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Round the World

Hong Kong

Arrived here yesterday just after midday. Had a quick snack and fell asleep at 3pm before waking up at midnight for another light meal and a pint then sleeping through to 9am. Guess I needed a rest….

Today has been spent checking out the consulates and visa requirements plus seeing where the best place to stay is. On the visa front everything looks OK as long as the UK company booking the train tickets comes through. As a starter for 10 I’ve applied for the Chinese visa and it should be ready for Tue.

Accomodation is very different here. Guesthouses are converted flats in towerblocks of varying grottiness. By luck I pre-booked a nice place for the first couple of days however it offers virtually no possibility of meeting other travellers. The couple of places I saw today might (and only might) offer better social scenes but are definitely grottier. Its a kind of company vs cockroaches equation……..

Street with my guesthouse, Hong Kong

Hong Kong had a couple of other surprises for me: its especially hot here at the moment so when 500,000+ people marched yesterday for democracy the local paper was amazed they did so in such heat. If the locals retreat in the face of it imagine what’s it’s like for someone of scottish blood. Role on Siberia… I had also expected that as an ex-British colony English would be more pervasive here. Not a bit of it, I saw far more English on signs and menus in Bangkok than I do here. I guess its good practice for China where nothing will be in an alphabet I recognise.

On the plus side it looks like a good, cheap curry isn’t beyond the bounds of probability and I may even have found a bar that doesn’t play continuous bubblegum pop… things are looking up.

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