28th October 2010
Up nice and early down for brekkie, pikkies with the Disney characters, room full of orientals and just us, more staring, pointing, pictures of what your eating, more bloody pictures with Niamh, even The Disney characters were getting in on the act!!
Thought I would try the most disgusting looking thing I could find to eat. It resembled a dogs knackers sack, fully boiled with the knackers still inside, had three of them, with soy sauce. Tasted.......................................yummy.
Went and got checked out and set off for HK, we had had a ball at Disney.
Initially the roads were v v quiet, hardly any traffic whatsoever. As HK came into view, so did the magnificent bridges and the most incredible site of the ports area. Wow bloody wow. We were all just completely blown away by the vastness of it all. Have never seen so many enormous ships and shipping containers in one place in my whole life. I have been to the Hams Hall rail-freight terminal and thought there were a lot of containers there, but this must have been at least 200 times bigger. How do they ever find the container they want? How long must some of them have been there? Absolutely incredible, the size of the cranes, ships, harbour, breathtaking stuff.
Onwards to The City, traffic starting to get a bit sticky now, (witnessed one accident when a large truck tried to get clever and took out a small car), but moving, looks like they are upgrading the main rail line into the City, as you might imagine, they ain't pulling any punches with scale or the amount of dosh they are throwing at it.Incredible feat of engineering just getting it from the suburbs into the City centre, minimum disruption really considering.
Some points of interest along the way, The Intercontinental, 2 of them, The Penninsular Hotel, very British looking traditional construction, with its 6 Rolls Royce's outside for the sole use of the guests and a most fabulous fountain at roadside (keep going thats not our hotel!!) National Space Museum, oh yeah McDonalds and KFC (bloody loads of 'em) and hundreds and hundreds of taxi's, ALL powered by propane gas would you believe. Dozens and dozens of skyscraper apartment blocks that were as high as you can get. Most were very new, some had seen better days and all had the washing, drying on frames outside the windows, it didn't matter how high up you lived, thats where you hung your washing out to dry.
We arrive at our Hotel, The Harbour Grand Kowloon, pretty snazzie I have to say, luggage is whisked away, we go to the counter and check in, room 1236. Up to the room, very nice very spacious, only one bed! Not even all us skinnies could fit in this bed and play "there was 4 in the bed and the little one said etc" Off trots Wend in Carol Marlow fashion "I'll sort this out'. And she did, we were transferred to a new room 1336,with two double beds, result. Fantastic view looking straight up the harbour.
As has been the norm with all the other hotels we have been in to date the kids want to check out the pool. Its on the roof of the hotel, 23 storeys up!! Surrounded by glass balustrading, with one side of the pool below the water line made of glass!! 360 deg view of HK, pretty cool when you've got a beer in your mit, pretty cool when you don't have a beer in your mit.
Very, very busy sea & sky lanes, plenty of ships, boats (some I would go a far as to say only the size of a one person dinghy, Petunia. Showing your age if you remember that) ferries, yachts, 3no cruisers anchored in the bay which were floating casino's, helicopters, planes large and small and swimmers, yes swimmers, lunatics I would say. It would be like swimming in the widest part of the Thames on a busy day, believe me.
Time to go and do a bit of sight seeing, back to the room first for a quick freshen up, change of clobber and we are off.
Climb aboard the hotel courtesy bus and head for the city centre, we disembark along side The Penninsular Hotel, which has got to be the, if not one, of the best hotels in the world, (I'm sure Sue and John will know), the Rolls Royce's outside, for guests sole use must be worth upwards of 2 million pounds, still ain't going in there. We set off up the main street, shop after shop, all sorts, new, old, market type, even shops in alley ways which have make shift coverings above to protect the merchandise from the elements.
Then it starts,
"wanna suit Mister, we make very good suit, you come look at my shop, make very quick suit for you"
I reply courteously "No thanks I'm ok mate" and try to walk on smiling.
"go on mate, not take a minute I will" I cut him short, courteously,
" No thankyou very much", he tails off.
Next,
"massage Mister, very good, in here, very cheap, you likey", I reply, courteously,
"no thankyou not today" and walk on smiling pleasantly, even though I have the hand of a 9 year old on one side and the hand of an 11 year old on the other side. How the hell or who the hell was gonna look after the godfers if I actually did fancy a massage?!!!!
Approached silenty and a guy whispers, "you want good Lolex, very good very cheap, copy watch n e make?" I reply, courteously,
"no thankyou not today" and walk on smiling"
Twenty yards further on
"wanna suit Mister, we make very good suit, you come look at my shop, make very quick suit for you" I reply courteously
"no thankyou not today" and walk on smiling. "go on mate, not take a minute I will". " I cut him short, courteously,
" No thankyou very much", he tails off.
Next,
"massage Mister, very good, in here, very cheap, you likey", I reply, courteously,
"no thankyou not today" and walk on smiling pleasantly.
