Revenge

The sudden realisation that we had been scammed had not gone down well late at night. And certainly not just as we were looking to turn in for the night. We could both hear that the other had not gone to sleep as we were tossing and turning for quite some time, thinking about how it was going to play out in the morning when we confronted the little gits. But first things first, I am getting ahead of myself! Had you forgotten that we had a train ticket to buy? Well that’s exactly what we did, and thankfully there was little problem buying the exact beds that we wanted. And ironically it seemed that we would save almost exactly the £35 that we were scammed out of the day before, but we weren’t about to let the scammers get away with our hard-earned cash that easily.

As we had our train ticket booked it was now time to find the scammers. We had two options: (1) go back to the same place they picked us up and confront them about it then and try to get our money back straight away, or (2) head to the tea house and cause a scene so that they give us our money back just to get us out of there. I doubted very much that we would find our 3 little scammers hanging around the same place as the day before as we believed that their territory might stretch down to Nanjing Road too (apparently the 4^th most scammiest place in the world). We struggled to actually find the place where they had picked us up to start with as the metro system has a million exits and they end up miles away from each other, but we managed to locate the park bit in the end and began our search.

They're here somewhere....

As we looked at the crowds of people we noticed that there were two young Chinese girls talking to one lone foreigner, presumably putting the same scam onto him as we had experienced. We decided that we should be a Batman and Robin duo and stop any more hapless tourists falling for the same trick so we agreed that we would amble up to them and listen to what they were saying and then advise the guy that it’s a scam and save the day. It didn’t quite go that smoothly.

I must have had a rush of blood to the head as when we got up to the trio I just blurted out to the guy “If they offer to take you for tea, don’t go, it’s a scam” and carried on walking. Pause for effect. Continue walking. Safe in the knowledge we had saved the day. “HEY! HEY! WHY YOU SAY THAT?! YOU RUBBISH MAN!” came the delayed response from one of the girls talking to the chap who was by now none-the-wiser as to what was going on. She hadn’t taken my off-the-cuff remark lightly and was now halfway through a volley of abuse heading directly towards me. We continued to walk on and James got involved trying to calm the crazy girl down but that just incensed her more as she ordered us to “get out of China”. The abuse continued as we offered to go to the police if she continued to follow us and pretend-spit on us, and she seemed keen to call our bluff. She also demanded that we tell her what country we were from so we could go to the embassy. She left us alone after about 2 minutes of hurling obscenities our way (whilst the other one simply watched from close-by, rather like the quiet one from the day before, hmmmmmm) and we carried on our jolly way. We’d like to think that somewhere there is a guy, new to Shanghai, with money still in his pocket and somehow thanking us that we saved him from a scam. There is probably also a crazy Chinese girl going nuts outside the Norwegian embassy in Shanghai…

James argues with the new scammer

Our hearts were still beating a little fast by that point as we didn’t know if the crazy girl had some heavies round the corner, but we put some distance between us and her and then checked the ol’ map to see where we were. We knew where the Champs Elysees was on the map (James had done his research well) but we would need to pass quite near to “crazy” in order to get there. We felt like snipers or something, not wanting to disturb our prey, but we managed to pass by without getting noticed and then found the Champs Elysees plaza where the tea shop was located.

The infamous Champs Elysees

Second floor. Stairs or lift? It didn’t matter. I had gone through in my head a hundred different scenarios and dialogues, but still wasn’t quite sure how it was going to go when we got there. I would take the lead and James would look mean and moody in the background. With my heart still pounding we arrived outside the tea shop that we had got fleeced in the day before. I entered first, doing a loud, slow, sarcastic clap holding the receptionists stupefied gaze directly in front of me. She didn’t have a clue what was going on, and from what we knew of her from our previous encounter she knew her tea better than her English. As we arrived at the receptionists desk we saw the door on our right was open, the door that had opened and sealed our fate, and we glanced inside. Guess who was sitting there, without a care in the world, looking through the pictures on his camera. Our scammer. It was only he who was there, the other two girls inside were not the same ones that had colluded to diddle us. There are obviously some things from this trip that I will never forget. The skydive in New Zealand. The tigers and elephants in Chiang Mai. The look on his face when we showed up at the door. It was absolutely priceless!

