In our last full day in Hong Kong we spent a few hours browsing the markets picking up some last minute presents and stuff for ourselves to make sure our suitcases were bursting at the seams on the way home. Over the course of the trip I feel like I became pretty well versed at haggling for stuff. In the end I was just saying to them “I’ve been offered x price elsewhere” and then not even giving an inch, just walking away if they wouldn’t take it. There were a few instances where I’d already gone a few shops down and they came running after me.

I feel like Hong Kong and Macau were the perfect destination to wet my appetite for travel into Asia. We got by on English okay, but struggled at some points. Rohan thinks they had a better grasp of it in Thailand. I think that just under a week in each city was enough to take it all in and I can definitely see myself returning in the future.

Now that I’m home, my focus is turning to buying a house in the next few months. Hopefully, my haggling experience in Hong Kong will come in handy in the negotiations. Owning real estate is said to be the Australian dream (and the American dream and I’m sure everywhere else’s dream). I’m not entirely sold on the whole notion, in fact it kind of makes me sick the length’s governments around the world will go to in order to sell ‘the dream’ and then artificially prop up housing prices through their policy making and the presence of a central bank. It is kind of laughable that everyone just goes into the housing market expecting their house to be worth more in 5 or 10 years time, of course prices are going to go up because the government is involved in creating inflation and the prices for everything go up. When you actually look at real estate in terms of something real and tangible like the gold, you can see that over time property appreciates only marginally. All that is for another blog though. I’ll be cautiously dipping my toe into waters of real estate investment, and diversifying myself in other areas at the same time.

Rohan slept in again and I played poker sessions and went to the gym. There was more poker in the afternoon, which was highlighted by us quitting all our tables and focusing on playing a fish at $5/$10 heads-up. He paid for our drinks in the evening and a bit more. We started about 4pm, went out for dinner, went to a seedy bar and then came back and hung out in the spa. We met a bunch of Scottish guys in there who had just been in mainland China in a remote city with no toilets or anything. Needless to say they were glad to be back in 5 star comfort of the hotel.

Late night trips to the police station and midnight poker sessions caught up with Rohan and he basically didn’t leave the room for 24 hours sleeping an lazing around. I took the opportunity to go to the markets on my own and do a bunch of personal and present shopping. I think I actually started to get pretty good at the whole negotiation thing, in the end I was just saying a price until they agreed to it otherwise I just walked away, which usually had them running after me agreeing to my price. I’m fairly sure all the stuff I bought will fit in my luggage, but there is still more that I want to get.

At night we caught the train to the CBD and had dinner then checked out Lan Kwai Fong, the ‘premiere dining and entertainment destination’ in Hong Kong. It was absolutely packed being a Friday night. It is basically a collection of pubs and clubs and it was so popular people were out on the street drinking. There seemed to be a very high volume of westerners there, surprise surprise. We decided we’d return on Saturday night, got some ice cream and headed home.

We decided for the afternoon we’d take a walk up to Sham Shui Po and check out what was going on there. It took longer than we thought to get there and we lost our way a little bit, but ended up finding our bearings and coming across the markets we were after. There was more of a fresh fruit and electronics focus and lots of things we hadn’t seen before. There were people selling second hand things and it certainly didn’t feel as touristy. There were lots of fruit shops and butchers where they were slicing up meat pretty much on the street and chopping fish heads off in front of you, the sidewalk was covered in blood and the smells were interesting.

Rohan wanted to eat dinner somewhere seedy, so we did and they had no idea about English so we just pointed at pictures on the wall. I couldn’t stomach mine, it was stewed beef but it didn’t taste like beef at all. They gave us what we thought was tea but then it turned out that it wasn’t hot and then we saw people washing their hands and putting their cutlery in it. I didn’t touch mine; I still have no idea what it was.

By far the highlight of our journey to Sham Shui Po was the computer arcade. It was multiple levels of computer shops all next to each other and the place was completely packed out. It was quite unbelievable how many people were buying computer gear, media players and video gaming stuff. If I was in the market for building a computer or anything electronic really I would have been in heaven. Things were about 40-50% cheaper when compared to back home I’d say.

On our second day in Hong Kong, RaiderDuck slept in after a 3am close to his poker session while I played mine in the morning. After lunch we caught the train from Mongkok to Central station on Hong Kong Island. We navigated our way from the station, through Statue Square, the gardens and to the tram terminal for the Peak.

The tram climbs a really steep gradient to the top of Victoria Peak, which is a great place to look out over the Hong Kong skyline. Unfortunately, we have barely seen the sun since we got here and today was no different with the haze. The view was still pretty good, but we really couldn’t see much past the first few blocks of Kowloon. It’d be great to go back there at night, especially if it is clear.

At night, we were about to head to the markets when Rohan realised that he was missing about HK$6,000 that he had stashed in his laptop bag. We decided we’d mount a search when we got back from the market. When we returned from shopping at about 11pm we couldn’t find it anywhere so he went and told hotel staff. They sent up two security guys to search our room, they went through our bins, looked under everything and through our bags and stuff. They found nothing went and proceeded to check the garbage and linen that had been removed from our room.

Nothing showed up, so Rohan went to the police station to report it. I’m not really sure what the police stuff achieved, from what I read our travel insurance doesn’t cover stolen cash if it isn’t on your person. He left at about 2am and was there until like 4am. Anyway, they have camera footage of housekeeping being in our room about 20 minutes before we got back from the peak and other than that nobody has been in here. It seems pretty clear where the money went, but there is probably no way to prove it since it is their word against ours. Thankfully, I was carrying most of my money on me and the rest was locked in the safe. Rohan has been giving me grief about being so security conscious; don’t think he will be anymore.

Anyway, we went back to the same markets as the first night and bought a lot more this time. We had dinner in a street restaurant where they were cooking the food outside. Rohan ordered some sea snails, I tried some and they didn’t really have a taste. On the way home we walked through the red light district and got some interesting offers to say the least.