Harrow Halong Bay

*WARNING - SHOULD NOT BE READ BY YOU MAM...it's for your own good ;)

10th May - Here We Go...

Miraculously, I dragged myself outa bed in time to make the 7.30 departure time for our Halong Bay Boat Tour (this makes it sound a lot less debauched…but the rest of this blog might change that idea). Before we got to the bay itself we had to endure a 4.5 hour bus journey. Luckily a lot of people I had met over the previous couple of days were going on this tour and I could see that I wasn’t the only one a little “delicate”, as we boarded the 2 x 25-seater buses, Halong bound.

When we arrived at the pier from which we would get our boat ,we were told that we would be split into two groups for two separate boats since there were so many of us. I hoped I wouldn’t be separated from most of my mates but luckily when they divided us I was in the same group as Mat, Claudio – 2 Canadian guys I hung out with after the walking tour the day previous, Ollie and Hannah – the Londoners  I was out with the night previous. Then when we actually got onto the boat, I realised there were three Irish girls on their way back from Australia (sure where else!) and two Irish lads – Jim and Gary. Now if you’re anything like me, reading this at home, you’re probably thinking oh sure there’s Irish everywhere, as everyone is constantly saying how they can go nowhere without meeting an Irish person, or even an Irish person that you know. But honestly, up until this point I had met NO IRISH. Seriously, not a soul. Gen and Kelly and shitloads of other Canadians, seriously…I feel like I know more about the various cities in Canada than I do about England at this stage. Canadians are everywhere! So when I got on the boat and saw a few fellow pasty-skinned (soon  to be red-skinned wha Jim!) Irish, I was delighted!

Once we boarded the boat the madness began. We should have known it was gonna be crazy when we found out our guide was gonna be Luke. This is the same Mohawk-ed Canadian (see what I mean) that I met on my first night in the hostel. This guy is fucking mental, literally. As soon as we boarded the boat – which was a deadly boat by the way (one of their normal boats was broken down so we got this fancier boat that usually wouldn’t be used for our type of “cruise”, and was a three-tiered beauty), and Luke demanded everyone get straight to the bar because we had to initiate ourselves onto the boat by shot-gunning a beer. So while we assembled ourselves into two teams to compete against each other as speed-drinking, Luke ran around the boat just roaring “WE ARE GONNA TAKE THIS BOAT VIRGINITY”. Yeah, there was no hope for this being your average tour. After the initiation was over, we all reclined into some seats to soak up the sun, beer, and THIS view:

Yes our boat even had foliage

We all chilled for a couple of hours while we cruised out into the bay, trying to take in the scenery. We noticed after a while that we didn’t seem to be moving. Next thing we heard an almighty *SPLASH*. We ran to look over the deck – yes our “guide” Luke had just taken a run and threw himself off the THIRD deck of our boat into the sea! Seriously, mentaller. He told us to join him and throw ourselves into the water…but not off the top deck, unsurprisingly the fact that you could hit the second deck and not the water was too great, so we would jump off the second deck. Ha ha! So one by one, we peeled ourselves over the ledge and jumped from the boat into the sea, in the middle of Halong Bay. Now I ain’t your normal “I get my thrills by jumping off high things” kinda gal, so I’m not gonna lie, when I climbed over the edge I did have a moment of hesitation…then I heard “G’WAN CAROL” in a strong Cork accent from the deck above me, and before I had time to think I just jumped. Yeah…our boat was higher than any of us thought! We had a decent few seconds of a drop before we hit the water! So as everyone took their first jump, we all let out a similar “oh fuuuuuuuuuuck” about half way down when we realised we still hadn’t hit the water! But it was deadly, what a rush! After we had all jumped – some people a few times. We got back on the boat, and sailed a little further before our next activity!

Not bad, eh?!

Kayaking. Now I don’t think I’ve ever kayaked before, but when your “guide” tells you before getting in “firstly, I usually bring about 3 beers with me in the kayak and then wish I had another one, so bring 4” followed by “oh yeah these kayaks are old as shit maan *insert your own Canadian accent here*, they don’t turn back over if you topple over, so don’t fucking turn the kayak over or you’re gonna sink” that it’s not gonna be your average kayaking excursion. We had to pair up, boy and girl so myself and Jim (who is from Ballyheane in Mayo – I know – typical!) decided to represent the West together and off we set – us, our beers in a kayak determined to take us in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go!