BUSTED!

We began our verbal jousting by claiming that it was a great performance yesterday and that we now knew it was a scam and they should return our money. Once he had realised who we were he had jumped up from his slouched position on the chairs and asked us (quite cheerfully, but with more than a hint of panic) if we had come back for some more delicious tea. We had to laugh and replied that we had had more than enough tea, thank you very much. We explained to him that we had done our research and that the scam was illegal and that we would need our money back to keep us quiet. He realised that the game was up and tried to negotiate with us. “How much do you want back?” he spluttered, to which we were prepared for. We had a couple of dangly Chinese charms (that when they attached them to our bags made it easy for other tea scammers to avoid as we had already ben “got”) and the small carton of fruit tea that he had kindly bought us as a gift (Chinese tradition, apparently) in good faith the day before, so we figured those plus the time, the tea and the performance were valued at about 50 RMB. As we had been fleeced out of 650 RMB we said that we would be reasonable and to just give us 300 each and they could keep the 50 for their trouble. When he tried to pass us off with 300 for both of us we got weary of his bullsh*t and ramped it up a notch.

I was prepared to cause a scene in any way I could, to make them want us out of there as quickly as possible. I figured that banging the reception desk with my hand and shouting (progressively louder each time) “give us our money!” would do the trick, but all it took was a mention of the police. I advised him that there were two police cars outside and we hadn’t gone to them yet but we would do, and then they would be shut down. He really panicked at the mention of police and he darted into the small room and returned with the 600 RMB that we had been demanding. With the six 100 RMB notes in my hand we turned on our heels and marched out of the tea shop feeling like heroes.

But we weren’t out of the Champs Elysees plaza yet and there could have been a bunch of heavies around the next corner, on the stairs or even in the lift, all wanting to get our money back. We took the stairs as it seemed easier to escape if there was any danger and the walk to the front doors felt like forever. But we made it. There were no heavies, no shouts from behind us, just me, James and a handful of notes! I hope they learned their lesson – don’t mess with the Gray boys!

Don't mess with the Gray boys!

Eager to escape the area as we could possibly now have two groups of scammers keen to get their own kind of revenge on us we just walked in a straight line away from the Champs Elyssess. We arrived on Nanjing Road and took a seat as there were lots of people around us so we felt a little safer. We took stock of our situation and then got back on with our day. Whilst looking at the map on Nanjing Road we expected more scammers to come up to us, but none did. A bit of a shame really, as we were ready to bat back any more tea/drink/art scams that would head our way. Our next move was back down to The Bund to get some less-smoggy pictures of the harbour and grab a well-deserved Subway for lunch. But before that we were confronted by 3 Chinese girls who wanted to take their photo. Alarm bells rang and sure enough they engaged us in the usual chit-chat. We were on our guard, naturally, and came across as pretty disinterested in what they had to say, without being completely rude. Once they had left I couldn’t help wonder (1) if they were indeed another set of scammers and (2) if I would ever trust/converse honestly with strangers/locals without thinking they were trying to scam me.

The Bund 2.0

Our afternoon was to be spent in the Shanghai Museum. Or rather, not spent, as it was free! Another little bonus for the day. It was a huge place with 4 floors to work through. The first area was all about the Russian jewellery makers Faberge, and there were some fascinating items within. I had never seen a true Faberge egg before and managed to grab a couple of snaps whilst the security guards weren’t looking.

A real life Faberge egg

The next section contained some amazing ceramics dating back to the Ming dynasty and before. Well, LONG before. To the point whereby we didn’t believe that some of these pots were actually 7 to 8 thousand years old. Surely someone would have dropped it in all those years? Even so, some of the artefacts there were amazing, if not a little too numerous.

An old chamber pot

 There were also exhibits of artwork, coins and furniture spread across the next couple of floors. The last floor had traditional Chinese dress and the Chinese Opera masks, some of which were pretty hideous! But by then it had been a long day and it was time to head back, stick the kettle on and take the weight off the feet.

