Day two in Hong Kong and I am loving it! I think what I love most about Hong Kong is that it is nothing like China. Everyone speaks English, it is so much cleaner, only problem is it’s so expensive.
I was up early this morning to get ready and to the Kowloon hotel (a 20 minute walk away) to be picked up to go on a Pearl river dolphin cruise which I was so excited about! We met in the lobby at 8.50am and were picked up and driven to the harbour in Lantau which took 30 minutes. There was a small boat waiting for us and then we were off! It was a cloudy day but on the water it was realy overcast, but still warm. Now the guide had warned us plenty of times that the pink dolphins are wild animals and that there’s no guarantee we would see them and after 40 minutes of no sightings I was beginning to get anxious. There was no need for me to have worried though because in the distance we could see a pod of about 10 dolphins, a few pink adults and about 3 grey calves! It was exciting but I was disappointed that they were so far away and I couldn’t get any good pictures but then, in the other direction we saw 6 more dolphins! These were a bit more active and jumping out of the water and were a bit closer so we followed them for a while. Then to make it even more exciting the dolphins swam right up to the boat and then swam under it and jumped out of the water on the other side and then disappeared. I hadn’t had much luck with the photos so I decided to video as my camera took to long to take the photo. Then the dolphins swam under the boat twice more, each time jumping out of the water! It was brilliant to see and the baby calves were so cute and small! We were watching the dolphins for about an hour before it was time to turn around and head back to the harbour but I really enjoyed it.
I got off at Hong Kong Island and went to Man Mo temple. It was OK, but I got into trouble for taking pictures. Some of it was pretty but they were burning incense everywhere and the smoke was stinging my eyes so I left pretty quickly. I wandered along the road for about 30 minutes before finding a little cafe down a side street that was playing English music from the 90’s so I ate lunch there. After lunch I jumped on the tour bus on the green route that would take me round the south of Hong Kong Island where all the beaches were. This part of Hong Kong reminds me a lot of Ibiza, there are lots of hills and windy roads that one wrong move and you would plummet to your death (made me nervous that I was sat on the top of a double decker bus, dodging low branches) but the views were beautiful and the beaches looked really nice too. I did notice that there was a shark net around the swimming area (not that I have been in the ocean since I saw all of the jaws films!) but still, makes you realise that there is just a flimsy net separating you and whatever sharks are out there.
The tour bus got me back to the star ferry at 5.30pm, it was nice seeing the gorgeous views while the sun was setting, unfortunately I didn’t get many good photos. It seems that to be a tour bus driver you need to have experience as a racing driver as we were going so fast most of my photos came out blurry. I got the star ferry over to Kowloon and found a restaurant that had a roof terrace to eat dinner at as it was still 25 degrees (it had been 29 degrees at lunch time) I timed it just right as when I had finished dinner I just had to wander round the corner to the tour bus stop to do the night tour of Kowloon. On this tour you got amazing views of the promenade and skyline lit up at night, although I didn’t get great photos as I think we had the same racing car driver as earlier in the day. The tour lasted an hour and dropped us off just round the corner from my hostel. I took the walkway over the road instead of the underground tunnel and found a park above the roof of one of the shopping malls which was really pretty, I just wish I had someone here to share it with as the views over the harbour and the lit up skyline were just amazing. I walked back towards my hostel and stopped in an Irish bar for a drink. I was instantly befriended by a gay Chinese couple who wanted to hear everything about America as they had always wanted to go, they quickly lost interest when they found out that I was actually English so I chose this point to make my exit and wander back to my hostel. Another great day in Hong Kong, oh, did I mention I got sunburn?
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