We would be kayaking to a cave, where we would meet up with the other boat’s passengers and go and have a look in this cave before kayaking back. The view was out of this world on our trip – and it may surprise you to know that it’s quite easy to kayak and have a drink, as we managed quite expertly. On the return journey, the sun was setting so it really was a postcard setting. I’d love to offer you a photo but seeing as enough sea water made its way into the kayak to keep our beer chilled, it wasn’t the best environment for a non-waterproof camera. We finally made it back to our boat just before sunset, where we all retired to our cabins to shower and freshen up before dinner and the madness afterwards took hold.

The food was great, but lets face it you’re not interested in that, it’s what happened afterwards that’s more entertaining! After dinner, Luke kicked us out of the dining room on the boat for a short while, while he set up the room. Basically, the boat would be split into two teams – one large table vs. the other. On each table there was a deck of cards – laid out in the shape of a dragon. Each card had a different forfeit so depending on what card you picked up you could have to force the other team to do anything, you could have to finish your drink, you could be forced to sit under the table and be the team’s hobbit, you could have to swap clothes with someone else on your team – boy or girl, the whole table of people would have to rush to lie on the floor, last person to fall facing another forfeit…the list goes on!

Preparing for the carnage ahead

Opposite team facing our forfeit and wrapped to a pole...obvs.

Time to swap clothes!

Some of the forfeits included the whole other team being wrapped against a pole together with massive cellophane wrap and being force-fed shots of rum! The bad thing is, the worse the forfeit you give the other team- the bigger the forfeit they would give your team when their turn came! For example, at one point I went to the bathroom, when I returned – the whole table was pretty much naked but for the bare (pardon the pun) essentials! It was crazy! I think the night ended with people doing set-dancing style swings with each other – thanks to the 3 Irish girls. Nobody managed to fall off the boat and everyone made it to day two, somehow.

This was defdinitely at the latter stages of the night

11th May - Castaway Island...but no Wilson.

Well we were absolutely woken with what you could call a “start” on the morning of the 11^th May. And by a start I mean HAMMERING on each door. Repeatedly. Shouting “GET UP, BREAKFAST!!”. They refused to stop until you actually got up and opened the door. To say we were all in bits, well, that would just be an honest statement! We all managed to eat some kind of breakfast, then those of us that were doing two nights (of course!) had to move to the other boat that was on the cruise. Everyone else, would be sailing back, hungover to fuck to get a 4 hour bus journey. Yeah, putting that off for 24 hours made way more sense. So over we trundled to boat no.2 of the day where we met some of our new companions for day two. We met Phil - the funnest (oh I know it's not a word) German I have met to date – I told him that, that night when we were pissed covered in yellow paint. More on that later, also Luuk – from the Netherlands – we would later be forced to wear each other’s underwear on our heads…god if we only knew that when we met! There were loads of cool people – Zara and Dai who I had met at the quiz and on the bus were doing two days so we were reunited, we also met Fletch and Ash – two brilliant Aussie girls who were so much fun, Gunnar – the first Icelandic person I’d met on my travels so far – did you know the population of Iceland is only 300,000! Yeah didn’t know that either – it was also the first opportunity I had to ask a native Icelandic person how the hell to pronounce some Sigur Ros songs. Also, Annabel & Glenn - sweet fun couple from Singapore and loads more Canadians unsurprisingly, couple of British girls -Kayleigh and Helen, and four Sheffield guys – Rickesh, Jabba, Chets and Lewis and loads of other people who’s names fail me but I know won’t mind! Basically there was about 30 of us in total.

When we arrived on Castaway Island after taking I think 3 different boats, we were greeted by our island guide – Taco. That’s not even a feckin nickname, the lad’s name is Taco on his passport, poor bollox. Anywhoo, he lived up to the name coz that guy was another mentaller. Our resident mentaller Luke also joined us on the island. It was probably safer for mankind to keep those two deserted on an island to be honest. After arriving, they fed us and sent us off to recover and take a nap. We were staying in these huts that had about 5 or 6 mattresses on the ground with a mosquito net open, and they faced the ocean. To say the setting was idyllic doesn’t even come close to describing how beautiful the place was. I was sharing with Jim and Gary – the two Irish guys from day one on the boat, and Gunnar , my Sigur Ros translator!

Castaway Island

It was still really early, seeing as we’d gotten up so early so by the time we’d taken our naps, like good little children, all did some watersports. Gary and Jim decided to try their hands at wake-boarding, but seeing as I have the co-ordination of a toddler, I decided to go tubing instead. It was great fun, but man the sea beat my ass! We had to go in pairs, so me and Gunnar shared.