An old coin, with a James in the middle

We found a Sichuan restaurant for dinner that night and it seemed very expensive when we walked in, but the menu proved us wrong. It was certainly a very elegant place and we felt a little out of place if we were being honest. It was pretty difficult to get our order across though as the waitress spoke not one word of English. We managed to point at the things on the menu and she wrote them down, but once the order was complete she pointed at a Chinese symbol at the top of her notepad and said something in Chinese. I had no idea what she was asking and couldn’t work it out by deduction so I shook my head in a non-understanding way. For some reason she thought I might have better luck if she wrote it down in Chinese……I didn’t. We thought that maybe she was asking how hot I wanted it, so I pointed to a chilli on one of the other dishes and she seemed to get the message. It was a tasty meal too, and one that was probably a little more than we would normally pay, but as we had got back our money from the scammers we cared not one jot about the price, it was the taste of success!

Hmmmmmm, the spicy bull frog looks good...

Anyone For A Cuppa?

The day started well – the stream of water falling off the sun terrace roof (our indicator of the strength of the rain) had stopped, meaning that there was no more wet stuff falling from the skies above Shanghai. That meant that we could go exploring properly, rather than dashing around with our raincoats on whilst stopping off in alcoves waiting for a break in the weather. According to the chap on reception we would be able to get a map of the area from the post office two minutes down the road.

Two minutes down we couldn’t find it, so we got the metro down to People’s Square to see if there was anything touristy where we could pick up a map. There didn’t seem to be a huge amount to see there, so we took a little wander round the corner to where we thought we could get a bit more touristy, and that’s when it all started…

Shanghai looking good, near People's Park

“Hello, would you mind taking our picture, please?” came the request from a young Chinese girl standing with her two friends. “No problem” I replied, as we had been getting used to taking peoples photos, or indeed being IN the photos with the requestor! I took two pictures of the three of them and then as I handed the camera back the girl whose English was best struck up a proper conversation with me, as did the guy with James. We chatted for a few minutes (the other girl didn’t speak very much English as she was studying traditional Chinese medicine, not English) and they said that they were visiting Shanghai for a few days and would we like to join them in going to a traditional tea ceremony. Now I had read on Wikitravel that these are supposed to be pretty good so after a quick discussion with James we decided that we would indeed join them – “when in Rome” as they say!

We walked through the park bit and saw an area that had hundreds of paper signs hung up from wires along the path. Maiqi (May-shay) told me that it was for match-making for older people who hadn’t got married yet. Essentially you write down who you are, how much you earn, whether you have a car or not, and maybe put a picture on there. I asked if that was the reason why the three of them were here but she just laughed it off.

After a short walk we arrived at a place called the Champs Elyssees, which was basically just an indoor shopping plaza, but not a very big one. We took the lift to the second floor and our new-found friends took us inside a small room where the tea ceremony was to be performed. It was very small and cosy, but we managed to all fit inside, and then the tea mistress entered and began setting up her gear. We were briefly shown a price-list, one that seemed pretty expensive as tea goes, but it seemed that we would just be tasting some and could buy some if we wanted later. IF we wanted. All through the show our new companions were chatting away to us about anything and everything, including talking quite loudly even when the tea mistress was telling us about what she was doing – in Chinese of course, but they would translate it for us so that we could understand.

A selection of Chinese teas...

After the show had finished we were shown the price list again and I chose to buy a small tub of the fruit tea that we had sampled. It came to 198 RMB. It was only when James pointed out that that was about £19.80 that I realised I had got my maths hopelessly wrong. All you have to do is divide it by 10 to get it into GBP sterling, and I certainly didn’t want to shell out nearly £20 on some tea! But Maiqi was buying some so that would pay for the tea mistresses time. Or so we thought.

Tea leaves under the eyes (?) a couple of new friends?

