Hong Kong Bitches!

welcome one and all to the penultimate blog entry for, Halfway around the world in eight months!
            We are here now sitting in Hong Kong international airport waiting for our flight home. HOME! It tastes like a foreign word in my mouth! Our flight isn't for another 7 hours, but hey another night sleeping in an airport wont kill us! Or will it!?! It's freezing here, all the floors are polished, cold hard tiles, and there are being polished again, right now by an excessively loud machine!!
But aside from the trials of the now, here is a quick run down of what we've been spending our time on, these past few days.
    When it comes to accommodation, we left it to the last minute. All of the hostels online were either sold out, or charging a sweet fortune. After too much searching we settled on a hotel that was a little too close the the upper end of our budget than we would have otherwise liked. It turned out to be a nice place, it was even mentioned in the Hong Kong map that we were given in the airport, if that's not classy, i don't know what is!!
    Moving on, we both found it nice to be surrounded once more with Asian culture. The streets of the city were filled with a multitude of smells, and neon lights were hanging from every shop front. It really is a busy place. The public transport system here is really fantastic, everything is joined together, buses, trains and ferries all fall under the same ticketing system. In the airport it's even possible to pay for food using your bus pass!
Being here almost acted as a bookend to our trip. Compared to the other cities in Asia we have visited, HK seems to be one of the most varied. The English influence is still evident here. In the newspapers we saw pictures of judges wearing the same wigs as in Britain. Also the fire brigade and ambulances' use vehicles very similar to those found in the U.K. At the same time, a lot of people have trouble speaking English, we ran into translation difficulties even in the tourist information centre. Within a couple of blocks the city varies between brand spanking new Gucci and Prada shops, to run down inner city flats. There are quite stark contrasts between the rich and the poor here. The food from the street stalls, were as good as we've tasted anywhere! Not to mention the night markets!
    On our second day in HK we went to........... DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!!! We had a great time there, plenty to see and do. We met a lot of characters, Donald, Goofy, Buzz Light year. It's true what they say, Disneyland IS the happiest place on earth!! We went on pretty much all of the rides and had a great time acting as two big kids!
    Today (Wednesday) we went up the the peak, which is a lookout point over HK, we had to take a very steep tram ride to get up there. It was a spectacular view, well, some of it was, the smog did   a pretty good job of covering up the rest!
          I may have lied earlier in saying that this is the penultimate blog entry. Due to tiredness restraints,(Jet lag is fantastic! NOT!!!) there are going to be no pictures in this entry. When we arrive home (tomorrow!) we'll get a few HK pictures up. Then, when the dust has settled, we'll post something regarding our thoughts on the trip as a whole. Facebook will tell you when!
See you really, really soon!!!!!
Dave and Kjerst!

PS
Thanks to James Cleary and Marita for getting us horribly hung over in Dunedin in NZ. Which we forgot to mention in the last post! G'wan Jamesie ye mad yoke! Karaoke till du DØR!!!!