When we first left the coast and were going straight, it was brilliant fun, but then so to purposefully turf us off the boat at high speed, the boat that was dragging us started doing big corners and we were sent flying off the tube! This was all good fun, until you try and drag yourself back up onto the bloody thing. I don’t know what I was doing all those days in the gym but it wasn’t improving my upper body strength as I almost told the boat to just leave me floating in the ocean rather than struggle to drag myself up onto the thing! Luckily, Gunnar was stronger than me, and very kindly yanked me up on to it when we we were turfed off! In total we were thrown into the sea 3 times, and by the third time we were wrecked! It seems clutching onto a floating device for dear life, whilst bouncing across the sea at high speed is quite knackering! So any miniscule amount of upper-body strength that I did have, was certainly depleted at this stage. So the third time we dragged ourselves (ok I’m not gonna lie – by the time GUNNAR dragged me up), I was so wrecked I didn’t fully put my whole body onto the float, so I only was really half up on it – then off we went, at fucking high speed again…except this time my body took the hit!

About to be thrown off...again.

My legs and feet bashed off the water, it was pretty feckin painful. So when we got to shore, I could already see the bruises forming! By the time I walked the few meters back to our beach hut, the left hand side of my right leg was already going black! To say it was the biggest bruise I’ve ever had would not be an understatement by any means! My right foot was also starting to swell and was pretty sore! Oops. All in all, it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. So much fun, and he a few bruises and swelling wasn’t gonna stop me! It did start to explain however why the hostel in Hanoi is like A&E in a hospital with people walking round with major cuts and bruises all over them! It also knocked any hangover that was lingering right on the head! So afterwards I was feeling fresh as a daisy and ready to go with whatever was waiting for us that night.

After dinner and a shower, well it all kicked off again. Jesus H. Christ.

It started with a demon pack of cards again. This time we were all dealt 4 cards and depending on what card you turned over…well you guessed it there was a forfeit. All the time, we were still playing Buffalo, and Antelope. If you’ve travelled backpacker-style, you’ll probably have come across the buffalo rule. Basically, you have to drink with your left hand only. If anybody on the island at all sees you drink with your right hand, they shout “BUFFALO” at you and you’re forced to finish your drink there and then. At 6pm they brought in the Antelope rule, meaning you had to drink with your left hand between the hour and half past the hour, and between half past and the hour you had to drink with your right hand. Confusing, yes. But bloody hilarious also! When you looked around the table you could just see everyone glance at the clock before taking a drink. Everyone was ruthless – just waiting for the opportunity to shout buffalo at someone! There was also a rule that you couldn’t say the word “TEN” or “MINE”, you had to spell out the word if you needed to say it – the forfeit being ten press-ups. This one was great because people would be doing their ten press-ups and counting them out, and everyone was just waiting for them to say “ten” when they got to their tenth one so they’d have to do another ten. It was a very strange place as you can imagine! So back to my point, trust me, there was a point. So earlier in the day, Taco, when explaining the rule, said that if anyone catches him out he’ll buy ten drinks for the whole island. He’d been on the island for months at this stage and was so used to drinking with his left hand that he was positive he’d never be caught out. Well, isn’t karma a bitch! I was about 8 o’clock and Luke had introduced the Antelope rule, with the hands changing every half hour and Fletch all of a sudden rises to her feet, points at taco and shouts “TACO, BUFFALOOOOOOOOOOOOO” well everyone turned around! Nobody could believe it! His face dropped! He was like “oooooh shitttt”! But a man of his word, he slowly started making his way to the bar, and ordered up a few bottles of vodka – on his own money for everyone. So suffice to say when that night’s card game started, there was plenty of drink going round! Like the previous night, the forfeits were suitably debauched.

Taco and Luke deal the cards...

One of the more hilarious ones, was when Luke announced that whoever had a certain card had to chase this local Vietnamese man who worked behind the bar and kiss him – you should have seen this guys face when 6 people started chasing him around (me included!). The best forfeit though definitely fell on the guys – now this one should definitely come with a warning to “not try this at home”. Basically, a few of the guys had to strip, and attach a long string of toilet paper between their ass-cheeks which was set on fire – and their challenge was to shot-gun a beer before the fire reached their ass! And lets just say toilet roll burns FAST! I have some hilarious photos of this, but well, I fear the lawsuits that could ensue if I was to put them on the net! Ha ha ha! It was soon after this that I came upon, don’t ask me where it magic’d itself from, but this bright yellow body paint into my possession, and nobody was safe. I decided to “paint” and I use this term very loosely everyone’s face, back, arms – basically any skin that I could see! It was hilarious at the time, and great entertainment however right now it’s a month later and I’m still seeing traces of this yellow stuff on my camera!

