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Kong Kong

After finishing up in Australia, and returning to cold Norway, I felt like dividing the rather long flight back to Europe in two.
When I got my original flight plan, it had a stop in Hong Kong. “Well, why not see what Hong Kong has to offer!”. After all,
my dad had lived there for 6 months or so in the early seventies.

My "dear" Falcon

I was planning on going by myself, but after mentioning this plan to a few friends, I found myself with 3 travel companions.
The last days in Australia was a hellish marathon of cleaning and things to take care of, so it was with a relief I left my appartement early in the morning. Audun had agreed to drive me to the airport, where I would hand over my “beloved” car to him.

It was a bit sad leaving Brisbane after such a long time, but new adventures awaited.

Linux, the bellboy

Somebody with a lot of brains had created our flight plan, because we had to travel via Sydney, which added 2000km to our travel. Bravo…
Oh well, we arrived safely at HKIA in the early evening, and thanks to a helpful hotel agency at the airport, we found a fairly cheap hotel on Hong Kong Island. The hotel was great, we got two double rooms and a bell boy named Linux, who said “Just call me Red Hat”. (Yes, I know, geeky humor).

Gisle arrived a few hours later, so in the meantime Henning, Steinar and myself went for beers and steaks. Found a nice and bloody expensive restaurant in Central, a area on Hong Kong Island.

Hong Kong dinner party

After a while, Gisle showed and it was party time. We went out in Central, and the nightlife was awsome. Packed with people everywhere, everybody in a terrific mood and heaps of my favourite, rum&coke. A girl came over and asked if she could take a picture of me, and off course I had tod do the same then. Felt like a bloody moviestar:) Other than that, 90% of the girls at the bars were prostitutes, which gets rather annoying after a while. “No, I will NOT buy you a bloody drink. Nope, dont need company either.”
But we were not too worried, and I returned to the hotel rather late.

The mountain casino

The next day we decided to head off to Macau, a former Portugese colony 1 hours with a fast-ferry south of Hong Kong. We soon discovered that the island was filled with casinos. Of course that was of no use to us, since we were/are all broke students.

The boys in Macau

The most amazing thing about Macau, was desperate shortage of bars, or in general any place that sold beer. We walked around for four hours, and did not find any place where they sold beer. I ended up with some crappy pineapple-juicy instead.(Pieces of pineapple in a glass of water).
But on the bright side, we found the lighthouse of Macau, which is the symbol in their flag. Not too hard too find:)
We ended up with a beer on the ferryterminal heading back to Hong Kong. But Macau was a really pretty place.

After getting back, Henning and Steinar was growing tired of chinese food and we all found McDonalds quite good.

Vladivar vodka

We went back to the hotel, and we had a “vorspiel” in good, norwegian tradition. We even managed to watch soccer with chinese comments. After ending a bottle of “Vladivar”, we hit some bars again. Nothing new, really, and we were growing tired of the prostitutes. We managed to stay out all night, though.

The orangutang in Hong Kong Zoo

The next day I started to feel the effect of heavy partying, hardly no sleep during the last week and long kozy walks on Macau.
Henning&Steinar had disappered when Gisle and the author managed to get themselves out of the hotel. After a VERY slow breakfast whom included three bottles of icetea, we went to the zoo. I guess we looked like old men on a sunday walk, because there were some steep hills to that zoo and we needed a rest now and then. But the zoo was peaceful and quiet, and being Hong Kong, that rare. And they had some big-ass orangutangs too.

Star ferry

After gathering strength there, we took the “Star Ferry” from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon, the mainland side of Hong Kong.

Besides walking up the main street, Nathan Road, we did’nt do much besides sitting on a bench looking at bypassers, and that suited my energy level perfectly. When we got back to the hotel, we met Henning and Steinar, who had been at a restaurant for hours, eating and having a good time. Bastards!

At HKIA

Anyway, that was our last day in Hong Kong, and after picking up our baggage, we left the airport.

At Heathrow

Then we only had seven boring hours on Heatrow before we were able to head home.