Hong Kong

On the eve of the 28th sun of the fifth moon of the 2024th year in the common era we left Middle earth. For that we wandered to the meeting hub of metal cranes. There we said goodbye to our animal companions as they would find their own way to the land of ancient civilisation and wingless dragons. The two of us officially left the country and ate half our dinner while waiting for the arrival of our metal crane. We were flying under the colors of the Hainan airline. A group that was unfamiliar to us but it was surprisingly decent. We entered the large metal bird after the sun had already disappeared. Delighted we found blankets, pillows and sleeping masks waiting for us. The menu on our seats promised a three course dinner and an equally extensive breakfast. Next to us sat a nice guy from Argentina who had plans to travel all the way to the city of the Romans. While we were waiting for our dinner we passed the time training our brain with the games available on the magical screen in front of us. It turns out our knowledge about music is insufficient as we did not know enough about the life's of Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to answer the questions. We were saved from despair by the arrival of dinner. When we arranged our trip on the metal dragon we choose to have an elvish diet, that means no meat. The lady serving food was apparently a dwarve as she did not understand our wish and ended up serving us chicken with salmon as an appetizer. The meal was good enough. The mousse ou chocolat for dessert was a bit dry and the roll not done, but the rest was good. After dinner we settled down for the night. The seats on the metal crane are not large beds but we used the abilities that come with being small and Sesy layed down on the floor while Artey rolled up on our two seats. It was not that comfortable but in that way both of us could lay flat and sleep at least a bit. We were awaken before dawn for breakfast. Once more our wishes for a meatless option were defied, so we ended up with scambled eggs, sausages, hash browns served with a stale croissant, fruits and joghurt. The people working there were even kind enough to give us more magic potion an hour after breakfast. We arrived in Shenzhen at 4:30 am local time.

For everyone who does not know the location of Chinese cities or those of you who have never heard of the mighty city of Shenzhen: don't despair on your lack of knowledge. The city of Shenzhen is the neighbor of Hong Kong, which was our final destination of the day. So we entered China, country 21 on our journey. We were joined on our quest to Hong Kong by an Argentinian-Italian, who was travelling to the country of Romans and had 20 h to spare before his voyage would continue. Our first issue was that apparently no mode of transport could bring us to Hong Kong before 8 am, which was still several hours away. In the end we found a metro that would carry us to the main speed worm meeting hub of Shenzhen. With a bit of difficulty we managed to acquire tickets for the second speed worm that would start the journey to Hong Kong that day. The speed worms of the land of China are magnificent constructions. They travel at great speed and are very well equipped. To enter such a speed worm all the animal companions were searched and our pocket knive and our deodorant were inspected. In the end we boarded the train and in just 15 min we reached west kowloon station. There I realized how separate Hong Kong is from mainland china, as we officially left china and entered Hong Kong (They did not give us new stamps just paper slips). There we said goodbye to the Argentinian-Italian guy for we wanted to first get to our inn to drop off Meeko and Pascal. I don't think he was the brightest of minds and I very much hope he found his way back to the Shenzhen airport on his own. Our Inn was in walking distance from the speed worm meeting hub. After sitting 20 min in front of the door the lady working at the inn let us in and we could leave our bags behind and ventured out into the city.

The mighty city of Hong Kong is separated into the mainland area and an island. Everyone we have asked for travel advise agreed that the island of Hong Kong is the superior area of the city. Therefore we walked down to the harbour. There we marveled at the skyline of Hong Kong Island for the first time. To cross the waterway we took the star ferry a two story boat that is an essential part of the cities infrastructure. Then we wandered through the labyrinthe of streets, watched the different people wander pass and found a couple of taoist temples (we have seen a lot of these in Taiwan and they are my favorite kind of Temple, very intricate). For lunch we ate noodle soup with Won-Ton at a Michelin star restaurant. It was great. They had the good chilli oil! Oh, how much we have missed this food.

After lunch we continued our exploration and got ourselves some magic potion to fuel our tired limps. After strolling through the streets of Soho we took the ferry back to the mainland part of Hong Kong. The sun had already walked the majority of its path along the sky and our limps were tired and our minds confused by the sudden change in seasons. We left Middle Earth in the early days of winter just to arrive to 30 °C and a burning sun. So we retired for an hour to rest in our Inn for a bit.

For dinner we went to a night market just around the corner of our Inn. There we ate a variety of different foods: first siu mai and rice rolls (remided me of something we have eaten in Korea) with spicy sauce, then we got rice with a lot of veggies and lastly a bag of four large springrolls. It was good food.

Our evening ended with us forcing us to stay awake until is was a reasonable time to fall asleep.

30.5

We awoke after a reasonable 11 h of sleep and eager to explore a bit more of the city. We broke our fast with porridge and bananas. We brought along two bags of oats from Middle Earth and our inn provided hot water. We spent the first part of the day walking past skyscraper, whose heads were stuck in the clouds. Then we wandered throuh the botanical garden, which was more like a zoo. We saw a different birds, turtles and a lot of apes. For lunch we found a small restaurant where we ate the special soup and the shark fin soup, both served with a lot of coriander. The shark fin soup did not contain shark fins but duck. Our original plan was to spent the afternoon on the victoria peak, the highest point of Hong Kong island, but the weather did not favour our plans, for it was very cloudy and the peak was hidden in the clouds. We decided it would be a waste of time and energy to go to a viewpoint when the view is obscured, so we changed plans and went to the museum of history instead. I must confess my knowledge about the different Chinese dynasties was very little but we dedicated the rest of the day to fill the gap of that knowledge at least a bit. We learned a lot about the Xia, Sheng and Zhou dynasties the first three Chinese dynasties. All ancient and their history started 4000 year ago. After leaving the museum we started watching some documetaries about other dynasties. Mostly the Qin dynasties and the dragon emperor, who was the first person to unite china. He was the person who set the idea of a unified china with borders as we know them today. He also built the Terrakotta army we plan to visit later on this trip. For dinner we ate noodle soup with dim sum (Dumplings) and fried noodles (we have eaten a lot of fried noodles on this journey so far but they tasted like nothing we have eaten before). During the day the weather had turned foul and we decided to head back to our inn after dinner, for we had a long day of travel waiting for us the following day.