Me and Luuk forced to sport some "interesting" headwear

One of my face-painting masterpieces

Me, Fletch (Oz), Phil (Gernany) and Dai, all "super excited" as the Canadians say!

Me and Jim make a mark for Mayo

Still it did make everyone look ridiculous – as if we needed any help at that stage.  The party continued on into the night, all I can say is it was definitely bright when I went to bed!

The following day, well you can imagine when we got our “wake up call” at 7am we all sprightly made our way off the island, spring in our step. Yeah. Right. It was like a scene from 28 Days Later where the living dead dragged themselves onto another boat (sidebar – for someone who lives in WESTPORT, and lives on the island of Ireland – only after being away for two months, have I realised how few boats I had been on before now, crazy when you think about it), where we just all passed out on the top deck, and sailed back to shore. When we got back to the port, we boarded our bus for a bumpy 4 hour bus journey back to Hanoi.

Shook. But by far the most fun I have crammed into two days – made great by an amazing group of fun people. Add this tour to the bucket list guys J

Harrow Hanoi

8th May – Arrival

Well the stress was in vain…I sailed through immigration at Hanoi, not before a sweaty 30mins in the queue mind! Once through immigration I went out to arrivals and booked an overpriced taxi to take me to my hostel. The drive into Hanoi was crazy. At this stage I was used to the mental driving from China – but in Hanoi it was a totally different ballgame, as here, the bikes rule the road. I had never seen so many feckin motorbikes, scooters, mopeds etc on the road. I mean they were everywhere and all loaded with people, animals, food. Basically no load to small for these bikes! And child safety…well don’t even ask. We finally made our way to my final destination – Hanoi Backpackers Hostel. I had gotten a recommendation from a guy I met in Yangshuo that this was the hostel to go to in Hanoi. My god, how right he was.

What I arrived into was this really big open-plan hostel, full of backpackers. When you enter, on your left you have a big reception desk divided in two – one half where you check in to your room etc. and the other half is dedicated to tours – so you can book bus tickets, tours to Halong Bay, tours to Sapa etc. More on this later! Then the rest of the open planned ground floor is a huge bar, with a massive food and drinks menu. Anywhoo, I checked into my room – a 6 bed mixed dorm. It was a really well thought out dorm. Trust me, I’ve been inter-railing around Europe, and I’ve slept, fearing for my life on the top of some not-so-trustworthy bunk beds in my time! These beds were all new, and under each bunk there were locked lockers, and beside each bed there was a reading light and small locker beside a socket. So you can leave your phone charging, locked in this locker. Good security! There was no en-suite in the room but there was a large shower room and bathrooms just down the hall. When I checked into my room, there was nobody there, but judging from the boxers hanging off one of the beds opposite, I guessed there was at least one boy staying in the room. Mrs. Marple, me.

I headed downstairs to mayhem of the bar and ordered a sandwich, got talking to a couple of guys who worked there. One of them a Canadian guy with a huge Mohawk. Little did I know at this stage how mental this lad was! After eating I was pretty shattered so I decided to just have an early one. Went back to my dorm which was still empty and cracked out my laptop. I was just beginning to think I was quite the dullard being the only one hitting the hay at like 11pm when the door opened and two guys walked in. Hot guys. Two Canadian guys who had just arrived from the airport. 5 mins later, two more guys arrive back to the room – two british guys. Next thing I know they’re all stripping off for bed – and me sitting on my top bunk trying to look like I’m on the net whilst at the same time I’m surrounded by 4 half naked guys.

I knew this travelling solo thing would have its benefits. ;)

