on your own beach a few yards from your own beach restaurant in the evening, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds from Hung Shing Yeh. Lamma is only 13 square Kilometres in size but still manages to be littered with small villages, most of which have a single village shop and a handful of people living there. On the path from Yung Shue Wan to the hotel, we came across what looked like a bus-stop on one side of the path - complete with upright sign and seats opposite. However, within the shelter were bars to which people had chained their bikes - so I'm guessing that this was some sort of Bike Park, and it explains how people get around over here. Lamma isn't a place to be if you're unfit as proper exploration requires a lot of walking, so I'm already exercising in preparation for my return. Unfortunately, we were only here for two days and spent most of that rushed to do everything we wanted on the mainland - and Lamma is a holiday in itself. The nightlife here consists of socialising and mingling at the local bars, but if this is your destination then you're probably not looking for the bright lights of the mainland. From what I've seen, you wouldn't be able to get back anyway - the ferries don't run all night, so any visit to a nightclub on Hong Kong Island would almost certainly end up with you finding yourself stranded!

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

if you get a chance go this is a great city to visit if you like to eat out there is every sort of food you can think of. even a big mac next to the dock take a cable car up to the top of the island the veiw of hong kong is breath taking if you go to the jade market barter like mad dont get ripped off ocean park on the island is well worth a day out . has rides , killer whales , sharks and a cable car that takes you right round the other side of the island etc.. i had the chance to play golf on one of its three courses at the royal hong kong golf course. not many can say they have hit the ball onto the green over a tropical jungle. the old course is open to anyone . if you know a member i played the eden course was very good if you need to get about taxi are not that bad but take the tube its as busy as see on tv