Hello from Hong Kong!

We got our flight to Kota Kinabulu without any problems, thankfully the last we’ll see of Miri (not that there was anything particularly wrong with it). There wasn’t that much to actually see in KK, so we watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean film which was OK and took a day trip to the nearby island nature park for a bit of snorkeling in the crystal clear bath warm water. The corals were pretty stunning considering how close they were to a major city (about 5km), and there were plenty of tropical fish including some fairly violent triggerfish which kept angrily eyeballing me.

Deciding that we couldn’t quite be bothered to climb Gunung Kinabulu (at 4000m SE Asia’s highest peak) we headed down to Sandakan on Borneo’s east coast. It was a pleasant place with a cool village nearby, built in the traditional style on stilts out in the sea. Sandakan is also home to something called the English Tea House, with earl gray, fine views of the bay and a croquet lawn. Naturally I kicked Grapes’ ass (or Carowine’s ass as we can now refer to it after a waiter pronounced her name wrong...). I also found some marmite in a supermarket. God it was like heaven eating that again! Interestingly the label was in Chinese so someone else obviously likes it...

That evening we had a steamboat – an all you can eat where you have a big bowl of boiling stock in the middle of the table and a load of raw seafood to cook in it. We took it on ourselves to finish off the plates of food we’d been supplied with which proved something of a mistake as we could barely walk afterwards and all the other groups left most of their stuff. We were so bloated that we almost couldn’t care when a pack of angry guard dogs nearly killed us on the walk back.
Next day we took an excursion to the nearby Turtle Island, part of a protected area for nesting sea turtles. Again there was some amazingly clear water for snorkeling though the tide was low so the close up view of the coral was maybe a bit too close up (the water was about 20cm deep in places). The highlight of the afternoon was a turtle hatchling being released on the beach and being able to swim out with it as it flapped its way to an almost certain death – a fairly poignant moment.

In the evening we played the waiting game until the rangers gathered us up to see a turtle laying eggs on the beach. Apparently they don’t mind the disturbance. The eggs are then moved into a hatchery away from danger. Later they released a whole batch of hatchlings into the sea. It was a bit surreal as everyone encouraged them on (only around 1% survive apparently), especially the runty little one at the back who flapped so feebly down the beach you felt like stepping on it to save it the effort... The whole thing was touristy (and not cheap) in the extreme but still a great place to visit.

We’d booked a flight to Macau (the Portuguese Hong Kong) so rushed back to KK in time to discover that there’s a mad new rule stopping you carrying any bottle larger that 100ml on board a plane – even water or empty bottles aren’t allowed! We have a suspicion that this new lunacy has been visited upon us by the budget airlines to increase on board snack sales.

Macau is a nice enough place to visit, full of pretty Portuguese colonial buildings. Curiously in spite of being half Portuguese and half Chinese they drive on the left and have British plug sockets. It’s been smartened up in the last 10 years, though in comparison to HK it’s pretty shabby. There are some mental new casinos in the Las Vegas style as well as the tawdry old school ones. We had a look round but sadly no free drinks (apart from mineral water) and most minimum bets were a little above our tight arse limit. The main attraction for me was the Macanese food – a sort of Portuguese/Chinese fusion. As in Goa, it’s fantastic! A Chinese restaurant also turned up surprisingly delicious crispy roast pigeon and pigs cheek soup!

We spent 2 nights in Macau before we took the ferry to Hong Kong. It’s a different world here, all huge gleaming skyscrapers and huge crumbling tenement blocks... Everything’s a bit more expensive than Macau except shiny electrical things which is fortunate as I have broken my camera yet again (in Nepal). In many other respects it’s very British and even has the same speed camera signs as us. It’s also a bit grubbier than Singapore but this is actually a good thing!

The first day the only sight we had time to see after queuing up for 3 hours to apply for our Chinese visa was the World’s Longest Escalator! This is in fact a con as it’s an 800m stretch made up of at least 20 individual escalators. Oh, we went on the Star ferry as well. This is famous too (or so claims our guidebook).

Since then we've visited the viewpoint for the traditional harbour view, seen the largest outdoor bronze seated Buddha in the world, watched a live jazz band and eaten lots of food. The food is actually a little disappointing after all the hype as it's no better than the Chinese food we've eaten so far (though it's certainly not bad!).

Today we picked up our Chinese visas so it's off to the land of red capitalism (and our web address) Comrades!