Trains, Planes, Fire Engines & cable cars...

Hello hello! Here I am in Hong Kong! I hope this is working as all the clicky things are in Chinese so I as confused as ever... I will try to be brief but inevitably won't, so here are the edited highlights if you can't be bothered to read it all:
1) Everything's fine
2) Fire alarm in middle of the night, made a friend
3) Cable car to monastery with friend, eat vegetarian food messily

Now here are the juicy details:
Flight was good, nothing note-worthy (other than the PF which I will leave 'til another day for you hardcore JRAWA followers). Decided to be super brave / budgety and get the bus rather than the train from the airport to the hostel (third of the price!) which was a bit of excitement and resulted in me asking the poor lady in front of me if we were at my stop every 2 minutes. Arrived in the end, walked to the hostel without any problems (apart from crazy people trying to sell me something every 100 metres, I learned quickly to stop doing Julia's friendly smile at every one and walk with my head down avoiding eye contact) and checked in.

Room was fine, small but very clean and lots of YWCA freebies like toothbrushes and soap. Absolutely shattered so went to sleep almost immediately (after a shower - washing my hair was somewhat challenging since the shower head was fixed to the wall at a height clearly designed for small Chinese people not giant Julia-sized people). And that is where the drama began. Circa 11pm (about 3 hours into my sleep) I am rudely awoken by the fire alarm. Oh yes, the fire alarm. It's loud. And I'm ten floors up. I put on my coat and shoes (and remember to grab my passport and money, my parents have trained me well!) and go and investigate. I was hoping everyone else would just be going back to bed but instead I am greeted by a crazy Chinese lady yelling "DOWN! DOWN!" in my face and pointing at the stairs. So down I go, half asleep, down 10 floors. Around floor 5 I notice there is somehow a massive rip in my pyjama trousers. Oh well, too late to worry about it then...

When I get down the fire brigade are just pulling up (very efficient) in two fire engines. There are about 10 firemen (none of whom are even remotely attractive, alas) all looking very excited. I take a photo, much to the amusement of my companions. Another girl (from NZ) is even more bewildered than me, she's super jet-lagged and starts asking me what day it is. We start chatting and from the moment she says "this is my first time staying in a hostel and look what's happened!" I know we are going to be friends.

Anyway, needless to say there is no fire. Someone was smoking in a non-smoking room. Nice one. So I walk UP (much worse than down) the 10 floors after arranging to meet Sea (NZ girl - from Thailand hence interesting name) the next day.

So Thursday arrives and Sea and I head off on the MTR. She's even more obsessed with food than I am so we stop several times on the way to the station to buy some- egg custards (mmmm Trots they're far better here than in UK) and weird beefy things on sticks and some strange waffle type item. All very tasty and surely an excellent test for my always-dodgy-when-abroad stomach (which, by the way, is currently fine).

We arrive at Tung Chung and head for the cable car. Sea is crazily scared of heights and I'm not such a big fan myself but we go for it nonetheless. Cable car heads up the mountain and we're not too scared apart from the fact that our cable car mates keep getting up and swapping places and generally making it shake. It takes about 25 minutes and is very pretty. We get to the top and have a look around. There's lot of touristy stuff (and a starbucks) but in my quest to be hardcore we by-pass the commercial-looking restaurants and eat in the vegetarian restaurant bit in the monastery. It's very tasty and I feel like a proper local with my chopsticks and soup spoony thing. My side of the table is rather messy whereas Sea's is completely clean and the inside of my spring roll fell out everywhere but I think other than that I did rather well.

We admire the big Buddha from afar (too lazy to climb up the steps after all the step-climbing we did in the middle of the night) and peruse some shops and then head back down in the cable car. We then have a look around a big outlet mall nearby where I buy some flip-flops after my forgetting-all-my-shoes bungle in UK and I also stock up on food to eat during the week. Bananas were only 30p for 5! Healthy bargain good times.

MTR back to the hostel, I say goodbye to Sea who sadly was only in HK for a day on her way to plan her wedding in Thailand (obviously we did lots of conversing re wedding plans / proposals etc) and then faffed about in my room for a bit before another early night. My jet-lag meant I slept from about 9 - 2am then was awake for 3 hours before sleeping 5-10ish but I feel vaguely refreshed today. I've somehow managed to lose my HK guidebook so no longer have my detailed plan of what I'm doing every day but I'm sure I'll keep myself busy.

Have discovered free internet here in the library next door to the hostel so I'm sure I'll be back. Thanks to those who've emailed / facebooked / texted - it's great to hear from people.

Over & out (for now) xx