Kowloon City

The circadian rhythm has a lot to answer for. No, not those insects that rub their legs together all night long in summer, your internal body clock. You know the one, it tells you when to go to sleep and when to wake, except when you mess with it, by doing something like flying five time zones East. Yep, I'm still waking up at 'Oh f*&k o'clock'. First world problem I know, but it may explain some of my more erratic behaviour.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, Hong Kong.
This was our first full day in HK and I had scheduled to the minute what my campaign would include. First call was the inclusive hotel buffet breakfast. I often book hotels based on the quality and range of their breakfasts and the Intercontinental had rated highly on both scales with fellow travelers. After this morning's calorie frenzy I would give it two thumbs up, if I could raise my hands. I'm still Christmas day full from this morning's Buffet battle round 1. The day's most important, or free-est meal consumed I headed out on task one, redeeming two tickets on the Hop-on/Hop-off Big Bus Tour of Hong Kong. This meant a mere 1.5km stroll along Ocean Promenade. A doddle you say, so would I if it wasn't already 31 degrees by 9am and moister than Aunt Betty's chocolate cake. In less than an hour I was back with the tickets and a kg lighter from water loss. Fortunately the Kowloon bus route had a stop right outside our hotel. What a stroke of luck! What wasn't so lucky was deciding to sit on the open upper deck of the double decker tour bus. Soon feeling crispier than a piece of the Colonel's special chicken we scurried for the sanctuary of the covered area at the front of the bus. This provided minimal respite from the relentless heat and humidity, and this is Autumn! Enduring the elements we rode the tour round Kowloon enjoying the informative commentary on the local landmarks and history. We hopped off (see what I did there?) the bus by the Star Ferry terminal and caught the next ferry across to Central where we resumed our Big Bussing, this time on the Hong Kong Island route. This is a much older area than Kowloon and is rich in history. At the fourth stop we left the bus to ride the Peak Tram to the summit of Victoria Peak. The funicular hauled us to the crest of Hong Kong's highest hill where we oohed and aahed at the impressive 360 degree views, then took time out to process the majesty of the location by consuming Bubba Gump's finest shrimp. Shrimped to the gills (do they have gills?) we rode the tram down to the terminal and waited to catch the next Big Bus. You can track these buses using an app, so that you know when the next one will arrive and my app told me the next bus was 3 minutes away. Now brace yourself for a truth missile kids, apps sometime tell bloody porkies. The bus took more than 15 minutes to arrive. That's 900 seconds with no air-conditioning, the cruelty of it all! Eventually we were happily seated on our bus, downstairs in the AC, because we're not stupid, despite what Mr Gump says. And this time we got to enjoy aforementioned AC for much longer than anticipated as the traffic around 4pm HK time was glacial in speed. After several millenia we arrived back at the Star Ferry terminal, sailed back to the safety of Kowloon and then went and spent a silly amount of money on new smartphones. Guess what I'm setting up now while writing this? It's not flatpack furniture. Tomorrow we hit the seas bound for the gambling den of Macau.Read more