Monday 29th November 2010

A day later, at last, our hotel's "superfast internet connection" which was running at 1 mbps has let me online!!

On Monday, we had a bit of a shopping day. My daughter-in-law makes lovely handmade jewellery, so I went bead shopping for her. We roughly remembered where the shop was from last year, but still had to hunt for it!

The good thing about HK shops, is that they're all situated in a street of the same shops! Hence, Fish Shop Street - 50 or more aquatic shops, all in a line; Shoe Shop Street; Cloth and Materials; Beads & Haberdashery. How they all make a living I have no idea, as they all seem to sell the same things in huge bulk.

N_M started his trail of Fish Shop Street. They have so many interesting items over here that the UK won't get for another year or more, that he only went in 3 shops! Needless to say he'll be having another few visits before we go home.

From Prince Edward we moved onto Tsim Sha Shui to look at the beautiful Christmas displays at the entrance to Ocean Terminal. Those of you reading last year might remember the displays all featured clocks. This year I reckon they knew NM was coming, and the displays are all huge cakes!


The time and effort made here is amazing, and puts to shame most of the Christmas displays at home. And with no signs of any real snow.

We went to our favourite shop to get our tea - the Yee Shun Milk Shop!


And followed that by an impromptu musical performance by this lady in the street outside, who carries around her instrument on a trolley!

Our first couple of days

We arrived safely, after what was for us, a fairly uneventful flight!

I hate to rub it in for those of you at home who are freezing, but it's really warm here! We're expecting temperatures of around 25 degrees, and we're still only in tshirts at 11pm. It's not too humid at this time of year, so it's really quite pleasant.

We had an early start on Saturday as our friend's 12 year old daughter was competing in the Hong Kong Open Latin Dance competition. We had a brilliant time, it was like watching an episode of Strictly Come Dancing, but up really close!

Ying is in orange at the left hand side of the picture, with her back to us. She got through to the final in the Samba, the Cha Cha and the Rumba. I did wonder how children would handle the Rumba, the dance of love, but Ying's dance brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful.

We thought we might pop this tiny couple into our pockets and take them home!


There were also adults competing, some of them well into their 60's, and some of whom were very good. It was a cool experience in a foreign country!

In the evening we took ourselves across to Discovery Bay, as it was our sister-in-law's birthday party. We lasted until about 10pm before jet lag took over and we retired back to our hotel!

On Sunday, we met up with N_M's parents, and went to Hong Kong Park, an oasis of calm in the busy city.











We went for a meal afterwards and then went looking at the Christmas Decorations.

There is a new hotel and shopping complex which opened in Tsim Sha Tsui since our last visit. They have a Gaudi Christmas exhibition in their foyer, which was an incredible and glamorous sight!

Everything is gold and sparkly! And housed inside, under the watchful eye of a burly security man, is a Christmas Tree made of real gold leaves, with a diamond studded star on the top. It was designed by one of Hong Kong's top jewellers.


And now it is Monday morning and we're off to do a bit of shopping. Laters friends!

The belated Honeymoon!

Well, here we are again! A year on from our last visit, we're on our way back to Hong Kong again on Thursday, 5 months to the day after our wedding.

More adventures to follow.....