The next thing we know a bill has been produced and it comes to quite a few RMB, hitting both me and James for over £30……EACH! OK, it seemed pretty expensive, but we had drunk a lot of tea and enjoyed a genuine traditional Chinese experience. So we handed over the money and justified it by remembering that we had saved some money on the hard sleeper train coming to Shanghai so it kind of evened out.

After we left our new companions asked us if we wanted to hang out round Nanjing Road and do some shopping and maybe meet up later for a drink or something. We declined as the shops weren’t exactly what we were after and we wanted to see a few more things around town. But we exchanged email addresses and we all said that we would keep in touch. Aaaaaaaah.

James and I made our way down to the river, an area called The Bund for some reason. The famous Shanghai skyline is from The Bund side of the river with all the skyscrapers being on the other side, so it makes for a fantastic vista when you get to the waters edge. We took some pics and generally drank up the scene.

The Bund, Shanghai. Not a bad view!

As we were about to turn and leave for pastures new a woman prodded me on the shoulder and said words to the effect of “can I have a picture of you” to which I, naturally, replied “no problem”. She was holding her baby at the time and had to shuffle him round to hand him off to her friend before joining me for the photo. It was only then that I realised that what she actually wanted was a photo of me holding her baby! Well, I was shocked to say the least, and couldn’t help but see (and hear) James crying with laughter just off to my left. I don’t hold many babies, but thankfully I managed to work out what to do with him and duly posed for a couple of photos, even with the woman positioning me in a different spot as the light was supposedly better. Once she was happy with her photos I handed back the chubby kid and we got back to looking at the skyline across the shore.

I think you dropped this...?

In actuality we waited for about 30 seconds for them to leave the area and then laughed ourselves silly over the event. What a morning it had been. And we hadn’t even had lunch yet!

After lunch we thought we would have a little wander down the market street nearby the hotel, the one that we had explored slightly on our first day in Shanghai, in the rain. We were on the lookout for a couple of warm, light and cheap coats as the weather was only going to get colder the nearer we got to Nepal. We didn’t find anything really suitable, but there was certainly a lot of tat doing the rounds, but nothing that we really fancied. On the way back we stopped into the large Laoximen Tea Plaza building near the hotel to see if I could buy some cheaper tea than from the tea ceremony place.

The Laoximen Tea Plaza. Nice.

There was plenty to choose from, and each tea shop seemed to have the same kind of setup, whereby you would sit at the table and they would make some up and you could sample it first. Realising that we didn’t want to get stung for another £30 I just asked about prices to get a ball-park figure. I got a good price. It was certainly a lot less than £30, but only after we had navigated through a rather cumbersome language barrier. In the end I had to use Google Translate that was already loaded on their computer screen to get my message across to them. When they understood me they were both all smiles and enthusiasm as they got my order ready. It was a great little place and not a single tourist in sight – these are the places that we need to be hitting for that authentic experience.

Dinner that night was at a place called Grape, and one that I had found on Tripadvisor, because it was supposedly great food and at fantastic prices. Well, they were half right! The prices were indeed fantastic but the food was probably more mediocre than great. And we hadn’t heard from our new friends about going for a drink later that night, but by that time it had got quite late so we didn’t worry too much about it. Unfortunately, James had a repeat performance of what I had at the restaurant the night before – they brought his main course but then had to wait about 10 minutes just to get his rice! Crazy. But for cheap big bottles of Tsingtao and decent grub we were happy.

In Grape. Big beer.

When we got back to the hotel we discussed further our little jaunt to the tea ceremony, and it seemed like we both had a little nagging doubt about it all. Something wasn’t sitting right with us. I had looked up “China Tea Shanghai” but had not seen anything that would lead me to believe it was anything other than a pricey authentic experience. A little later James turned round on his chair and said “I think we’ve been scammed” and I just knew that he was right. I hadn’t searched further on the internet to find the scam as I half wanted to believe it was all above board, but it looked like he had done some research, and the news was not good.