Approached silenty and a guy whispers, "you want good lolex, very good very cheap, copy watch n e make?" I reply, courteously, "no thankyou not today" and walk on smiling" Twenty yards further on, are you getting the picture?
Well, we decided to have a bit of sport, Peter was delegated to fend off the massagers and Niamh was delegated to take care of the suit and Lolex sellers, no, not the suth sayers. Peter would shout" yeah yeah, me, me, how much?" The sellers, all women would immediately withdraw and bugger off. Niamh would say "nah, nah thanks luv, not today" and wave them away with a hand in the air. The sellers, all men, they too would bugger off. Unfortunately, Niamh was otherwise distracted when one poor guy approached and got to me, he got the full brunt of my discourteous nature, in bucket fulls, its the heat you know it don't agree with me. If I said that some of the words started with an F, some of the words an O, one or two with a B and only one with a C, can I leave you to fill in the other letters. Our Wend, just ask me to "Chill " Chill? more F's, O's, B's, left out the C, kids were in ear shot, chill?
We had had just about enough of all that by now, so we set off in the direction of the Avenue of the Stars. On the way little Niamh decided she needed a number two! We duly found a WC close to the Avenue, Our Wend and little Niamh set off for "the John". They reappeared soon after with a tale. Apparently, Niamh went in to trap number 3, Our Wend is waiting to use the same trap, as Niamh appeared from the trap, she enlightened Our Wend on how it was in its consistency, sloppie, pan was completely "flock of starlinged". Wend then has a number 1, but without the benefit of gents genetalia, could not rid the starlings from the said pan, neither did a normal flush do the trick. Whereupon, the toilet was not left in Our Wend's normal state of affairs and an oriental, (that was daft 'cus there ain't any other sort in HK) followed Wend's exit, red faced exit!!. Anyway, 5 mins later, we are at the start of the Avenue of the Stars, when the oriental lady that had followd Niamh and Our wend into trap 3 appeared, made a bee line for Niamh, to, you've guessed it, have her photo taken with her, then her pal wanted one two. Well I thought Our Wend & Niamh were gonna give it the old one two again!!
The Avenue of the Stars is basically a Chinamans version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, full of plaques/handprints of famous Chinese folk. These are the ones I can remember. There was an alledgedly famous politician, Hu Flung Dhoung, former breast stroke champion Wim Faz Tist, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wun Nuvver Gong, Asia Golf Ace, It It Lung Weh, Oscar Award Winner, Stat Tu, Porn Starlet, Lyk Lung Kok, Porn Starlets Assistant, Mee Too, Ex Prime minister Ly Ly Lot, dwarf actor, Ty Nee Gy, Kung Foo Ace's Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, (never heard of them).
At the end of the walk there was a bar, yippee, beerio time. Guess what?, They got Guinness, yeah, yeah, yeah. Miserable looking bird comes over, soz but she was, "Is the Guinness any good? "Yeah", "sure?", "Yeah", "ok I'll have one". Well, it arrived, best way of describing it....................., well there ain't one. It was either crude oil scooped up from the recent Gulf tragedy, and I pretty well knew it couldn't have been that as we are too far away, so it could only have been, the dregs from the bottom of the deisel tank of her car!! In any event, it did not even warrant a try. I asked in my inimitable way, "if this is good what does shite look like?" no reaction, told you she was a miserable c*w. Ended up, without any fuss with boring lager.
Anyway, after much merriment and swapping inumerable jokes with TMC (The Miserable C*w), we set off for The Intercontinental Hotel, no less,to view the 8pm light show that occurs every evening in HK on the recommendation of Mr & Mrs Gaunt. Got to get there at circa 7.30 for the best seat in the house, as recommended ditto.
The staff were very obliging and dragged a couple of extra seats for us near the window. Ordered a beer, glass of white wine, one orange and one strawberry something or other non achoholic cocktail, and got comfy. The light show started exactly at 8, pretty amazing, stuff. Generally consisted of about 10/12 buildings across the harbour, on HK island, having mega lighting systems attached to them, lasers etc, went on for about 15 mins. Place was packed. Decided it was a nice place to sit and people watch, so another glass of wine, Niamh did not like her orange something or other, but once I put a double vodka in it I thought it tasted spot on, Peter had water.About 45 mins later and 960HK$ poorer we headed back to the billett.
Hungry now, so we hit the hotel restaurant buffet. Another fantastic spread, everything you could wish for. Clientele much the same as Disney once again everybody drinking water. Asked the waiter for the wine list he said, "we have one white and one red", even I can pick a bottle of wine from that selection so I immediately took over, "that'll be a red then!!"
Finished our scramm, kids went off exploring, we retired to a first floor seating area to finish off the bottle of red, good choice of wine I was thinking to myself!!!.
Had a nice 30mins watching a load of chinkies coming and going from a weddin' whilst we reflected on what a great place HK is, truly a fantastic place and we had another couple of days to see even more.
The Skerritts
OMG - Brilliant! You'll have to write a book "Travels of the Skerritt's". Loved reading it - keep it up.....Lesley & John xx
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