9th May – Goooooooooooood Morning Vietnam

Well after my early night with the boys, ha ha ha, I got up early and availed of the free breakfast in the hostel. Since Vietnam used to be under French rule, there are still a lot of French influences around the country. One of which is baguettes. They’re feckin everywhere. So most meals either come with a baguette, or served IN a baguette. So it was no surprise that the free breakfast in the hostel was watermelon, bananas, and baguettes with butter and jam. Did the job. I met the two Canadian guys from my room for breakfast and filled them in on my plans to join this free walking tour of Hanoi that the Hostel do every morning. They said they’d join me, as much like I thought, saved us the effort of havin to crack out a map. We set off with about 30 other people and followed this tiny Vietnamese girl who was guiding us around the city. To be honest with ye, most of the time I hadn’t a breeze what she was saying most of the time, but it was good to be led around the place and see the market (which had way too many pungent smells for that time of day!). The best thing about the tour was it introduced us to Vietnamese Road Crossing. Now fuck me, but I may have said, there are A LOT of motorbikes in Vietnam. And Hanoi is a bustling city as it is. Crossing the road is like a sport. You have to just walk into traffic. If you were to stand on the side of the road and wait, well frankly you’d be waiting all day. So here’s the strategy – you walk into the traffic, SLOWLY. It’s crazy, you are literally going “fuck fuck fuck fuck I’m going to die” but the only way you can cross is to be obvious and don’t rush, because it’s a constant case of Mexican stand-off with the people on bikes – they’re gonna go, unless you literally make it clear you are not gonna stop or hesitate. But hell it’s daunting!! So watching this tiny Vietnamese girl walk straight onto a hectic road with oncoming traffic in both directions and manage to make it to the other side was an education in itself!

Yes people do actually wear those hats in 'Nam

Whilst on the walking tour I met a few Canadian people and we went to try out a well-recommended Vietnamese restaurant for lunch called Quan An Ngon. It was really good and had lots of traditional Vietnamese dishes but an English menu. I went for Bun Cha – a really traditional dish in North Vietnam that I had read about – it’s basically a noodle soup with pork in it. Really tasty and refreshing. Afterwards we decided to visit the Hoa Lo Prison, which was ran by the French when they ruled Vietnam, see below. They're bad bastards, them French. ;)

Surprisingly, not the first guillotine I'd see in Vietnam

Afterwards I just had a wander around the rest of the Old Quarter of Hanoi and made my way back to the hostel.

Reason No. 2 why Hanoi Backpackers is such a good hostel – every night they have something on downstairs in the bar to basically help people to meet other people and get people mingling. Apart from the pub crawl that starts in the hostel every night, tonight’s “activity” for want of a better word would be a Pub Quiz. Excited, I was. Although much to my surprise I realised that the “pub quiz” is not as universally known and enjoyed as I would have thought. That morning when I expressed my excitement (I blame those Credit Union Quizzes) at that evening’s quiz, the two Canadian guys from my room just looked at me with blank faces. They had never heard of a pub quiz before! I had to explain the concept and they said they’d probably go too. So I headed down and met a few people downstairs from the walk earlier that day and we gathered ourselves around a table to let the quizzing begin. Well, unsurprisingly we didn’t win. However, we didn’t end the quiz completely empty handed. In between each round, they asked a question and the first person to shout out the answer won a round of shots for their table. The question began…”In what film, does Patrick Swayze, play dancer…” “DIRRRRRTY DANCING!” – I roared! BAM – round of shots for the table. Thank you, Credit Union Quizzes for your early training, me and my table thank you. The quiz was a right laugh and met so many people that night – Martin from Denmark, Ollie and Hannah from London, Zara and Dai from the UK and many more. Aterwards, a load of us went to the hair of the dog bar across from our hostel and indulged in some beverages.

These weren't for building sandcastles.

Little did I know how much more I’d be seeing of these guys ha ha! Hit the hay relatively early, as the following day would be the start of the best 3 days of my travels so far – The Halong Bay Boat *Booze* Cruise.

Harrow Hong Kong

2nd May - Arrive Hong Kong

Well we arrived off our last sleeper train into Hong Kong at 11.40 on the 2^nd May. Apart from our brimming excitement at Facebook access being within arms length, we were also instantly hit by the British influence on Hong Kong, making everything so accessible. It’s hard to explain how good this was, but it’s really disconcerting literally not even understanding one shop sign, street sign. So once we arrived into Hong Kong and got the subway with all its lovely English signage we knew we were gonna like this city!

We were all pretty shattered after making it through immigration and making our way to the hotel. Our hotel was in Kowloon, so not “on” Hong Kong island itself, but only a 3min subway ride away. We decided to give ourselves a leisurely 1.5hrs to freshen up (i.e. get on Facebook) and have a shower before getting out into Hong Kong to see what it’s all about! As this was the last “official” night of our trip we had to pack as much stuff in as possible as from tomorrow people would be leaving from our group.  After having lunch at a suitably dodgy looking street food “restaurant” near our hotel (you know when you all decide to avoid looking at the kitchen that it’s not exactly haute cuisine on its way!), we decided to get the subway to Central Station and go to see “The Peak” as it’s known. Basically, to get to The Peak, you take a tram that was built around 1880 that was built to bring food and supplies etc up to people in the hilly area. They have restored this tram and you can now ride it up to The Peak Tower which is this famous building that boasts a 365 degree view of Hong Kong. The tram itself was cool - I mean the trip up is so steep that the skyscrapers beside you look like their leaning over. Also there were a load of Indian's on our tram that were whooping and getting very excited the steeper we went. It was hilarious. Especially at the top where Dan, from our group goes "come on lets start a slow clap, they'll catch on" - what do you know massive round of applause at the top, all of us bricking ourselves laughing.