There were countless blogs and forums detailing the China Tea Scam that outlined everything that we had just been through that morning. One saving grace was that it seemed like they had taken pity on us and charged us a “reasonable” amount, whereas other, more unlucky, victims had seen a bill with hundreds of dollars on it. We cursed the little b@stards for ripping us off, but we were also mad at ourselves for getting sucked in by it. One thing for sure they were very good at it and must have down it hundreds of times to lure the Gray boys in. It also seemed that some people had managed to get their money back from the scammers, so we searched the forums for any possible tips that we could use for when we confronted the kids who had conned us out of £65.

Oh we would confront them alright. They just didn’t know who they were messing with…

Back In China

side from the bloke underneath James snoring ALL night long, loudly, and James nearly knocking the woman on the bottom bunk unconscious by allowing his small rucksack to slip off the top bunk and fall fully 7 feet onto the floor, nothing much really happened of any note. It wasn’t the greatest nights sleep in the world, but they never really are on the trains.

"Mornin!"

We arrived in Shanghai before noon and I somehow managed to pass for a Chinese resident as I ambled through the wrong immigration desk, but there were no problems, I’m a good blagger. And then we left the station, to be met by……rain. AND cold. Oh so cold. This wasn’t good, and brought back memories of cold early mornings in the campervan in New Zealand. After we had “layered up” we found the English-speaking ticket office and tried to book our train tickets from Shanghai to Beijing. Apparently you can only book them two days before travel so we would have to return on Sunday. Oh well, it looked like we would have something to do on Sunday at least.

A drizzly Shanghai morn

Next up, finding the Metro and then the hotel. No problem navigating the Metro system and we even had an offer of help from a passer-by, to which we kindly refused as we had worked it out already. The hotel was not far from the local Metro station, but it didn’t look great from the outside. Thankfully, the room was OK once inside, and we even had a sun terrace outside, if it would ever get warm and dry enough to use! But it was a heck of a lot bigger and cosier than the one in Chungking Mansions, so that was just fine by us. We needed to catch up on a bit of R & R so we had an easy afternoon while doing some research on what to do in the most populous city in China.

Without a map we would have trouble finding the things we wanted to do so we set out to find the Tourist Information place nearby. It was still raining and still quite cold so we had to gear up in our wet weather attire and brave it for the short hike. James had drawn out a map from the internet and it wasn’t too far away apparently.

Shanghai...still in the rain

We never found it. But we did get a vague idea of what the surrounding area was like and we were sure that we would come to like it, when the bad weather cleared. So, sans map, but with wet shoes and trousers we headed back to the hotel to dry out and try to find somewhere to eat, as there seemed absolutely nowhere nearby that we could go. Thanks to Tripadvisor I managed to find a place that looked like it would fit the bill so we jumped on the tube and got out two stops down. It was only two stops, yes, but then again it was only 30p. So we thought we’d live a little. It was still raining, but slightly less than before, so we fast-paced it down the road to find the restaurant as quickly as possible.

We never found it. We walked the entire length of the street that it was supposedly on but we never came across it. We didn’t really see many other alternatives either, as it seemed to be that there were plenty of “local” places and plenty of expensive places, but nothing in the “James and Tim” category in the middle. We found a Pizza Express and thought that our prayers had been answered. Although a little pricey we breathed a sigh of relief when the manager said that there was a 50% off offer on. But then we left when he said it was only applicable to wine. So with sodden feet and legs we carried on our journey and managed to find a place that seemed economically viable. Simply Thai was quite classy inside, but I didn’t rate them too highly (or leave them a 
tip) as when our main courses arrived it took a full 10 minutes to get the message across the 4 or 5 waiters that I was missing my jasmine rice. It arrived just as my pork was getting tepid and it was very tasty, but it was eaten almost out of spite.

Harrrumph!

It was time to get back to the safety (dryness) of the hotel after dinner as it had got reasonably late with the elongated search for food, but thankfully the rain had abated. When we got back to the hotel our next job was to try and work out how to get around Chinas block on Facebook. It was blocking both Facebook and the blogs, so it was important that we got access to keep the viewing figures up, and so that our mam and dad didn’t worry that we hadn’t made it to Shanghai…

Packed In Like Sardines

So……morning. No breakfast to speak of so we had to make do with the rest of our snack/supplies that we had purchased along our travels. All we had to do was check out of the hotel by 11:30am and head towards the train station, via the metro. With a heavy heart we said goodbye to Chungking Mansions and made our way outside to stock up on food for the train journey through to Shanghai.

