Europe and the Final Countdown

Not the iconic 80's song, but today we fly home. We cant wait to be home to our own bed and to see friends and family, but we also don't want this adventure to end. I guess we will have to start planning for the rain forests of South America now!

From spice to space

Today we were supposed to go to a theme park that has the fastest roller coaster in the world, Ferrari World. Sadly though, most of the rides were closed for maintenance, so instead we had a lovely little tour of Dubai city, stopping off at some of the key sights. Most of Dubai has only been built in the last 30-40 years, so its all very new and the skyline is constantly changing with new high-rises and hotels. We also visited the old spice souks, and although being Ramadan, many of them were closed, there were enough open for us to get a feel of the place and the aromas from all the spices mixing together was amazing.

In the evening we went to the largest mall in the world, which includes the largest aquarium in the world, an ice rink, a roller-coaster and pretty much every brand,shop and restaurant you can imagine. All of this is in the base of the tallest building in the world, and we were about to go to the top - or pretty close to the top anyway. The lift shot us up to the 140 floor in 60 seconds, but you could barely even notice you were moving, the only clue being that your ears popped on the way up. Once at the top there were some great views of the city at night.

The last few floors above us:

On our way out of the mall we noticed an odd looking ATM machine, this was a gold dispenser, a cashpoint for gold bars, that only accepted cash as payment. Only in Dubai...

Sun, sand and... more sand.

Today we went 'dune bashing', which is to say we went tearing around the desert in a 4x4. We observed lots of camels wondering loose in the desert - apparently they don't worry about them coming back to their farms, as they always return because of the heat and they know that is where they can get water. There are three different breeds, brown, black and white and the latter are best for racing - but none had go faster stripes. Brown camels are the most common and cost approximately £1000 - £1,500 to buy, but a good racing camel can cost upwards of £300,000.

The drive was lots of fun, but it wasn't long before both Nikala and I were feeling a touch queasy from all the bumps and sliding around. We then stopped off to meet a camel up close.

We made it

Just thought I'd let you all know we made it to Dubai. Our penultimate flight, indeed flight number eleven during our mammoth journey, arrived at 04:30 local time and the temperature was already 36 degrees. We were lucky to be met at the airport by our friends which was really nice after having to worry about making our own way everywhere for so long, and it sounds like they have planned an amazingly full itinerary or stuff for us to do while we are here. Its lovely to see them and its a real treat to have such luxury after the last couple of weeks of traveling. We can wash some clothes, yay! I cant begin to tell you how exciting this is because without the additional day in Hong Kong we had planned for, I'm down to my last pair of underwear - you see I was going to hand wash some in HK but instead we didn't even have time to shower before running for the airport!

We have just returned from walking our friends dog around our their villa, but we had to cut it short after 7 minutes as at 48 degrees it felt like we were becoming instant charcoal. I think we will wait for this evening to explore further. Oh and we have arrived right at the start of Ramadan, which means no eating or drinking in public, not even water when you are outside. Thankfully everywhere is air-conditioned so it shouldn't be too bad.

In the next day or two, amongst other cool things like touring the dunes and visiting Ferrari World, we will also be visiting the top of the worlds tallest building. Every time I come to Dubai (and I've only been  twice before by the way, I'm not a frequent desert rat), I am always amazed at the constantly changing landscape. I don't mean the fact that its in a desert and has the ubiquitous shifting sands, but that the rate at which new skyscrapers and hotels go up is astonishing. I don't recognise the skyline at all. The beach front hotel that Nikala and I stayed at before, is now a marina resort in the middle of a thriving city they now call "old town".

On our second to last day in Hong Kong we decided to go and see one of the other islands upon which there is a giant bronze statue of Buddha, which you can reach via a 25 minute cable car journey. The cable car has a glass bottom and you pass over the sea, mountains and woodlands. Its a nice trip and the glass floor was pretty fun. Sharing our cable car were an american family, you may be familiar with them from the National Lampoons Vacation series of movies. I kid you not, we were stuck in the cabin with National Lampoons Hong Kong Vacation, I kept looking for hidden cameras and wouldn't be suprised if you see us coming to a screen near you soon. Comedy at its best, at least for Nikala and I at any rate.

