We went back to Mong Kok train station which is just down the block from Sincere House, the building our guest house is in. (7th floor..)

We got tickets to Tsim Sha Tsui and picked up some Chinese bakery treats from a place with a Japanese name which escapes me now, possibly the after effects of the pork floss and cheese coated bun I ate for breakfast. Cheap and filling enough to keep us going, a couple of these snacks set us back less than $20HKD, ensuring we’d be able to afford lunch.

We made our way to the museum and had a look around.

There was a collection of installation works focusing on human hair.

Yep. Hair. Hair as subject, hair as medium.
Difficult to describe, really. Fortunately they allow photography, so long as you Do The Right Thing and keep the flash turned off. No problem.

Of particular interest was a hall, of sorts, made from big sheets of woven hair, hung as walls, draped as ceiling. Each sheet was woven from hair collected from all around the world, and detailed with twisted nonsense characters made out in various styles to resemble Chinese, English and Arabic, amongst others. In the centre of the hall Ming Dyntasty style furniture, with the seats of the chairs cut out to accomodate the picture tubes of television monitors, each displaying footage of clouds drifting past. Way cool.

Also of note, an L-shaped room filled with tiny slippers made out of hair. Eerie. Check it:

Apparently New York was the city that never sleeps, but after we made our way from Hong Kong airport to Kowloon Island by bus and taxi, under Lili’s excellent guidance, late last night, finally rocking up to our hotel after midnight, I was questioning whether the big apple really deserves the title.

Crowded streets full of trendily dressed people, and neon-lit shopfronts assaulted our senses as we left the hotel to buy a bottle of water for tooth-cleaning purposes, while our bodies protested under the burden of jet lag. This on a regular Wednesday night. Puts our major cities to shame.

But Hong Kong does sleep, eventually, and when it does it doesn’t bother waking up until around midday, as we were disappointed to discover this morning, leaving our guest house at a fairly respectable 9:00am in search of food. We had trouble finding anywhere really open for business until 11:00, though some satisfying pork congee did tide us over until then.

My addiction directed us after that. Seeking out somewhere that promised coffee, I selected from the guidebook, and we took the train to near the harbour, finally ending up at a disappointing place that served milky coffee which only seemed to increase the vague pressure in my head. I’m going to have to break the habit I’m afraid.

The rest of the day was spent more or less wandering around. Food and drink here and there, whenever our stomachs weren’t full to bursting. We’re still exhausted from the leadup to departure, as well as the flight, which didn’t really provide much opportunity for comfortable sleep.

Standard economy class gripes aside though, the flight with Virgin Atlantic was good. Free booze, bland hypoallergenic meals, and after I signed a waiver stating that they would be taking no responsibility for peanut content on the plane, they even announced that a peanut allergic person was flying and would people please refrain from eating any peanut products they may have brought on board.

My initial impressions of Hong Kong are difficult to nail down. There’s obviously a lot of money here, and it’d be a shopper’s heaven. The food has been a mixture of okay and bland, while the scenery is a blend of overwhelmingly towering buildings and, through the humid haze, mountains in the distance, when the view isn’t obscured by the dirty, airconditioner-studded sides of the standard white-finished apartment blocks which seem to be the standard here.

The streets are something out of Blade Runner, those apartment buildings reaching into the sky, with steel and glass skyscrapers dominating those, and a canopy of coloured lights and advertising suspended above the busy streets. Food vendors are fairly sparse, with fried meatstuffs taking pride of place. Some fantastic looking orange tenticles pierced and threaded multiple times on a skewer are tempting, but equally daunting, and perhaps best left for the end of the trip when our stomachs have been hardened by weeks of budget meals on the mainland.

It doesn’t really feell like we’re here yet, and it is difficult to believe it’ll really be three months before we have to go back. Still, it feels like an age since we were in Sydney, and I don’t think it will take long to get back into the travelling groove.