Once we arrived at the train station we ended our trip to Hong Kong in the same way we had started – a McDonalds meal upstairs. We added some cards and a crossword in too to waste some time as we had a couple of hours to kill. When it came time for us to depart we made our way through all the passport controls and security to get through to the waiting room, and then joined the stampede for the escalators once we had been given the “OK” to make our way to the train. It seems to me that in China (and indeed some other Asian countries, but not all of them) there is no formal queuing system so I didn’t feel guilty at all about sneaking through a little shortcut to beat some of the heaving masses. Sadly my little trick didn’t quite work because someone had fallen/stopped at the bottom of the escalator so it was powered down until the blockage was removed. It didn’t really matter though as we all had allocated seats/beds anyway.

As we got on the train we were bracing ourselves for what would greet us when we got to seat/bed 19 and 20. We were unable to get a soft sleeper booth (4 people, 2 up and 2 down with a closing door) so we had to make do with a hard sleeper bed (2 up, 2 down, 2 in the middle, with no door to close) and hope that the other 4 beds would not get filled. They did, of course, but we had bagged the 2 at the top so we could just hide ourselves away up there and not get in the way of the crazy Chinese people below and around us. There certainly wasn’t much room up there and we both managed to bang and thump most parts of our body on the ceiling, walls and bedrails. 

Comfy?

We spent some of the trip in the corridor at the small fold-down seats and table, until we were absolutely sure that we wouldn’t have to get off the train to go through yet more security. After we had eaten our dinner we passed the time with cards, music and a few episodes of Red Dwarf, before settling down with a movie to finish the day off. As days go these travelling ones are pretty much write-offs unless something amazing happens, so this blog entry will finish here. Apologies.

Filling in yet another departure/arrival card

So Long Hong Kong

Remember yesterday? Remember when I said that James would have another chance to get barter for that coat? Well today was the day that he would get that second chance. As we were running out of (cheap) things to do in Hong Kong we decided to go back to the Ladies Market and get a few things that we hadn’t got the day before. James was after his coat and I was after (amongst other things) one of those Chinese waving cats that bring good luck into your household. A bit garish some might say, but for some reason I really wanted one. And I wanted to get one on that day as I would be sending a parcel back home, so it would fit perfectly in the box I had purchased from the post office.

Me and my box

The walk was again manic, dodging all the people on Nathan Road, including people quite openly asking me if I wanted to buy hash as well as a suit. Well they go hand-in-hand don’t they. So we were re-tracing our steps once again, and this time when we arrived at the market just before midday there were very few sellers that were open and ready for business. So with time to kill before the market got into full flow we wandered back to Goldfish Avenue where James bought some superglue for his shoes and I watched the cats and dogs in their little glass houses again.

A little later we wandered back through the market and some more stalls had opened up so we began our search for trinkets again. For some reason we both found it very hard going as everyone seemed to be playing hard-ball with us and not budging much from their opening offers. I couldn’t get a good price on the cat and James couldn’t get his coat down to his magic number, so we both left empty-hearted.

We grabbed lunch at the Café De Coral again (a Chinese fast food joint that did great servings at great prices) and then made our way back down Nathan Road again. I was to pack up my parcel and take it to the post office round the corner, and James was to……well, I dunno, just watch 20 minutes of Chinese TV or something. I had quite a lot of stuff to send back, but I figured that I really needed to lighten the load a little so I chucked all my trinkets and souvenirs in there, in addition to a few items of clothing too. It was pretty easy and reasonably cheap to send it back and afterwards it felt like a load off my mind…as well as off my back!

