The bus from the airport to the hotel was interesting. The streets are so narrow and the traffic is so busy you are convinced you are going to hit something at any second. What was impressive however was the way the bus driver managed to get a full sized coach into alleyways and side streets so narrow you would think twice about taking a pushbike down them!

I got dropped off at the 'Kowloon Hotel' on Nathan Street. This is the main tourist shopping street in Kowloon and it's called the Golden Mile (although it feels like five miles when you walk down it). You could pretty much pick up anything you wanted down here. It is not hard to see why so many of the shops do so well. None of the owners are held back by any of the pesky drawbacks of capitalism (like honesty, integrity or copyright)! If you could think of a designer label and wanted a really bad copy of it, this was the place to come. I was walking down one section of the street when I saw a big crowd of teenagers hanging around an alleyway. I went over to have a look and found a twenty foot long trestle table stacked a foot deep in CD's with everything you could imagine on them (music, software, films). Two young lads were sat at one end of the table stuffing CD's into cases as fast as they could and adding them to the pile. Each CD cost $10 (just less than a pound) and it would be fair to say they were doing a roaring trade.

After a quick walk, the heat, humidity and the long day started to catch up so I went back to the hotel for a couple of hours sleep. When I woke it was about eight o'clock and it had got dark. I decided to walk down to the harbour and take a look at Hong Kong Island. The hotel room had fierce air conditioning so I had no idea what the temperature outside would be like. I though I better take a jacket in case it had cooled down a bit. I got outside the front door and was almost knocked over by the heat and humidity. I turned straight back to leave the jacket in the room.

The hotel was just over the road from the Hong Kong cultural centre which was on the edge of the harbour, but which obscured the view of Hong Kong Island. I followed the signs to the Star Ferry terminal but found you could look out over the harbour from the roof of the cultural centre. I climbed up some steps and came out on the roof. The view was amazing. There is either a mist from the mountains behind the skyscrapers or it may just be pollution, but it gives a soft haze to all the lights on the buildings. It's is quite mesmerising and I was not the only one who thought so. There were hundreds of people all sat on the benches that ran around the roof (it was a huge building) just staring over at the lights.

I was going to go back to the hotel and go to bed, but the Star Ferry was so close that I decided to 'pop over' and see where it took you to on the other side. It only cost $2.20 (20p) so I could go over and come straight back if there was nothing to see. There were three places you could go to on the other side of the harbour from the terminal. West, Central, or the Convention Centre. Central sounded like it might be in the middle of things so I went there. Unfortunately, Central is the business district so I ended up wandering about between huge skyscrapers at 10 o'clock at night. There was virtually no one about which felt a bit weird so I headed back, caught the ferry and went to bed.

When I woke up the next day I heard a banging outside the hotel window (which was odd as I was on the 11th floor). When I looked out, there were half a dozen men in a cage suspended from a crane doing something to the windows. Not quite what you expect first thing in the morning, but everywhere you look, there are new building being put up and old ones being fixed up. It is amazing to see the Chinese building techniques. There was a skyscraper being built near the waterfront on Hong Kong Island. It must have been thirty or forty floors high, but they still use bamboo scaffolding held together with plastic string. It looks like a giant lattice work covering the whole building. All they need are a few climbing plants and it could be a giant patio feature.

I decided to go back to Hong Kong Island and check out the shops. I left just after 9 o'clock and headed for the Ferry. This time I went to the Convention Centre which when I looked on a map was much closer to one of the main shopping districts. I got off the ferry and was immediately carried along by the general bustle. The whole place was absolutely packed with people (and this was a Wednesday morning). I somehow managed to end up in the middle of the Convention Centre. I walked round for a while and found a way out (I think the place is set up to try and keep you in). I seemed to be back in another business district and there were not many people around again. I spotted a few shops down a side street and went that way. There were a few more shops down another street leading off this one so I went that way. Suddenly I was in the middle of 'town'.

