Are you Cassie?

After we had got through arrivals at the Hong Kong airport, we were in the main concourse. As we walked through suddenly a tall Chinese man asked me "Are you Cassie?" I thought - what is this place? first I'm French and now I'm called Cassie! I replied "No, I'm not Cassie" Clare then informed me that they were infact taxi drivers and were asking "Do you want a taxi?"!!! .. another typical 'Mary moment' for me! :P

After searching for about 10 minutes we found an ATM and withdrew HK$500 each. Clare found the Park Lane Shuttle bus and we took the 1 hour drive into Hong Kong and Causeway Bay.

Our first glimpses of Hong Kong from the air as we were landing were very exciting - it was just so huge, so glittery, and just so foreign. It felt like watching a huge Christmas light show.

As we drove thought Lantau Island over the 2.2km suspension bridge and onto Kowloon, then Hong Kong Island, my first observation was that they live in high rise buildings - in one small space I counted 26 buildings all of 25 stories high! :O and you could see into the buildings with their twinkling lights and observe people eating dinner or hanging their washing from opened windows. Other very 'new' things were

People live in these!!

• Square shaped cars, instead of the curvy shaped cars we have in Australia



• Lights everywhere! even in the middle of the night everything seems like daytime



• Mickey Mouse displays of soft toys and figurines in the back of car windows



• High rise schools!



• People playing soccer in tiny outdoor spaces at 10pm at night!



• Seemingly thousands of people wandering the streets at 11pm on a Sunday night!!



• Heaps of old, crumbly buildings and street markets.

- Mary