The rest of the day was to be spent down the Hong Kong Space Museum, located near the harbour front. It was only HK$10 for admission, which was great as we were trying to run down our money for our trip back into China the following day. When we arrived it turned out that it was actually free to get in on a Wednesday, which was a great little bonus! Inside it was all about early astronomy and space exploration, with some pretty interesting stuff. And it was quite quiet too, another little bonus considering that it was free on Wednesdays.

It's a gyroscope!

We didn’t pay to watch the iMax movie but instead headed outside and managed to catch the back-end of a sunset over the harbour which was just astonishing. James went back to the hotel while I went back down to the harbour front to try and get some better shots.

Hong Kong at sunset

That evening we found a place to eat that did Macau dishes and had a good bit of banter with the owner – he would’ve been brilliant on a night out with a few beers! A friend of a friend, Jamie, was also in Hong Kong so we had arranged to meet him down at the harbour to watch the amazing light show that is put on every night at 8:00pm. As James and I secured an area behind some people right at the front (but it meant that we could still see over their heads) I sent Jamie a message asking if he was there. He was still in Mong Kok up in the north of the city so it was clear that he wasn’t going to make it. It was by the by, as James and I enjoyed the light show amongst the hundreds of people there. Well, I say “enjoyed” the lightshow. I think we were both expecting something a little more, but it was still good to see, and it was free too, so that is always good in our books.

What a "great" lightshow

Jamie was making his way down to the harbour after the light show had finished but we needed to get back and pack up for leaving on the morrow. We grabbed a few things for the nearby 7 Eleven and headed back to the box-room to make sure we knew what the score was with getting into Shanghai and getting the bags packed. It didn’t take long for me to pack my bag, not after I had sent my parcel back home…

Hello Ladies.........Market

Breakfast was again a strange strawberry-based macaroon, a few sour cream & onion Pringles and a cup of black coffee. Just what you need to get the day going. So once we had polished it off and made ourselves presentable we left Chungking Mansions to visit he markets that lay up north.

The infamous Chungking Mansions 

The main road through the area, Nathan Road, is almost like The Strip in Las Vegas, as there are just people everywhere, and most of them are trying to sell you a suit or some such tat. It was a fair hike to get to the Ladies Market too, which was our first item on the agenda. And before you ask, it is just a name, it isn’t for women only. It was pretty good too, and nothing like the madness of Xuan Dong in Hanoi! There was (just about!) space to squeeze between the stalls and people were kind and polite…reasonably. Most of the market sellers were nice and friendly if you were interested in their stuff, but if you walked away they sometimes got quite vocal with you as if they expected you to buy whatever it was just because you had had a conversation with them. Overall though it was a good experience and we managed to get some good stuff, although James was unsuccessful in negotiating for the coat he wanted, but we would have another chance to get that as we weren’t leaving HK until Friday.

The Ladies Market

As we left the Ladies Market we wandered through another, but lesser, market nearby, but we kept our wallets firmly in our pockets this time. Near to that market was the Goldfish Market, and well, we just had to go and check that out! So we found it just round the corner, and it was more of a “fish avenue” as opposed to a goldfish market. Shop after shop of fish and other pets, unfortunately with some of them being kept in less-than desirable conditions. The best ones were the ones with the cats in though, they were absolutely adorable. But a bit out of our price range at £700 each.

I'm sorry, I don't have £700 to spare... 

As we left we took a route through a fish market, just to see what delights lay within. Well, there was pretty much anything you care to guess, and even an escaped eel, until the natty fishmonger managed to scoop it back up into his net with a flick of his wrist.

Just WHAT is in that bag...?

We had seen on the map that there was a rather large park near to the hotel so we took a stroll through on our way back to the hotel. It was pretty nice, with an aviary by the entrance housing some parrots and other exotic birds. But we weren’t allowed to disturb them mind, not unless we wanted to pay HK$1,000. There was a rather good open-air swimming pool, save for the fact that it was empty…of people and water. A couple of fountains and a big warning sign about mosquitos completed the journey and we were out and heading back towards Chungking Mansions.

I got a little bit jealous of this guys camera...

