Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau

After two days in Beijing, I moved on to Hong Kong, where I attended a conference for work. I've been to Hong Kong before, and it remains one of my favourite cities.

It is so well organised, easy to get around, interesting, beautiful, and friendly. Unfortunately, I had a cold, and tried my hardest to overcome it by staying in on the first evening and taking it easy.

Avenue of Stars

Because we were at the conference, and were fed quite excessively at lunch time, our eating schedules were a bit funny and we didn't end up eating out all that often. And I took zero photos of food. But we did get to see a bit. Like the giant rubber ducky floating in the harbour!

After two days of conference in HK, we got on coaches and headed to Guangzhou for another half-day of conference. Again, we were fed a LOT as part of the conference.

North Gate at Sun Yat-Sen University

We had Saturday to look around Guangzhou before heading home. Because we don't speak or understand Chinese, and we hadn't really prepared well for our trip, we asked locals at the conference what we should do. Everyone answered "shopping!" And so we did. It was a little overwhelming, to be honest, because I'm not much of a shopper (nor is my travel companion, I think). But Guangzhou was pretty! It seemed more affluent than Beijing, was easier to get around, and the air was so much clearer!

The Pearl River at night, viewed from my hotel elevator-lobby

We coached back to Hong Kong for a last night. Our flight wasn't until 9pm, so on Sunday we popped over to Macau for a few hours. It was hot. And glitzy. And we wanted to walk around and see a bit, so we had a look at a map and worked out a route that looked interesting.

And it was, at first, but in a "Who lives like this?" sort of way. It was like Asian Las Vegas (having never been to Las Vegas).

But then we came to a beautiful tiled square.

And we followed the beautiful tiled streets...

... until we found Macau's prime attraction, the ruins of St Paul's Cathedral.

It was crowded, and hot, so we got sorbet which was wonderful. Then we got the ferry back, had a shower, and went to the airport.

It's good to be home, even though I went straight back into crazy work mode! Visiting Hong Kong again made me want to take a proper holiday there in the future, spend a bit more time, and see some of the parts I haven't seen yet.