Dan, Emma and Me on the Tram

Anyway, back to biznizz regarding this "365 degree view", here’s the stipulation…it provides a 365 degree view of Hong Kong when IT’S NOT CLOUDY. Yeah…suffice to say the cloud gods came to play and well our view wasn’t the greatest. But luckily we arrived at the top around 5pm so we decided to stay for over an hour until the sunset so that the lights of all the skyscrapers would be more visible improving the view…hopefully. Well it was slightly better, but in all honesty we didn’t get the best view of HK.

That night we made the short journey across the road to the Temple Street Night Market. Basically a huge night-time market in which you can buy everything from jewellery to art, to knick-nacks, you name it really! So we all had a quick perousal of the items on show. I decided to restrain myself and just bought a pair of earrings for 5 HKD – so €0.50! Myself and Emma decided to have a bit of a walk around since we weren’t interested in buying anything else. Oh what a good idea this was. The further we explored the market we more hilarious the discoveries! We stumbled upon…wait for it…Karaoke Street!

It was brilliant, basically a line of street stalls with people (mostly in their 50s btw) singing their hearts out. The best bit – there was nobody listening – they were basically just singing to the tv screen with nobody evening caring! And they were all beside each other on the street so they were all singing into microphones over each other. Absolutely painful, but gas. After walking past Karaoke St, we came upon the Psychic street! It was lined with palm readers and tarot cards readers with people queuing to see them. Me and Emma gave each other a look of “eeh…don’t suppose ya fancy it…” and well from the glint in her eye I knew she was up for it! So the two of us saddled up to a relatively normal looking guy and after bartering a price (I didn’t leave all my sense at home!!) we braced ourselves for the palm reading of our lives! Now before I go any further – most of you know me well enough to know that I am way too sarky and sceptical to take any of this too seriously. I mean I’ve seen all the Derren Brown specials where he pretty much proves it’s a load of bollox, but still it was a bit of a laugh and well what the guy said to me was kinda on the money!  Anywhoo, Emma went first. Now the only thing he asked her was her age. I won’t go into too much detail as she may not want me to but I know she’ll get a laugh outa this – he basically said she had been having “too much fun” etc with men, that she was “not like typical Chinese woman” that she was always looking for Mr. Right and then deciding they weren’t good enough. Well, the two of us nearly broke our shites laughing – basically he was tellin her she was a bit of a sluh! Ha ha ha ha well by Chinese standards anyway. God it was hilarious, she couldn’t look me in the eye when he was talkin to her as she knew I was on the verge of losing it! After telling her a bit more about her personality he moved onto muggins here.

So he didn’t ask me any questions but just went straight to the palm. So he didn’t know what age I am, the skeptic in my brain thinking this might test him. Well how wrong I was. Basically he described my personality, which was pretty feckin spot on. About what I’m like and how I think. Then he said now this is the bit that sounded pretty on the money for me – he said I’m basically going to have “lots of fun and be crazy” until I’m 28, he kept writing down 28 and circling it, and then at 28 I get serious, about work, about relationships etc. I was like, well my friend that sounds quite probable! Bearing in mind that I’m gonna be travelling and away for at least 2 years he made quite a good prediction. All in all, it was a really fun experience and we enjoyed got a kick out of it!

3rd May – Hong Kong – Bronze Buddhas and more bastardin' Clouds

So after our relatively early night on the 2^nd May we decided to get up early and head to Lantau Island to go and see the famous Tan Tien Buddha or the “Big Buddha” as it’s known. It a huge bronze statue of the Buddha Amogashiddi – meant to symbolise the relationship between man and nature (or so Wikipedia tells me haha).  You get a tube to the foot of the hill upon which the Buddha is located. Then you can get a bus or a cable car up to the statue itself. We decided to save the cable car for the trip down and got a very windy road bus up to the top. It was half way through this bus journey that we realised that the cloud gods had come to fuck with us again. Yep, as we ascended into thicker and thicker cloud we realised that we weren’t going to be seeing much today. When we got out of the bus at the top, we could hardly see each other through the thick cloud. What was even more hilarious was when somebody, by chance realised that our visibility was improved by actually wearing our sunglasses. So get a good image of that, a group of people engulfed in cloud, wearing sunglasses – ridiculous is not the word. So we decided to make our way up to the Buddha himself. Yep this meant climbing 240 steps – even HIGHER into the bleedin cloud. When we got to the foot of the Buddha, well frankly, that was all we could see – his FEET! This is what the Buddha looks like on a clear day:

This is what our view was:

LOL.

