3rd February 2011

After a 10 hours flight (an hour shorter than usual) we landed at Hong Kong airport at 8am - 12 midnight UK time. The airport is situated on Lantau Island and as we made our approach we were able to see the Big Buddha, a picture of which we have posted earlier. We were at the Metropark Hotel in Causeway Bay by 9.15 and were delighted to find that not only was the room ready for us, but we had been upgraded to a suite! Mind you, I'd rather have been upgraded on the flight and have a standard hotel room - but you can't have everything. After a short rest and freshen-up we took the Metro across to Kowloon Island with the intention of doing a walk of the various markets. However, we were both more tired than we realised and a lot of the stalls had closed early so after a couple of hours we returned to the hotel for a snooze.

A word here about the metro, it's clean and efficient. The carriages have very few seats so that as many people can squeeze onto the train and because the carriages are open-plan (no dividing doors) they are very very long.

We have arrived in Hong Kong in time to help them celebrate the Chinese New Year, which is the Year of the Rabbit- the downside to this is that a fair number of shops are closed, but as we are only here for the one night, it shouldn't affect us.

We did go back to Kowloon to watch the Parade but the crowd was horrendous with lots of pushing and shoving and we really couldn't see very much so we decided to go back to the hotel and watch it on the tv!

The photo I have just posted was taken earlier in the day as the build-up to the Parade began. Rosalyn and I got involved with a dragon