Sunday am. The Tourist Bit

As expected Meister was the only one up and about Sunday morning and I met him in the breakfast room. We decided to do the tourist thing and get the Star Ferry across to Tsim Sha Tsui. I suggested we get the MTR to Central and pick up the ferry there but Meister had other ideas. After speaking to reception he said we should go from the Wanchai terminal and that it was only a short walk. And so it was that about an hour later we arrived hot and sweaty at the ferry terminal having toured the local construction sites, gatecrashed a Christian prayer meeting, encountered a number of deadends and dodged a countless number of deathwish bus drivers.

On arrival at TST we encountered a plethora of hawkers trying to sell us anything from suits to their grandmothers. The enquiry "you wanna watch" was of course met with the standard reply "why, what are you going to do". On my insistence we headed to the air-conditioned paradise of the Ocean Terminal Mall, more designer labels than you could shake a very big stick at and a perfect example of Western decadence if there ever was one.

Out into the heat and a quick tour of the local area before sheltering in the calm of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. They had a wonderful photographic exhibition and Meister hit on the idea of photographing the photos so that he didn't have to visit the real thing. Great idea but he was a bit stumped about what setting to use to snap the nightscenes. I feel an e-mail coming on "Dear Amateur Photographer, if it is daytime and I am inside taking a photo of a photo of a nightscene should I use the night time setting on my Fujitu 3000 or just get a life?"

I do have to say that during our time in TST Meister became quite efficient at spotting escalators and avoiding stairs, I suppose that was some sort of recompense for taking me a on an effing route march to the ferry. Onwards to the viewing gallery with magnificent views of HK Island and then to the Avenue of Stars where Meister delighted in trying to spot as many silly names as he could (in your best Glaswegian accent, you're Wong Yue Jimmy!).

Back to HK Island on the MTR and Meister convinced me that we should stay on until Tin Hau station as that was closest to the hotel, two minutes later we retraced our steps to Causeway Bay. By this time we thought we deserved some sort of reward for our hard work and dropped into Royal's Pub near the hotel for a couple of beers. Here we encountered Andy, a strange Brit with an interesting story of a failed career/relationship in HK who was heading home. We didn't get the full story which was fortunate, otherwise I may have had to stab the boring bastard in the eye with a sharp pencil. We also encountered perhaps the slowest waiter in Hong Kong who seemed to be working in slow motion, so much so that Meister nicknamed him Mr Tai Chi.We must take the other guys here to see this amazing example of controlled movement in action.

First signs of life from the main party as we received a call from Hodge. Headed back to the hotel to shower and change for the evening activities and Hodge's birthday meal at the American Restaurant. I'll probably leave the report about Sunday night to someone else, largely because I don't remember much about it, I do know that it involved beer though.