Back to budget airlines and bunk beds

Just a short(ish) post since I have to go and meet some relatives for lunch before doing a last few errands and trying to lug all our luggage to the aiport.

I am henceforth giving up the somewhat-high-life that I have become accustomed to over the last three weeks. Four star hotels, bellboys carrying my bags, banquet lunches and dinners, guided tours and excessive shopping. I hope you understand I was sacrificing my reputation as a backpacker because I wanted to ease my brother into travelling a little easier. Yep.

The last week in HK has been awesome. Loads of shopping, sightseeing, eating and catching up with friends. There are too many markets and malls to cover, so I will see some more when I come back.

I have also been lucky enough to be able to meet some of my late grandmother's relatives. When my mum called us at 6.30 on Sunday morning, I wasn't too keen on the idea, especially since I really didn't know anything about them, and they couldn't speak any English. But on actually meeting my great aunts and cousins, everything was fine. They took us to a seafood restaurant and we tried a couple of new things, including some kind of whelk or hermit crab or something, which was fantastic. Despite the language barriers, we managed to communicate reasonably well, and they were all really lovely. We are meeting one more uncle and cousin for lunch today as well. I hope that my mum and aunt will get to come over and meet them all soon.

On Monday we did the ultimate cheesy Hong Kong tourist thing (asides from meeting Jackie himself) and went to Hong Kong Disneyland. We managed to spend about 10 hours there, and had a hilarious time. Some of the rides were pretty lame, but some of them were loads of fun (Space Mountain, the Buzz Lightyear ride and the 3D Philharmagic show, which included smells and water spraying). I tried a couple of new foods, a red bean popsicle (yech) and a char siu (BBQ) pork burger on a man tau (chinese bread) bun (really good actually). One of the most entertaining things about Disneyland was the hilarious English names that some of the staff had - Paper (female), Hilson (male), Selina (male). I wish I'd written them all down. Even funnier was this morning when we were checking out of the hotel - the receptionists' names were Elvis Wong and Dicky Chan. Love it so much.

Oh, also I got semi-stalked by a dude from the Congo on the way home from the internet cafe the other night. It was nothing too too creepy, but lucky there were a lot of people still on the street that late at night.

Better run, don't want to be late for yum char. Will write again from Singapore ...