Had a little lie in before checking out of our crazy awesome hotel. We picked up a couple of cakes for breakfast and sat in Kowloon park with the taichi people for a relaxing morning with birdsong in the background.
We watched 4 middle aged asian women taking photographs before they saw us and demanded we get in their photos with them!
Avoiding the chaos we had a few hours to kill before visa collection but as we wandered around Kowloon we saw a lot of Police blocking a road. When we got closer we saw that someone had been hit by a lorry, pretty messy.
We had seen the main road and so decided to disappear into the back streets riddled with tailors, Indian restaurants and hundreds of hawkers trying to get you into aforementioned tailors or restaurants, if they can't sell you watches, girls or anything in between.
We decided on a lunchtime kebab and it was great, just like cafe noir in oxford! All the English signs and white tourists and many foreign locals and all the things designed to make Hong Kong feel like home for foreigners work and make it very safe and relaxing but a little boring and easy compared to china. I think I could imagine living for good here in fact, if I could find a job with the crazy expensive wage you would need!
We got the star ferry again over to hk island and walked to the visa office, meeting Todd in the queue.
Picked up my visawith no problem after smuggling in my food and made a conservative plan to be on the airport bus by 6 for a 9pm flight from shenzhen.
We all fancied heading to see if we could see the sea and so took a tram for 2hkd to the end of the line for a small view to the sea and across the bay.
Took the bus back to central station for 5 to find the bus station with time to spare.
We looked round and round asking many people where this bus stop was before eventually finding out that the stop here was drop off only! A helpful metro girl pointed us towards wan chai metro further down the line. We got there and eventually found the counter for the bus at half 6 only to be told we couldn't possibly get the bus in time and we would have to taxi it.
Jumping in a taxi we fought through the rush hour traffic to get to shenzhen port, we then had to queue to leave Hong Kong then queue to enter china and the guy on checking spent ages checking every last detail of our passport and visa!
We ran out and found a huge queue for a taxi!
Made it through that queue and found another taxi who drove at breakneck speed to the airport undertaking on corners and forcing buses off the road. We jumped out and ran through the terminal towards check in.
Made it to the gate 15 minutes before the flight, too late! We tried to blag our way on but no luck.
Calling the agency they basically dropped us in it, no help with hotels, flights or paying for it! All respect for Helenconsulting now lost, they messed up the directions, gave us no notice, changed plans half way through, and then when we get stuck in customs abandon us. If the school hadn't been so great to us I would jump ship to another school who asked zero recently, but I do like the school. Considering I haven't actually signed a contract yet I wonder.... if I could cut them out .... haha.
We asked at the gate and a flight tomorrow is 90pounds , ouch! And we still needed a hotel for tonight!
Lucklily Todd had been here before and knew a great hostel, and now my phone works again I could Google it and reserve 3 beds.
The time at this point was gone 10 and the metro and bus had stopped so we had to get a taxi for another 70rmb.
The hostel when we made it was awesome! So clean, and they gave us a private triple for the price of 3 hostel beds.
Finally got our head down, sort out the rest in the morning!
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