The Giant sitting Buddha was impressive, though I should point out that this was built in the 1990's and isn't a historic site. To tell the truth I felt a little disappointed with everything else that surrounded it; it was all just so new and so, well, touristy.

A long way from home:

After exploring the area we discovered a little walk down a small trail, sign posted as "Wisdom Path". This led to a replication of Confucius' hill climb with his prayers carved onto the wooden posts alongside. Again it was a bit contrived, given that it was all only less than 10 years old, but the countryside was beautiful and we were away from the thronging crowd. After a while it seemed as though we had strayed off the path and when we looked up, we found ourselves face to face with the Children of the Corn (for those of you that haven't seen the movie, adults get killed in unpleasant ways by creepy children and scarecrow-like demons and other such nasties!)

One of the things that this trip through China has taught us is that when you go travelling you can expect there to be ups and downs, surprises and dissapointments, and you just never know what will happen next and what will be good or bad. When we made it to the other side of the creepy rundown village we discovered another footpath, and beyond that a mountain. Lantau Peak is 934 metres high and the top dissapeared into the low clouds. The path and steps were made from rough stone, there wasn't any concrete in sight or for that matter any people. This was what we had hoped to find in Huangshan, and it was beautiful. As we climbed the steps, we had to push aside the foliage and as we went lizards, beetles, crickets, butterflys and all manner of creatures scattered before us as we ascended. It was pretty tough going and towards to the top, the steps became steeper and steeper, some of them were each over a foot high and all were uneven. Once again the views were breathtaking, though once we passed the cloud line we could barely see each other, let alone anything beyond a few feet in front of us. The climb took us about 1.5 hours up, and a pretty pacey 30 minutes down and by the time we reached the big Buddha again, we were drenched in sweat and our hearts were hammering in our chests. But we were ecstatic, we had finally found the mountain we wanted to climb, though it was in a completely different location than expected.

Just before we entered the cloud layer:

We looked back and could just about make out the Buddha, where we had started our walk:

After a spot of lunch we headed back to Hong Kong island where we had decided to spend the afternoon looking around the botanical gardens and maybe visit the zoological park to meet the giant tortoises. After that we had already decided on the restaurant we would have our farewell to Hong Kong dinner in and had begun planning what we would do the following day before going to the airport. It was about 4:25pm and at that point Nikala asked what time our flight was on the 31st July. It's at 12:35 I replied. There was a silence between us and then we must have come to the same conclusion at the same time. 12:35 or 0:35? I scrambled for our itinerary information, Nikala scrambled for our cable car tickets, we compared the dates. Crap. We were flying tonight! With all the travelling, all the airports and flights and everything else over the last three weeks, we had totally lost track of what the date was and we were obviously enjoying Hong Kong too much. Subconsciously we didn't want to leave and now we had a mad dash back to the hotel, where we were fully expecting to either be charged another nights stay at god knows what rate, or to find that our bags had been left out on the street for all and sundry, or perhaps even both. Until now we have both been pretty impressed with how we have been on top of everything despite all the travel problems we have encountered, but now at the last, we have given ourselves all this drama. Ah well it can never be said we ever do anything the easy way.

Today we went and explored Hong Kongs many street markets, starting with the Ladies Market which is supposed to be kitchen based goods and gadgets and fun stuff like that, but actually turned out to be the same tourist tat that was in the Night Markets we have seen before. After that we walked to the Goldfish Market, which is a collection of pet shops predominently selling fish, tortoises and terrapins, but some of them were also selling dogs and rabbits which looked far too hot in their shop windows.

After this we walked on and came to Flower Market Road, which as the name suggests is full of flower stalls all laden with the most amazing bouquets and plants.

Then finally just a short walk on from there we found the Bird Garden. This was an amazing market full of singing and chirping birds as well as all the paraphernalia that you need to keep them, including their food, lots and lots of crickets, some in net bags, some just loose in tubs. They were jumping all over the place and at one point I thought it might be like a biblical plague as they started hopping all into the path in front of me. Fortunately we survived to tell the tale.

We then took the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong island and it was still fun during the day.

In the evening we went to the open air swimming pool on the roof of our hotel and watched the sunset, and the storm clouds that were rolling in.