Live it...love it

one minute you're walking through a maze of ancient streets with chinese vendors selling birds nests (for vitality and longevity), sea slugs and flying fox on a stick (complete with head and wings of course - how else would you eat a flying fox?)...a 5 minute tube ride later and you're drinking cocktails in a cosmopolitan bar surrounded by countless other cosmopolitan bars in Lan Kwai Fong - THE district of choice for the sexiest bars and the hottest clubs....

one minute you're on the seaside, bright white sand and english style pubs lining the street...half an hour later and you are back in the city, unable to see the sky for the skyscrapers, making your choice of restaurants from the hundreds in Soho, a choice of every type of cuisine under the sun...if only you could see it...

its a jumble of the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the technological...the asian and the european...this city has it all. Advertisements for HK use this slogan - 'Hong Kong...live it....love it'. I could do both. Already i love it...am IN love with it. And I think I could so easily live here given the right salary which would of course have me living right in the thick of things!

Yesterday we caught the famous Star Ferry across to hong Kong Island, excitedly speeding closer and closer to the heaven-touching skyline. We wandered through expensive shopping malls full to the brim with designer wears, before mozying along streets full to the brim of chinese medicine men and antiques from the Tang Dynasty....eventually we found ourselves in Lan Kwai Fong and settled in with a margarita to do some serious people watching. it's the world cup rugby 7s at the moment in hong kong and the place is overflowing with rugby boys from the uk, south africa and australia...and they were all in lan kwai fong to party on thursday night....the party spilled out on to the street, good spirits helped along by yard long beers hung around the necks of the punters and pumping music spilling out from the bars along the road. We were having so much fun meeting and chatting to people from all over the world that we stayed out drinking till 1am and almost missed the last train home....!

feeling slightly the worst for wear when we woke this morning we took things a little slow, catching a local bus to Stanley, a beachside resort only 30mins from Central, boasting a famous market of cheap clothing rip-offs and souvenirs. The fact that Hong kong city is so very close to beaches and cute little bays just makes it so much more livable in my mind...though i imagine that on a nice sunny day it would be standing room only around there. unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, today it was pouring and we had the place to ourselves...well, us and some rugby boys from england. a 30min bus ride back to the city and we wandered the streets of Soho, spoilt for choice with the countless restaurants whipping up every cuisine imaginable....we settled on a homely little italian with huge servings of pasta and generous glasses of red...i can't tell you how much i have missed a good glass of red, normally my everyday drink, it was expensive and awful most of the way through SE Asia....lets just say i'm making up for it now...

I have a list of Top 5 cities I have been to. cities i love and would love to live in...it didnt take long for Hong Kong to comfortably make its way onto my list...Live it...Love it.

stay tuned. xx