Arriving in Hong Kong we were very excited (and a little bit pissed from our flight) to get back on the road and have a bit of a challenge again.  Unfortunately this challenge came far too soon.  Now Hong Kong has some of the highest property prices in the world and so accommodation is expensive, hard to come by and V small, so we were prepared for a box when we arrived at our new home for 4 days, however the wee on the floor (yes in the hotel) and disgusting bathrooms was a bit too much.  So, off to Mc Donalds we go to use the free wifi and desperately search for something else.  There are two notorious backpacker towers in the centre, Wee floor was one and so we went to the other, possibly the dodgiest looking block i have ever been in – V Scary and the tiniest room too small for two!  but we had to settle for the night with the hangover settling in – Challenge Number 1!

After finally finding an alternative accommodation (probably the best we stayed in for the whole travels) it was time to explore Hong Kong and get past the fake rolex’s, Handy bags and leather jackets constantly being touted at us.

Hong Kong Trams

First stop the longest escalator in the world – now i was imagining one non stop escalator all the way to the top of the mountain, but no, its a series of mini travelators so not as impressive as first thought but still a main sight seeing attraction!  This took us to an area called Soho, very touristy and set up mainly for the Ex-pats living in HK. 

Foggy view

Night View

Following this, a trip to the Peak for amazing views of the city, star ferry across to the mainland to watch the nightly light show in the city.  How very bizarre!  All the buildings with cheesy lights to very cheesy music and laser beams jetting from the top – I have never seen anything like it and probably never will again!  Food time and the bit we were most looking forward to (as you can imagine) , goose and sweet and sour pork followed by people laughing at us….not sure why and Hong Kong food was a hit!

Nige on the Avenue of Stars pre light show!

light Show

The Dim Sum hunt now begins, and my god we found it!  Maxims Palace, one of the few places that still has trolleys going around a huge banquet room serving dim sum – god it was good and the atmosphere was great and the very moody trolley ladies even put a smile on our faces.

Dim Sum

A trip to the Hong Kong museum and science museum was followed by an evening out with Nige’s cousin, Chris and his girlfriend Alicia. Was great to have someone to take us out in such a big city and the wagyu burger, jelly shots and great company certainly made for a great evening – thanks guys!

Nige and Chris

Jelly shots

A quick trip over to Lamma island finished our Hong Kong adventure with a walk over the island – with the majority of the view of a power station but was still great to get out of the city for a day and out of the manic-ness!  Hong Kong overall did us proud and got us back into the swing of things that we have ahead of us, great cheap street food, different cultures and some great sites…. off to Asia we go!

Beautiful View?!?!?Great Markets...

We were back on the road again, Betty was fixed and raring to go, our belly’s were full from the delicious eggs for breakfast at Nana and Miles’s and it was time to start the final leg of our oz journey – onwards to Wilson’s Promentary. 

Red Skies at wilsons prom

A fantastic national park and one of the few places on the East coast where you can see the sunset.  Unfortunately a lot of the park was destroyed in a fire in January last year so its not as pretty as it once was I’m sure, but it still beat the majority of the up north driving through red/ brown dirt!

Next stop headed towards Lakes Entrance where we experienced the Chav side of Australia, I cant believe it but we actually got EGGED whilst driving along, poor old Betty covered in egg, and me slightly shaken by having something thrown at us.  Anyway, Lakes Entrance….very touristy, I think that the three mini golfs in a row on the esplanade give that away, but we were here for another activity…fishing.  After finally deciding on our trip our hosts Anthony and Heather plied us with tea and tim tams – vital for catching fish!  Well it worked… 7 Australian salmon in total (I think Nige managed slightly more than me – but considering I had no idea what I was doing it wasn’t bad!).  Back to camp straight away to fry the beauties up in flour butter and oil – some of the freshest fish I have ever tasted and all the better considering we caught it ourselves. 

mmmmmmmmm

With the fishing bug in our bones it was off to Mallacoota to fish off the wharf with all the old men and crazy ladies.   We managed loads of fish, 2 flat heads, 1 bream and 2 toothbrush

leather jackets but sadly all too small to keep – oh well Pie for lunch again.

Xmas BBQ!

Our final stop of the road trip was Lake Conjola, an amazingly pretty bay and lake, a perfect place to chill for a few days and wait for the arrival of Katie and Bill and amuse ourselves looking at the crazy Australians chasing possums around the campsite with a rake ( who brings a rake camping??)….enough said.  After a few very boozy nights with Katie and Bill it was back to Sydney to say goodbye to Betty….hopefully!

We were in luck, everyone was desperate for a van and we managed to sell her within 3 hours of reaching Sydney and even had people fighting over it (I still slightly feel for the 18 yr old Germans who just lost out and turned up with their rucksacks as they had no where to sleep!)  So in true Nige and Fran style it was time to celebrate, a few drinks later and we were finally getting in the Christmas spirit!

FRIENDS!

the Boys and Silly Hats!

And the Girls.....

Then the clan arrived, Abi, Nick, Katie and Bill – it was definitely Christmas and definitely party time – a few too many boozy nights led us to a hungover Christmas day but determined to soldier on in style with Bucks Fizz, smoked salmon and Croissants for brekkie, a quick nap then onto the mains.  I should add that by this point we were probably the most hated people in our hostel, all because we were celebrating Christmas with yummy food and great wines (courtesy of Katie and Bill) and all the baa humbugs in the hostel were a bunch of miserable gits…rant over!!  So the food… typical ozzie Xmas, prawns, sushi, steak, cheese – all amazing apart from the untypical ozzie weather – cold and wet.

Christmas Day!

With Christmas over there were still a few celebrations to go – Nicks 30th Birthday which put us all out of action for a couple of days after amazing Japanese food and a lot of wine, then New Years Eve…… Up and sat in a park to watch the fireworks at 8.30AM – yes we were mad… it slowly filled up but by midday totally full of English idiots basically, one delightful character near us had passed out by 4pm (not such a bad thing!)  Finally after sitting for 16 hours the fireworks were amazing and well worth the wait – Definitely would not do it again next year though! 

New Years at 8.30am...

NYs a bit later.... and a bit busier!

IT was all worth the wait!

Happy New Year!

And the oz adventure was over and time to move on to Hong Kong.  Now I normally hate flights as they are tediously boring, but this one was bizarre.  We still don’t really know what happened but apparently we were seated in the ‘honeymoon’ seats so all through the flight we were given champagne, wine, vodka and lots of special treatment – we dodged answering the honeymoon question in case the treatment stopped – it was all very strange but fantastic!

So the next adventure is Hong Kong in the next installment….