Hong Kong

I leave Hong Kong tomorrow. Have had a great time here. I stayed in Kowloon for a few nights and am now in Hong Kong itself. The city is very cool if a little souless, its basically all skyscrapers and shopping. Most of my time has been booked up with travel journalism trips, although a couple of the tours failed to pick me up, but this at least gave me time to explore the city properly. One of the trips was a champagne night cruise of the harbour, which was a press launch, and was funny because everyone on it were just like Hong Kong versions of us lot back home whenever we went on a similar press freebie. They all seemed to have a love-hate relationship with Hong Kong - it's exciting and very happening, but it can also be quite claustraphobic.
The one tour out of Hong Kong really illustrated how the city is expanding. We saw a floating village used by the families of fishermen, who would have been there for generations, but will soon be forced to leave as a gaudy estate of multi-million pound homes - called The Beverly Hills - is being erected nearby and they want somewgere for the people to store their yaughts. All really sad.
Anyway China tomorrow and after one free stay in Beijing it will be a return to good old fashioned backpacking. Looking forward to China. I don't really know what to expect, which is what it's all about. Hopefully I'll still be able to blog as they do have some internet restrictions.