After “viewing” the Buddha, we walked around the surrounding area and went to visit the adjoining Buddhist monastery. Now this was a real treat. Outside the monastery itself there were lots of people burning massive sticks of insense as tribute to the gods. So the air all smelled of insense all around the monstery. Then the monastery itself inside was absolutely beautiful. So serene and the statues were just so impressive.

 After spending some time just soaking up the calm surroundings we all succumbed to our rumbling stomachs and quickly made our way to the cable car ride down. Once again, this was pretty much a wasted journey as there wasn’t much to view except cloud. Until we got to the bottom stretch where we emerged from the cloud. After our descent we treated ourselves to an Italian lunch – was a lovely break from chopsticks!

That evening, myself Emma, Nikki, JJ, Dan and Bethany decided to go and get a night time view of Hong Kong island on the Star ferry. This is basically a dirt cheap mode of transport that crossed the water between Kowloon and Hong Kong island. It only cost $2HK so €0.20 and the views were amazing of the nearby skyscrapers across the river. For the first time we got a decent view. Carol  1, Clouds 0.

Afterwards we treated ourselves to a beer in Causeway Bay – my new home for the next 5 nights. Our tour had now officially finished so I had checked into a really cheapo hostel right in the shopping centre of Hong Kong. I mean my hostel was located in between a Vivienne Westwood and a DKNY shop, on a street actually called “Fashion Walk”. Honey, I’m home.

 

4th May - Hong Kong - Markets & Monsoons

At this stage a few of our group had already left and more people were leaving by the day. We’d already said goodbye to the first of many great Danes (pardon the pun) that I’ve met so far on our travels – the famous Barbie and Ken – Marianne & Kim. And today we said goodbye to Dan who was heading off to Hanoi to join another tour of Vietnam and SE Asia.  After waving him off, myself JJ and Emma walked up to Mongkok market otherwise known as “ladies market”. It was a brilliant market, great stuff like really interesting iPhone covers and laptop bags, and lots of knock-off designer handbags and clothes. Once again, I had to restrain myself as the prospect of making my already heavy rucksack even heavier wasn’t at all tempting! Also, Hong Kong is definitely not the cheapest place, especially when you’re after coming from mainland China where everything is so much cheaper. Hong Kong prices are more similar to home. After perusing the market we treated ourselves to a decent dinner in an Irish bar (stop tutting, they had a great menu!). The bar itself was located in a basement, and much to our surprise when we emerged it was LASHING down. I mean I haven’t seen such a downpour in god knows how long. We HAD planned on going home but we knew if we walked more than a few metres we were going to be soaked. So we made the logical decision to take shelter in well, the nearest bar. We ended up in Castros, a Cuban bar (what gave it away) that was on the first floor with all shuttered windows which were open.  It was rammed with people sheltering from the rain – enjoying the view of people dashing about in the almost flooded streets. Sure enough, as is often said, as quickly as the downpour came, it went again and we joined the hoards of people who left the bar to make the last subway home.

5th May - Hong Long - Getting Lost

So on the by the 5^th May the last of our group were departing Hong Kong so my solo travelling would really commence. I spent the morning and early afternoon with Emma. We decided to have a stroll around just see what we found. We also planned to take a tram ride. Hong Kong island has these old trams that have been around for ages. They’re two stories but really small, and I was looking forward to taking a spin in one. Firstly the morning was mainly spent getting incredibly lost around Causeway Bay. We did stumble on a few gems like a food market with lots of “fresh” ingredients, I’ll let your imagination take over here. By early afternoon we found a tram to take us in the right direction to Lan Kwai Fong – basically an area of pubs that’s good for socialising in. I must explain, that finding a regular bar / pub just to have  a quiet one in is incredibly hard in Hong Kong, like you genuinely have to look up the streets to go to because it’s not like home, where in any built up area there’ll some kinda bar nearby. So when we found Lan Kwai Fong we were gasping for a drink and some food. We went to a bar in which the floor was covered with monkey nut shells . Basically they serve you monkey nuts with your drinks and it’s just the norm to dump your shells over your shoulder onto the floor. I must admit that the good girl in me felt incredibly guilty dumping the first few shells on the ground, but by the time we’d left a couple of hours later we had accumulated a nice pile of shells around our stools ha ha! After saying my goodbyes to Emma and Nikki who had joined us I made my way back to my hostel. I chilled out for a while then joined a roommate from my dorm Steph, a lovely british girl on her way home from Oz where we headed back to L.K.F for food and then we decided to treat ourselves to a beer and one cocktail (it was more the price that restrained us haha). What ensued was a night where we ended up dancing for hours with about 5 energetic Hong Kong girls, 2 indian women, and Alex this huge black guy from Brazil that was happy to get his dance on. It was hilarious.

