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Greetings from Hong Kong. The weather here is fine, around the thirty degree mark but hazy, sometimes cloudy and with the occasional tropical shower to clear the air. The food is great as well, cheap and tasty wonton soups for lunch and alternately excellent Indian (and not Anglo-Indian) or interesting Cantonese for dinner. I am so glad to back in the Far East, after being in West Africa and Europe over the past few months it is great to be back in that part of the world where the people are not only friendly and welcoming but more respectful of themselves and each other, even if there are binge-drinkers, young-single mothers or teenage tear-aways here they still show respect to each other. Asian hospitality is not a myth and one wonders why the rest of the world cannot behave in a similar manner.

Why are we in Hong Kong? For those of you that don't know we are are embarking on another so soon after the last one in order to visit Monikas cousin, Martin, in Mongolia.  He has been studying there since October and will only be there until July and so we decided to dip into the savings in order to benefit from visiting Mongolia with somebody who speaks Mongolian and knows the country very well.  Hong Kong has for a long time been the easiest place to acquire and Chinese visa and we have just discovered that it is not a bad place to pick up Russian or Mongolian ones as well.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon on OasisHongKong.com the new budget airline, which was OK. It is a good trick advertising as a budget carrier because then the passengers drop their expectations. I was then happy to get two hot meals and free coffee and water, instead of complaining that the drinks trolley came round only twice! I was happy that there was a seat-back TV instead of complaining that the choice of films was awful! One thing though, we had turbulence that I have not experienced on a long-haul flight (i.e. bigger aircraft, higher altitude) since the eighties. For the first two hours we were thrown around like dice in a game of Yahtzee and I could see the wing shaking violently, trying to liberate itself from the fuselage. The food service was halted twice by the captain for safety reasons. Not until we got over Belarus did it begin to settle. But then, that is not anybodies fault.

We were glad to be on the plane. As is the case with a lot of airlines now they asked for our return/onward ticket, so they are not lumbered with a fine and responsibility of deporting us. I have had this before and had to buy an open, fully refundable ticket in order to receive my boarding pass. I was aware that many flights into HKG ask for it and it seems Oasis are really thorough because if they get any problems they go back to the exact check-in clerk who served them and he/she gets in trouble. We had a lovely eastern European girl who first refused to issue our boarding passes, I was ready to buy a ticket from somewhere, hopefully a bus/boat ticket online. Not necessary, she bent her rules (a lot) and secretly let us fill in 'forms of indemnity' waiving all their responsibility, highly illegal under these circumstances but we were happy. She said it was OK if we wanted to risk it, a 1-10,000 chance. But I did not see it as a risk. So, did we have a problem? No, she let us through without a word, although Monika was a bit nervous and so did not take any of the complimentary sweets at immigration!

Star Ferry, Hong Kong harbour

Hong Kong seems much cleaner than last time I was here. Taking the bus from the airport everything seemed brighter, cleaner and more spacious. Especially Kowloon, and especially Chungking mansions, the infamous building full of cheap guesthouses. Gone are the days when you had to jump over several rats in the stairwell. Everything has been painted and there are hardly any bugs! Our room which is 100HKG has hot water, TV and air-con in the room and a shared fridge and kettle outside. It also has a phone with free local calls (know anyone in HKG?) and free mineral water. Although somebody did steal two of my Cream Eggs from the fridge! Chungking mansions was recently the subject of an undercover report conducted by Time magazine and was voted Asia's best example of globalisation and counted 120 different nationalities in the building at one time. Even if the article was exactly 100% positive, the owners of Chungking mansions have acted as if it was and yesterday there was a special photo-shoot commemorating the article.  Even if Chungking mansions does not exactly show the more marketable side of globalisation with its Bangladeshi hash dealers, Nepali prostitutes and Indian men offering "copy watches" on every corner, Hong Kong itself does.  Whilst many Western governments, especially the British government, pride themselves on having a true multi-cultural society, Hong Kong actually does have one, by that I mean a mixture of ethnic groups that intermingles not only within but outside of the working environment.

Our visit to Hong Kong was specifically to go visa shopping however and we got straight down to business.  We applied for the Russian visa on Wednesday morning.  The receptionist even cracked a few jokes which was certainly not to be expected from a Russian embassy!  We picked the visa up on Thursday and dashed straight to the Chinese embassy where we managed to make the application before 12. This visa was ready yesterday morning so we then headed for the Mongolian embassy which allowed us to pick up today (Saturday morning). So, three of the worlds most notorious visas (at least in terms of applying) successfully granted in 4 days! OK so we had to pay the "express" fee in each case and also there was at least one hurdle to overcome with each application. For the Russian visa they were not keen to give us the express service because our visa is not valid until middle of July, and the regular service takes one week, but I told them we had to be in China by Monday which seemed a sufficient reason. We did need some visa support documents but we arranged them already in England. For the Chinese visa we wanted 90 days but they only grant 30, in the end the receptionist said she would make a special request on our behalf for 60 days as we were only visiting the big cities (or so they thought!) but I was concerned that the Tibet entry/exit stamps in our passports might jeopardise our application, especially as we have no accompanying visa (we entered Tibet on group visas), but apparently no problems, it was ready the next day. For the Mongolian visa we needed a return/onward ticket, which we don't have. However the receptionist told us that a sheet of paper with our full itinerary on it, from Hong Kong back to Prague, listing the dates we would travel by public transport, would be sufficient! Of course I made it as simple as possible. I was surprised that we were allowed to pick it up on the weekend but it is because the building is shared with a lot of offices and she acts for all of them.

The Peak, Hong Kong island

Apart from these visa chores we have been doing the usual touristic sights in Hong Kong, although we missed the Big Buddha on Lantau. I went there last time and Monika was not so keen to go due. We did go up to the peak for the ubiquitous view of the harbour at night but it was incredibly busy (I then realised how lucky I was last time to be here in the middle of the SARS scare. Yesterday we visited the outdoor swimming pool complex spread over three levels in Kowloon park. I laughed at the naivety of the planners, building a outdoor swimming pool with a public walk-way over the top of it on the same road as a very sizeable population of Indian males. My thoughts were confirmed within minutes as I saw several men on a leisurely stroll who just happened to stop for a chat in the middle of the walkway! Last night we braved the downpour to take a stroll through Temple Street market, typically Asian with its fake trainers and watches, copied CD's and DVD's, Chinese plastic tack and all manner of food stalls.
 

Temple Street, Kowloon

The aspect of Hong Kong that has really impressed me this time is the transport. I always loved taking the Star Ferry across the harbour, beautiful old boats and so cheap at only HKG$2 per ride. Now we have also started to use the tramways, the double-decker narrow streetcars here that are over 100 years old! These are also only HKG$2 per ride and cover the length of Hong Kong island from Kennedy Town to Causeway Bay. With these two transport options oozing character, we still have not used the buses or the metro service.

Hong Kong Tram

So, after a little bit of nervous anticipation we are ready to leave for China tomorrow, several days earlier than we predicted. We were planning to leave the application for the Mongolian visa until Beijing but the other two were so easy we thought it was worth trying.