For the evening we spent a long time walking the streets of Hong Kong trying to find somewhere to eat. We had heard of a place called Mr Wongs where you could pay HK$50 and get all the food and drink you could eat, but we couldn’t find it. Or we could, but it looked very dodgy, so we moved on. There were a lot of gun shops in the area too, so I’m not sure how good an area it was. In the end we essentially re-traced our steps from our trip round the markets earlier that day, and we found a small diner that was serving reasonably cheap fodder, so we took a table for two. It was OK, but pretty functional as it had got quite late, so we just paid the tab and left the place, thankfully without getting drinks spilled on us like the couple on the table next to us.

Chungking Express

Ok, so for such a teeny tiny room the bed was actually quite comfortable and I slept like a log for the first time in a long while. Maybe it was because of the epic journey from Hanoi, but no matter, we were up and raring to go. Well, not quite “raring” as we had no breakfast included in the price of the room – and to be honest, I don’t think I would have eaten it if they had provided something.

Our first order of the day was to head back to the train station and book tickets on the train from Hong Kong to Shanghai. We certainly didn’t want to have a repeat of the Nanning-Guangzhou episode! It didn’t take long to book the tickets so we then made our way down to the harbour again, to have a good look at the place in the daylight. We walked along the Avenue Of Stars again, but his time it was much less crowded so we could actually see who the stars were for. We wanted to find Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee for starters, and any others would be a bonus. As we trundled along the harbour we noticed people trying to take our picture without us noticing…but we noticed alright. It got to the point whereby a couple of old oriental geezers wanted their picture taken with us, to which we obliged, naturally. Then, as they left, a younger couple of girls asked for the same thing. We duly posed for the second round of pictures, no problem. And then a further group wanted their photo taken with us; it was like we were proper celebrities and I half expected them to be asking us for autographs next!

Bruce Leeeeeeeee! 

We continued our wander and looked out across the water to Hong Kong Island, where we would be heading shortly. But only after another couple of girls wanted their picture taken with us. So with that done we bought two tickets for the ferry across the water to Central on the other side. James had done some research and found out that there was an escalator that ran from the top of the residential area up in the hills all the way down to the CBD at the bottom, but that it only went down until 10:20am and after then it only went up for the rest of the day. Well, this was looking promising for an interesting little visit so we managed to find the “start” amongst the concrete playground that was Hong Kong Island and jumped on. It was exciting! After about 60 seconds the escalator finished and we had to walk to the next stage of the escalator. And then again a few metres down the line. So it wasn’t one full escalator after all, and it was a bit of a disappointment, but still worthwhile as something to do as we got to see the streets and back streets.

Going uuuuuuuuup!

As we got to the top we realised that we would need to get back to the bottom again, but there was no escalator heading that way. So we had to march along the leafy roads to find a path down to the main road. It was nice to get away from the hustle and bustle and mix up the grey concrete of the city with the green canopies of the forest in between.

Hong Kong through the trees

We made it down to the road and found the tram station where we would be getting a tram (obviously) from the west side to the east side of the island as Wikitravel had said it was a good little journey. It took ages for the right tram to arrive and when it did we sat up top and watched the world go by from up high. It also took a long time to get from A to B (about 80 minutes) so by the time we had finished we were ready for dinner. But we had to get back to Chungking Mansions first.

Zooming through Hong Kong Island

We jumped on the tube and happily it coincided with rush hour, so we were literally forced into the carriages to go under the water (rather than the ferry back) for just one stop. After freshening up at the hotel we managed to find the Taj Mahal Restaurant within Chungking Mansions, something that we weren’t massively keen on if we were honest, but it was close, it was late, and Tripadvisor said that it was really good. We also ran into a guy whilst waiting for the lift who gave us a 10% off card, but only after James had initially waved him away claiming we weren’t interested. The Taj Mahal was OK, and maybe a little over-priced for what we actually got, but it had filled a hole and that was OK by us. The evening was spent watching the movie Chungking Express (told you we’d end up watching it) and to be fair I don’t recommend you rushing down to your local Blockbuster to rent a copy for yourself.