Melbourne ---> Hong Kong

My one night in Melbourne, I was in a room with 2 girls and an obnoxious british guy. He got kicked out at 4am in the morning (security was present) and he made a lot of fuss when he was gathering his belongings. He had such a fould mouth. Apparently, he got kicked out for trying to sneak in one of his buddies into the hostel.

APRIL 13 - 26

I went to Hong Kong for 2 weeks where I met family I have never met and to also meet up with my cousin Alice and her parents who were also visiting. All we did was eat eat eat!!!! If you're not hungry, you still eat. I had a lot of exotic things and I tried all of it. I love trying new things. I had roast goose (which tastes like duck but meatier), duck tongue, packaged duck heart (which my uncle loves but it smells and tastes like wet cat food!), abalone....

We went to the markets in HK where you can haggle with them for a lower price. We also went to Shenzhen in China to shop and get ultra cheap massages for 2 hrs ($40 CDN incl tip)! Another day we went to Macau...the Las Vegas of Asia but not as in-your-face. I didn't gamble but I saw the sights and ate a lot of free food samples from the shops.

My cousins took me to Ocean Park (amusement park with Pandas...real ones), Big Buddha statue, etc. There was 1 day when I went off to explore on my own. I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Medicine where the eastern and western medicines are compared. I also saw Kung Fu in Kowloon park --- 2 hrs of kung fu demos by students and teachers.

HK was a huge culture shock for me. It is smoggy, busy, crowded, chaotic. I was surprised at how screwed you are if you don't know catonese. I speak another dialect of chinese and english. English is useless if you are outside of the tourist areas (where my family lives). It was hard to navigate because I cannot read the characters and not many people know english (or my dialect). It is easy to navigate by subway but on the bus you could be screwed because all the buildings look the same! I am also very surprised by the lack of english proficiency considering this was a british colony not long ago!