Talk about a mish-mash of people – most funny was one HK girl, who literally had the rhythm of a table – she couldn’t keep a beat if she tried and she was so up for dancing she was all elbows and knees – she was literally a danger to dance beside.

Steph in the clutches of most rhythmically challenged girl ever.

We left the bar in time to make the last subway home (not drinking much has its benefits!). Crazy Hong Kong night.

6th - 8th May - Solo Life in Hong Kong

Well I’ve decided to bung these few days together because it was fairly tame. I was now on my own and to be honest I was wrecked after the hectic going of the last three weeks. I was looking forward to some downtime and to just chilling on my own for a while. Luckily I still had Steph who I was sharing with to head out for food with. One place I made sure we went to was this Michelin starred Dim Sum restaurant that had been recommended to me by my Hong Kong guru friend Vicky. Have to give her a serious shout out – Vicky gave me so much practical and useful info for Hong Kong it was great. I found fantastic coffee places (18 Grams for anyone who’s HK-bound), the best value for travelling around (Octupus Card –equivalent of London’s Oyster card), and she also gave me some fab foodie recommendations of which this Dim Sum place was one.

We managed to find it, as its hidden away in the basement of Central Station below this HUGE shopping centre. The best thing about this restaurant is that they have an English menu. This is often a problem with Dim Sum restaurants – as unless you have someone with you who can speak the language (Cantonese in HK), it can be difficult to order. So you basically get a menu or list of foods, on a sheet that are available, and you select a few of them to enjoy. Vicky had mentioned that the BBQ Buns were amazing and their speciality so I had to give them a go – also ordered some dumplings (was at stage 4 dumpling addiction at this stage!).

Food was amazing, as expected and so reasonably priced. Like still seriously cheap – even for such a good restaurant.

Over the next couple of days I mostly wrote this bad boy (I was so behind on blogs I was still writing about Shanghai in Hong Kong). I did take the time out to head down to the Vietnamese embassy in Hong Kong to sort out my Vietnam visa. I was advised to get this in Ireland before I left but it was such a pain in the ass to get from Ireland – never mind how expensive it was to get from home so I researched how difficult it was to get from Hong Kong since I knew I’d be there for a while before going to ‘Nam, and it seemed fairly easy and it was. I got myself down to the consulate for opening and joined the other travellers to queue for a visa. Arrived there at 9.30am, and was out the door with my one-month visa for $500HK – about €50. Talk about stress free – FYI if I was to do this at home it would have cost me about €150 to go through Trailfinders. SORTED.

Apart from this the only other sight-seeing I did over these few days was I went down to the Avenue of the Stars – which is sea front at the base of Kowloon, looking over onto Hong Kong island and each night they put on a light and laser show onto the skyscrapers that takes about 20 mins to background music.

To be honest, it was fairly lame, but it made me feel like I was at least doing something other than drinking coffee and blog writing! The following morning, the 8^th of May, I took myself for one final strong coffee and lovely breakfast of muesli and fruit to my local 18 Grams in Causeway Bay (I’d become quite the regular!) packed up my shizzle and got a bus out to the airport in Hong Kong to catch my flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Upon check-in I had the shits put into me. They asked me, did I have a flight out of Vietnam. I told them I didn’t as I would be travelling over land and wasn’t sure exactly what date I’d be leaving the country. There was lots of whispers between the check-in clerk and then her senior, after which he took me to the side and explained that I may have trouble when I got to immigration in Hanoi since I didn’t have transport out of the country arranged, they may not let me in. In this case, he explained, Hong Kong Airlines would have to guarantee that they would fly me back to Hong Kong. So I had to show him my credit card to prove I could pay for the flight if this happened. Well, the thoughts of that made for a lovely few hours before I got to Vietnam… what happened at immigration in Hanoi, well you’ll just have to wait for the next blog to find out… ;)