Looking for somewhere to spend a Christmas and New Year we chose Hong Kong as David had wanted to show it to Carolyn for quite some time. Along with revisiting some of David’s memories we explored Lantau Island and caught up with the world’s largest Buddha and visited Tai O, a fishing village built on stilts over the water. We explored Aberdeen Harbour, including the floating village, via water taxi (when we say water taxi we mean an elderly lady in a sort of canoe), visited Victoria Peak via the Tram where we had a meal at Bubba Gump’s of all places and Carolyn drank Martinis (we were terribly jet lagged), rode the MTR and Star Ferry, wandered the brightly neon lit streets on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon where David went shopping for a camera lens. When the shop assistant pulled out an iPhone 1 in order to call the warehouse to check stock levels Carolyn just knew David “would have to have one”. Camera lens forgotten David purchased a jailbroken iPhone on Christmas day which made him very popular in NZ where they didn’t arrive until months later.

We experienced the crush of thousands of people on the waterfront near the Peninsula Hotel to watch and enjoy the firework display in Victoria Harbour heralding the arrival of the New Year.

Closing Thought: Hong Kong remains a positive option for a stop over.

We took the hydrofoil to Macau, around an hour each way, for a day trip. We enjoyed wandering the old Portuguese areas and had late lunch up the Macau Tower where we both almost jumped out of our seats when a body plunged past the window – we were unaware that they bungee jumped from higher up.

We caught a pedicab taxi from the base of the Macau Tower back to the ferry terminal. Not the most frightening taxi ride we’ve ever had but being on what we consider a motorway being pedalled with cars and trucks passing on both sides of us at significantly faster speeds than we were travelling certainly kept the adrenaline up.