The adventure begins … (Hong Kong)

A few photobooth snaps from da weddin!

It’s an image we’ve all seen before: the loved up honeymooners skipping off to the airport looking fabulous. Her in a cute new outfit, him striding confidently – both glowing radiantly …

Nothing like Al & I then! No, our look as we arrived at the airport to check in was more homeless chic than honeymoon glam.

Don’t get me wrong, we did manage to achieve a ‘his ‘n hers’ look of sorts with our matching grey palours nicely highlighting the sleep deprivation induced bags under our eyes. Al’s ‘unshaven since the wedding day’ look nicely complemented my ‘still haven’t washed out the hairspray from the wedding day, Medusa look’. And lest there be any doubt that we were really were a honeymooning couple (and therefore clearly entitled to a complementary upgrade to first class), I was carrying off my bespoke and ironically tacky “Mrs Cunningham” tracksuit top with sheer class.

Complementary upgrade unforthcoming, and after a 5 hour stopover in London and subsequent 11 hour flight onward to Hong Kong, our look of complete and utter dishevelment was complete upon arrival. And like all honeymooning couples we couldn’t wait to jump into bed. No really. We were  exhausted. Finally, we could get a good nights (well, days) sleep!

Grainy photo of fireworks taken on Al's phone

Still, we’d made it. The first stop in our two month round the world trip: Hong Kong. And it was New Years Eve! So after a few hours recuperation, we headed down to Victoria Harbour to watch the NYE fireworks - a pretty cool way to kick the trip off in style. And unlike the locals who queued for an hour to take a few photos of the first five minutes of fireworks before heading off to beat the rush, we made the seemingly unusual & clearly quite controversial decision to actually stay and watch the entire fireworks display (sure seeing as we were there and all). Though I wasn’t feeling well so we headed back to our hotel shortly afterwards.

Professional photo of Victoria Harbour fireworks

 

It soon became clear that what I had initially assumed to be a combination of jet-lag and post wedding exhaustion was in fact full blown flu. So after the excitement of a full 15 minute fireworks display, I spent the next 36 hours in bed popping all sorts of cold & flu drugs. As you can imagine, Al was thrilled at the exciting start to our married life together (“Can I have another glass of water please Al?” / “Could you pass me the tissues please Al” / “you couldn’t just pop to the nearest chemist for me could you babe?” etc.). Luckily for Al, my searing sore throat made it hurt to talk too much and my fever made me want to sleep incessantly. So Al ended up sight-seeing by himself that day – which I imagine must have made any requests for honeymoon discounts all the more difficult to prove.

On the third day of our honeymoon, I rose again … slowly, and armed with quite a large supply of tissues and drugs. And as the week went on, and my flu flew away, it started to feel more like a honeymoon :-).

I’ve now managed to type an entire A4 page (MS word, arial font size 12 in case you’re interested) on our trip to Hong Kong and have barely mentioned Hong Kongs many tourist attractions. So here’s my run-down of stand out tourist moments from our few days there:

Temple St Markets at night

1. Feel good retail therapy at it’s best - haggling with the street vendors on Temple St: I do love a good haggle - and no better place than Temple St markets at night. Having bargained a seller down from $80HK (c. €8) to $50HK (c. €5), for a pair of imitation Miu Miu shades, I was on a high. I felt confident I had won that particular exchange of minds. That was until another vendor, whose wears I’d browsed prior to my big purchase, started shouting prices at me, dropping further and further as I continued to walk by. I could have had the imitation Vivienne Westwood shades for $30HK (c. €3). Doh!

My attempt at an arty shot of big Buddha in Lantau ...

  


2. Getting the cable car up to Lantau to visit the quite big Buddha & Po Lin Monastery: Our guidebook says that the giant statue of Buddha facing the monastery is “among the largest seated bronze Buddha images in the world”. I must say that I thought it was really a quite big Buddha indeed. But I guess there must be bigger Buddhas somewhere out there who are either (a) not seated; or (b) seated - but made of a material other than bronze. My global quest to find the biggest Buddha has begun …

Left: The size of the door at the bottom of Buddha gives an indication of how awfully big Buddha is. Right: Al working the medium of perspective in front of buddha ("Buddha - not quite so big from a distance!")

3. A day trip to Macau to gamble the night away: The Macau peninsula is a one hour ferry journey from Hong Kong. Nowadays, it’s most famous for its casinos but what’s most interesting is the complete mish-mash of culture architecturally speaking.  A Portuguese colony for 400 years, Macau was only handed back to china in 1999, and the lucrative gambling industry only dates back 50 years. The shiny new casinos look completely out of place beside historic ruins and streets littered with a random selection of mostly Portuguese, but some Chinese style buildings. Standing on the steps of the famous Ruinas de Sao Paulo (ruins of a 17th century Portuguese cathedral destroyed by a fire in 1835), it seems impossible that so many architectural styles cluster within such a small area. There’s the ruin of the ancient Portuguese catholic church itself, behind which sit a few Chinese style cottages; the street ahead is lined with dilapidated shops and in the distance you can see what look like council houses standing beside giant moneyed Vegas style casinos. I’ve never seen anything like it. The streets are lined with bargain basement shops selling you cheap iphone covers and cured meats of all kinds, yet the casino malls are filled with  luxury stores like Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton. We left Macau on the midnight ferry up €30 after some strategic roulette playing – that covered the cost of our tourist activities for the following day ;-)

Left: A photo looking up at the Ruinas de Sao Paulo. Right: A photo taken from the exact same spot but looking back down over the town of Macau. Note the random casino which looks like it was photoshopped into the background of the photo

Our view of Hong Kong at night from Victoria Peak

4. Victoria Peak: Worth the 45 minute queue for the tram journey to the top of the peak for the incredible views over Hong Kong. We went up at 5.30pm which meant we got to see the view both in daytime and at night. Night view with all the lights is more impressive!

Thankyou Mortons steakhouse in the Venetian hotel Macau!

 5. Blagging honeymoon freebies: Okay, so not a Hong Kong specific tourist attraction, but a key component of our adventure! The game is simple ... be vocal about the fact that we're on honeymoon and see what freebies come our way! Tally to date includes:

•  2 glasses of prosecco + chocolates in Shanahan's Dublin day before we left; 
• Chocolates in Hong Kong hotel; 
• a giant lemon souffle for desert in Mortons steakhouse Macau 
• Upgrade to bulkhead seats on flights to Sydney (it's not biz class but it's better than nothing!!)

That giant lemon souffle was a freebie honeymoon blag!

So that’s our Hong Kong adventure, and the first stage of our honeymoon complete. I still feel like I’m in a daze and, as clichéd as it sounds, the past 10 days (wedding, travel, Hong Kong) all seems like an elaborate dream. We’re both experiencing so many wonderful and amazing experiences and time seems to be flying by. I think I’m writing this blog so that I don’t forget all of this – the silly little details of our trip and the mental metamorphosis from Sarah Conry to this Sarah Cunningham I’ve heard so much about. Writing this blog will give me time to reflect as we go along on our round the world trip. If you made it this far down my blog you must be either my Mum or my Dad. Thanks for sticking with my ramblings! But don’t worry – it’s mostly for me to reflect back on in years to come (and partly to keep me busy during the 9 hour flight to Sydney – I’m typing this on our lil notebook laptop on our flight).

Am super excited about the impending Australian leg of our adventure; particularly our planned 5 day roadtrip from Sydney to Melbourne, and our trip to the Australian open tennis tournament.  I guess that means it’s time to say “G’day mates” …will type up my next blog entry on my next flight :-).

Till then,

Sarah (that’s 'Mrs. Cunningham' to you!)