dragons and vampires

Our first Thursday in HK began better for Alicia than I, having her managed a good 10 hours of deep sleep inclusive of a good rumble of snoring and me, well little to no shut eye at all. Despite trying to convince myself jet lag is a myth and for big girls, Wednesday night may have gone some way to prove otherwise.

Mid morning and with our extremely hospitable hostess with the mostest on interview with sotherby's to be the next big thing in the world of auctions, Alicia and I negotiated our way to the financial districts heart which is also home to the sky train that takes you to the highest point of HK island. With the weather in the previous days few being misty and cold, and the visibility appalling, it was encouraging to us that the day we were meeting Soph's Granny at the top of the island was sunny, bright and clear.....cue some photo taking opportunities with my new toy!!!

Having made it to the top safely on the virtually vertically inclined tram (despite Alicia trying to convince me the cable to the tram would snap and we would hurtle back down to our deaths) we made our way to to cafe deco at the summit for lunch with Soph, Mummy Soph and Granny. For the purposes of this blog i will omit food descriptions so as not to interfere with Alicias' so far, perfectly maintained food diary (i hope she is not as critical about me as she is the restaurants so far!!!). Anyway, the food was excellent and the company even better, Granny is by far the most switched on 91 year old I have ever met and despite her slight stature and extremely pleasant demeanour, I am told she is still very much head of the family. Despite trying to pay for our own luncheons, our advances were refused and the bill was kindly settled by Granny....thank you Granny!!

Having being dropped off at home by Boyer (Granny's driver of 10 years) it was a quick 20 min power nap followed by a night of food and maybe one too many glasses of fine wine/jelly shots in the heart of HK's expat community, Wan Chai....12pm onwards of Thur evening was somewhat of a blur, but Alicia and I arrived home together (apparently) and both fell in to a deep deep sleep.

Fri we woke up at the crack of dawn on top, ran down to the sea and swam over to Kowloon. No wait thats a big lie, we woke up suffering the consequences of our previous nights endeavours and managed to stumble to a massage parlour for what can only be described as a physical assault..i thought massages were supposed to be a pleasurable experience. It appears this is not the case in HK. Our evening consisted of dinner with some of Sophie's uni mates followed by an early night.

Saturday we woke up bright, breezy and bushy tailed with dreams of hitting the big time in Asia's Las Vegas, the former Portuguese colony of Macau, sadly this dream quickly faded as Simon (our other host with the mostest) failed to locate his British passport. in hindsight, i am glad we couldn't make it as our trek across Dragon's Back (a 2hr hill walk around the island) proved great fun. A near death experience with a taxi driver on the way home left us all a little shaken and this is what Alicia and i used as an excuse for a night in front on a pc watching true blood.....Nothing to do with us being tired and still adjusting to the Asia time zone!!