Flew into Hong Kong on Saturday morning (night flight after a big meal in town, and the world's rudest air steward on Air New Zealand - who aren't normally like that).

Got the express train from the airport, and was impressed straight away - amazing buildings and structures all over the place. My sister lives in Happy Valley, which is just rows and rows of apartments stretching up the side of a valley - when you stand on her road and look into the valley it's like looking into Mega City 1 (geek moment).

Got straight into it - went shopping at Causeway Bay and worshipped at the temple of Ikea! On Sunday we just had a lazy day recovering, although we went supermarket shopping and marvelled at the rampant consumerism - it's such a change from NZ - we don't even realise what we're missing. I saw an 'organic' spray for washing fruit such as waxed lemons. It's just surreal!

Monday was an exploring day - we went to Kowloon, to Mong Kok, where we went to a lovely flower market, which was worth a look, and to the bird garden (not v big and v smelly), then down to the goldfish market, which was amazing, with dyed goldfish and lots of dying turtles. We walked back down Nathan Rd, all the way to the Science Museum (along Knutsford Terrace which had some very nice looking restaurants). The SM was quite good - it had a huge exhibit on occupational health and safety, including a robotic display of how to store dangerous chemicals.

Tuesday was the start of the moon festival. We went to Stanley Bay during the day - it has a really good market, with European sizes - I got a nice smart work blouse 2 piece for HK$99. We had lunch at a german beer keller - a mixed sausage plate, with sauerkraut, and some yummy wheat beer. Then we went and sat in a pub called the Pickled Pelican which had a nice mix of beers, and watched the rugby! Tuesday night was the moon festival itself - we went into Causeway Bay, with some lanterns we picked up at Stanley Market.

We had dinner at a tapas bar called El Sid, which did sangria (yum) and very garlicky garlic bread, then went to Victoria Park, which was absolutely full of lanterns. There were a few shows on - dancing and a fashion show etc on stages around the park, and probably the equivalent population of New Zealand out in the streets wandering around. We saw the new moon, so felt good about it!

Today, we've just been pink dolphin spotting off Lantau Island. The guide was quite depressing - more and more of them are dying because of the incredible pollution levels in the water, but we were amazingly lucky and saw a whole pod of them - a couple of mothers with babies (pups? Calves?) and a couple of others, who swam around the boat for about half an hour. The guide was over the moon, and kept going on about how lucky we were - I felt really privileged, not least because they might be extinct in a few years!