Big Buddha

Aaron meets us at 9.30 and what does he have on his neck?!?! Oh yes, you guessed it – a fecking love bite! What a dirty boy!! Him and Sutty went onto a ‘special’ bar after karaoke and were surrounded by ladies of the night – and if you buy them a drink, they’re all over you! Aaron refrained from paying them for a whole night of loving but got a love bite instead for his chat! He even offered the girl his hat for a BJ – WTF!?!? She declined obviously!!!
After discussing the night’s scandal, we grab brekkie at a bakery – time for a cheese n ham roll of the sweetest variety – yep, interesting crossing of flavours there – and we head to the ferry to go to Lantau island and see the Big Buddha at Ngong Ping Village. It’s a toasty day and Sutty gets burnt! We have an awesome lunch at the place we visited last year and went up the steps to the Buddha. Some crazy lass was on her knees praying at the top and crying her eyes out, screaming to Buddha. Wonder what her beef was……mean I know, but she was LOUD!! In front of all those tourists too….its a long day and we head back to the ferry.
Everyone is freshened up and we head up town on Nathan Road to find Sutty’s hotel. We eat in one of these local joints where you can see the hanging glazed ducks, geese and chickens still avec heads, and order the set meal for 4. Well, didn’t we get looks from all the locals?! Haha – we showed them a thing or two by using chopsticks and not failing with them!!! Soup was interesting to say the least…..i’m sure it had bone marrow at the bottom of the bowl…it was a nice dishwater colour too – but strangely tasty!! Next up was an assortment of crab, prawns, pork and ribs. All yummy!!! Huge bottles of Carlsberg for £1.50 – great success 
After our mammoth feed, we head off to find a pub…..do you realise how hard that task was!?!??!?! Huh huh!?!?!? OMG……..there were like NO pubs to be seen at that end of Nathan Road and if we did find one – it was a TITTY bar – raaaaaaa. Bless this woman that stopped us outside a ‘karaoke bar’ – Aaron went in to check if it was suitable for me – he came out and said ‘why aye! Its karaoke’ at the same time, this local woman said ‘the women, they sing with you and then…..(she raises her eyebrows) not suitable for girls’ – haha, I’m saved!!! Onwards we continue to look for a pub, but now I’m absolutely bursting for a pee….not good chat…..Maccie D’s comes to my aide and I use their facilities – thank you golden arches! What we did find on our travels was a few amusing names of buildings – just look at the photo!!
Where do we end up?! The bloody pub opposite the hostel – haha! Delaney’s – another irish bar – but hey, the footie is on and Bolton are holding Man U scum to a draw – come on!!! Argh, but the last fecking minute Man U go and score – don’t they – fecking typical!!! HAYLEY RAGE!!! Off we trot to bed around 1ish – sooooooo many dodgy geezers around our block – ugh!! A tad too many Nigerians here on business – aye right!!!

Hayley

Friday - Welcome to Hong Kong

We land at 2pm HK time – with the flight lasting about 10hrs 50mins – the sun is shining and it’s a nice comfortable temp of 18 degrees sweeeeeeet!! Bye bye crappy UK weather, Hello Sunshine!!! We get the MTR into Hong Kong and then another one onto Tsim Sha Tsui (?) where we get to our accommodation – Parkgate Hostel in ChungKing Mansions. This place is heaving and all full of crazy annoying touts with this crap chat: “Tailored suit sir, DVD, good fake watch?” or “ I take you to nice guesthouse. Where you want to stay? Follow me!” Joy. We rock up to the 15th floor and meet our hostel owner. She seems lovely and friendly so all good. We open our door to the room and its pretty darn basic! But at least it’s clean. The bathroom is a hoot – we have to shower head so it’s kinda like a metal hose hanging down – wahaha! Two single beds – mattresses are a tad hard and that’s about it!
I’m feeling skanky from the flight so hit the shower. Half an hour later we hear Aaron’s hearty laugh – you canny miss it – and Sutty has arrived!!! Aaron’s flatmate is stopping over in HK for a few nights on his way back from Oz to the UK – super timing. We get ready and meet them in the Irish pub next door – too handy!!! Bless Sutty, who has been researching the joint – mainly of Irish pubs – good skills! Unfortunately, it’s like £6 a pint or more in these places so we have to rely on happy hour – damn the exchange rate!
We head to the harbour for 8pm to see the free light n laser show – along the way we have dinner….at good ol Maccie D’s…..its £2 for a meal! Canny believe it!!! Light show is well impressive – even though we saw it last year – and we head to another bar!!! We stumble into a random bar – we’re the only Westerners in there with what looks like the fecking Triads at the bar – hmmmm…..dodgy!!! But we’re rescued….it’s a karaoke bar – hahaha! Aaron and Sutty get up and sing ‘Fly me to the moon’ - what a hoot! The locals LOVED it!! Probably helped that Aaron was wearing his England top and cowboy hat – mentalist.
Boy and I are knackered so get to our beds for 10ish.

Hayley

We made it to London

Using the wonders of modern technology I have managed to avoid paying airport WiFi charges by connecting my mobile phone to my laptop...

Well after all of the packing and saying goodbye, we are on our way successfully bagging our first flight. We are now in one of the bars (surprise surprise) in Heathrow’s T3 and Aaron is away looking for an outside bit to have a sneaky wee fag before the 12 hour flight to Hong Kong at 6pm this evening. The flight should be interesting as Aaron has invested in a Niccorette ‘Inhalator’ – a small plastic device which give the users a small dose of nicotine on inhalation. It will be interesting to see how well this works and how angst Aaron will be when he gets off the plane at the other end!!

On changing from T5 where we land to T3 where our next flight takes off, we had to clear security again. Me and Aaron made it through with no issues but Hayley set the metal detector off and the lady who searched her had a right old rake around in her over shoulder boulder holder, looking for hidden contraband – luckily for Hayley none was found.

Aaron has also brought his ‘Fanimal’ – those of you old enough will remember these creatures from the Peparami adverts of days gone by. Here’s a photo of Fanimal at Newcastle airport.

Dave

We've crossed our 1st Border

Well, yesterday we crossed our first country border making it successfully from Scotland into England. The motor was a bit full up with gear but there you go!!

Our first flight is at 12:15 on Thursday taking us from Newcastle to Heathrow and then on the 18:05 to Hong Kong.

Packing Begins

Now that we've said Ta Ta to just about everyone in Edinburgh, we can start to make a go of packing everything we need for the next few months into one rucksack each!

Things are already off to a delayed start as we set the alarms for 08:30 this morning but didn't surface until about 15 minutes ago (09:30) however, it can't take that long to pack a rucksack can it?

Dave

Last Day of Work, Last Day of the Year, Last Three Injections

Well, yesterday saw us both getting the last three of our nine injections - so that's us now hopefully immune to a lot of nasty diseases!! Tomorrow sees the last day of 2008 and also the last day of work for the next 6 months or so.

Now we can look forward to our leaving do on the 10th and start to think about packing – although admittedly, finding the time to fit things into a small rucksack won’t be that difficult!!

Now the countdown begins proper!!

Getting Ready to Go, Mapping Update & Injections

Right - thats us all booked up so I've added our stop off points onto the route map - Pink means we haven't done it yet, Blue means that we have

We go on 15/01/09 and the tickets ended up costing £2200 each including all taxes not bad for all of the flights we are getting!

We've now had 6 of our 9 injections, we opted to go for Hep B, Rabies and Japanese Encephalitis - we get our final injections on 29/12/08. With the anti Malaria stuff we ended up paying £320 each - a bit steep but then again, I don't fancy catching any of these diseases