Day two in the Special Administrative Region of HK

Ok, Hong Kong - get ready. I'm here and coming to see what you have to offer. Or at least that was the plan. The reality was that we sampled the facilities (very nice gym - good bit of running accomplished) and then after lunch managed to get to the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) (the HK version of the Underground) and purchase ourselves a couple of Octopus cards.

Now don't be confused and think that these are the same as your piffly Oyster cards in London. Oh no. Octopus cards can do all the things Oyster cards do and then some! So you load them up with 'value' and you can travel on all types of transport (MTR, bus, tram, ferry, hydrofoil) as you do with an Oyster (oh except that you can't use Oyster on boats) but you can also use your Octopus just about everywhere else! No change for your newspaper this morning? No problem - just beep your Octopus. Meant to go to the ATM before ordering your Big Mac? It's ok - the Octopus has it covered. Left your wallet at home when you're meant to be taking the kids ice-skating? You've guessed it - Octopus will save your proverbial bacon. It's amazing - Colin even uses it as his ID card for his work building - there is nothing this card cannot do!

Right, so before you start thinking that I've had to take a job on the Octopus Promotion Committee to make ends meet, we did actually use the card to get the MTR down to Central, (essentially the main business/shopping hub on the island; one stop south from where we are at Kowloon - which is the bit attached to the Chinese mainland) where we had a wander around another one of their massive shopping malls and checked out the International Finance Centre (tallest building on the island) where Colin will be presiding over his team of newbies from Wednesday (picture left in case you're wondering why I've included an image of a giant electric shaver).

Encased in acres of glass and shiny marble is the usual assortment of Gucci, Tiffany, Fendi and Donna Karan plus good ol' Starbucks and even a Pret a Manger to make us feel at home, but surprisingly, our search for noodles was not so easily rewarded. There's Japanese, Italian, American Grill, French, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Thai meaning after not very long I was somewhat bored with the 'hunt the noodles' game when we happened upon a place called Tasty. Brilliant. Wonton me up, good man!

We also discovered a strange phenomenon known as the 'foreign food supermarket' - a place which essentially sells nothing but stuff they have imported. You would not believe the produce they have in here - most of it from the USA where everything's high in fat, low in taste and has bright yellow packaging! I have to confess I did get quite excited to find they had Marmite though - I'm a sucker for the weird brown goo; the fact that it cost five whole english pounds had Colin reeling and I now have to ration it for special occasions...

Apparently one of those things you just have to do when you come here for the first time, is ride on the Star Ferry across the harbour, so not wanting to buck tradition and lose the tourist book companies loads of money by refusing to 'get on board', we dutifully made our way to Star Ferry pier number 7 and took our seats on board. I came over all 'super-touristy' and took quite a few pictures, but you'll be pleased to know I've spared you and only included a couple here. I think I'll wait till it's a really gorgeous sunny day and take some more for your enjoyment (and jealousy of course!) The second picture is actually what the ferries look like - not half as super high tech as you'd expect from somewhere like Hong Kong, hey?

The boat took us to Tsim Sha Tsui from which we lugged my Marmite back to the apartment which is NOT a good idea in 85% humidity! Not sure there's an easy way to convey just how melt-inducingly-hot it is here and why being outside is not generally something you should spend a lot of time doing, but I think I'll save that for another day's post. Bet you cannot wait.