The only upsetting thing amidst the tourists, the views and the dragonflies, was my constant need to blow my nose! We walked back down to the harbor, winding through streets and squares crowded with Phillipino women sitting, eating and playing cards. I guess Sunday is the only day they have off and they spend it outside with friends. Then we sailed quickly, but bumpily back to Kowloon on the Star Ferry.

The breeze was divine. We walked up Canton Road to Jordan Road and then on to our new hotel, the West Hotel, which is very nice. At 6 PM we meet up with our tour guide and our new friends and travelmates. Afterwards we went to dinner. When most people travel HongKong, they used to book HongKong tour from a local agent. I have no idea what we ate because the guide, Xin, ordered! But it was tasty and family style. We went to the nearest 7-11 to buy dinner (cup of noodles) for tomorrow on the train and explored the Temple St market with our new friends, Nicola and Rachel.

Actually, this is less true; Tori remembers more, but cares for about as much. The museum was interesting from a curatorial point-of-view. It was interesting to see an Eastern interpretation of a particularly Western art display-format. What was even more interesting was Chinese contemporary artists - of about the same calibre as what you might find at Primavera - meh. It was a good way to while away a few hours and there are some pretty ceramics but if you are looking for important art, this is not a priority. One thing that the gallery did have which was great was the shop. This shop was great. It had everything. Tori is a particularly big fan of Art Gallery shops, good ones, but more often than not, they are crap. A good gallery shop should be choc-full of books. Further, you should be able to get all sorts of fabulous Art related things. This shop did that quite well. Tori could have trawled the shelves for hours. The one down-side to this shop is it introduced Tori to an addiction of epic proportions.

After picking up a nifty book of Chinese symbolism in art (just some light reading), Tori encountered a mysterious collection of boxes. In some gallery shops, sections are devoted to just quirky things - gifts and the like, which make good presents or a feature point in your house. The Hong Kong Gallery Shop had a lot of quirky things, but this was by far the best. You could purchase little boxes with a random collection of tiny (I’m talking millimetres and centimetres here) versions of popular yum cha dishes in plastic. You could also purchase an old-school yum cha trolley to match (about Barbie doll proportions). Oh it was on. One of the most exciting parts of this process is that all the little boxes are identical and its complete luck-of-the-draw as to which dishes you get. Oh, and did we mention the accessories? You get mini steamers, tongs, tea, plates, chopsticks - the works. So, Tori snapped up a box and the yum cha trolley, and proudly took her new purchases home. It began that way, and is now ‘le grande obsession’.

These items are not so popular, and given that all the box is in Chinese, it’s no easy task to find them. So Tori spent the entire rest of our time in Hong Kong (and Japan) looking for them. Next person to go to Hong Kong will have strict instructions to get some more for her. She must have all the dishes, all of them. Mmmm plastic tiny yum cha.

Andrew was extremely crestfallen to discover that it is in fact not just one gigantic escalator (as the name suggests), but a series of large ones, so that you can get off at different points. Now, as a way to get from A to B on a hill, it is a great idea and works well we imagine. As tourists just checking it out, it gets pretty boring, and slanty, pretty quickly. The problem is that once you get on, you, as a tourist feel committed. You need to go the whole way up, regardless of how incredibly tedious the whole exercise actually is.

So about 30 minutes after we started (that’s standing time (we didn’t walk up any of them), we emerged at the very top, on a dull road with ‘escalator legs’ (imagine sea legs but less damp). So - the top. Really not that interesting.

We were in a bit of a pickle, because it was not morning peak, the escalators only go up and being lazy, we had no real intention of walking all the way back down. So instead we formulated what would prove to be an infinitely more insane, more strenuous and in fact down right idiotic plan which we do not recommend anyone replicating. In the daze of having actually experienced something in Hong Kong that was not awesome, we looked at our map and decided that it wasn’t that far to walk to the Peak Tram.

It is a long, miserable and mostly uphill walk, which no basic Lonely Planet map topographically tells you. Curse it, curse it and curse it to hell. It went on and on, in the heat (which is not much better at this altitude) and it’s windy and ugly and ungrateful. When we finally reached the Tram Station, we almost passed out - partially from joy and partially from exhaustion.

Now, we didn’t actually get on the peak tram at the bottom station like normal people either. We managed to walk to one of the fairly unused interim stations. I think even the tram driver was surprised he had to stop to let us on. Boy were we grateful though. What we hadn’t planned on was the (in hindsight, unsurprisingly) full tram and no seats. Now this would normally not be a problem. Oh you, know, it’s like standing on a bus… NOT.

When you get on the Tram the floor is not even flat - it is concaved like waves. At first we had no idea why, but we soon figured it out. The tram steadily arises to a maximum steepness of 48%. This is difficult to stand on. The concaved flooring helps you stay upright, but at first it scares the life out of you. So, having struggled with gravity for a number of minutes we arrived at the Peak; hot, tired, sweaty, with aching legs and an overwhelming desire to kiss solid, flat earth, no matter how high the elevation.

After all that work though it was worth it. We realise that we have been rabbiting on about views and spectacular scenery, and you have probably stopped listening, well too bad. The Peak is awesome. It gives you the best overview of what Hong Kong actually looks like. It is incredible. The city is massive and you get the best idea of it from up there. The Peak features a number of mixed business buildings - where the tram arrives is the major attraction - full of restaurants, shops and bizarrely an EA Games Concept Store (imagine what EA would do if it merged with Apple), among other things. Outside the building (a bit like a shopping centre) there are more viewing points, another shopping centre, a tourist information point (inside an older tram) and a few houses belonging to the ŭber-rich of Hong Kong.

We stood gobsmacked at the view for quite a while. When we finished the few days’ Hong Kong travel we were totally exhausted. We also enjoyed delicious mid-afternoon high altitude Burger King (Andrew: Most inconvenient place to get a Whopper of all time) with enviable views. Our HongKong tours from this travel agent is highly recommended. After a good explore of all the Peak had to offer (which very excitingly included more tiny plastic yum cha, feeding Tori’s addiction further), we reluctantly hopped back on the Tram and headed down the summit, enjoying all the views that we were too shocked to notice on the way up and too busy struggling with gravity to appreciate (this time we had seats - yay!).