All the guide books warn you about the manic non stop 24 hour culture of Hong Kong, but they can't adequately explain just how unrelenting the place is. I walked through street after street of shops and never once found a single place to sit down. No benches, no little parks, no green bits, nothing. Just shop after shop packed into tiny little streets. And it's not like you can browse around either. The shops are all about four foot square with two hundred people in each one all shouting and screaming in unbelievably high pitched Chinese voices. After about a couple of hours I just wanted to go, but that was easier said than done. I had walked about all over the place and ended up completely lost. Every building in Hong Kong utilises every last inch of space so they are all high rise. They have shops at street level and flats above (for at least 20 floors). It makes it very hard to get your bearings because you can't see any landmarks anywhere. On top of this the shops seem to be divided into districts. So if you want dim sum for tea, you go to the dim sum district. There you will find a choice of about five hundred tiny shops (which all look identical) and all sell dim sum in one form or another (and they are all packed).

I was totally lost and worst still, I seemed to have wandered away from the touristy shops and had somehow found my way into the bathroom fixtures district. The streets were getting decidedly grotty and I also noticed that all the signs were in Chinese with no English on them. On top of this dozens of tiny Chinese men were carrying full sized bath tubs on little trolleys (a bit like the sort old ladies use to go shopping with). This was causing total traffic chaos and added the delightful sound of car horns being pressed continually for about twenty minutes.

I finally managed to escape by following my nose. I caught an unmistakable whiff of the harbour as I walked into the dead chicken on a spike district. I caught a glimpse of the murky brown water and made a beeline for the sea. This seemed like an excellent plan apart from the fact I came out in the middle of a container port. I am not talking about a little container port like, say Liverpool or Rotterdam. Oh no, you could put Liverpool into one corner of this place and promptly loose it. There were cranes the size of small villages lined up as far as the eye could see loading and unloading more large ships than I have probably ever seen in my life.

There was nothing else for it, I was going to have to head back to the bathroom fixtures district and try again. This time however I kept the smell of the harbour to my right and tried to follow the water front as much as I could. The shops along this part of town were obviously where the locals went shopping. Crates of live chickens, herbal medicine and very peculiar looking vegetables were all very much in evidence. Finally after what seemed like forever I saw the convention Centre again. I didn't look back and headed straight for the air conditioned haven of the tiny McDonalds I had seen the first time I walked through it. Hardly eating the local cuisine I know, but at least I could recognised what I was about to put in my mouth and I could share one of the six inch square tables while I regained some feeling in my feet (and ears). It was only two o'clock but it felt like I had been trapped in the shopping district for the last two months.

I got the ferry back to Kowloon and went back to the Hotel for a lie down and to investigate the fully wired nature of the hotel room (as advertised on the web site, each room had its own internet connection, e-mail and fax facilities). This turned out to be an ancient PC locked inside a cupboard with just a miniature keyboard and trackball sticking out. The whole room seemed to be wired into this, so it was controlling the lights, the air conditioning, the TV, radio, phone and any contact you wanted to make with the hotel staff. I am sure this is a good idea, apart from the fact that I somehow managed to crash the PC and effectively crippled the whole room. One quick re-boot by the bellboy later and I was surfing the net at the speed of ... well treacle really. I think the whole hotel had a single dial up connection shared between the forty thousand rooms they had managed to cram into a building with a floor plan the size of a small semi-detached house, but five hundred floors high. Having said that, the included buffet breakfast was fantastic. As much as you could eat with a choice of everything you could ever think of eating for breakfast plus quite a few things you wouldn't. I never went hungry for the two days I was there.

As I was going to be leaving the next morning I decided now was the time to investigate the possibility of purchasing a nice Rolex watch or two. When I had walked down Nathan Street the night before one or two (hundred) people had enquired if I may be interested in purchasing a top quality copy watch, so this was the place to go. I took most of the money, all my credit cards and all my documents out of my wallet and locked them in the safe and set off from the hotel. Within 20 steps I was approached and asked 'You want copy watch - very god quality', to which I replied 'Yes I do my good man, lead me to your fine establishment from where I may purchase you quality goods'.

The shop turned out to be a curtained off section of alleyway well off the main road. There were four other British tourists in there all being show pictures of various watches and silk shirts. I took a seat and perused the catalogue (there was no sign of any actual watches). I picked out a nice Rolex and asked how much. The man did not want to talk about price until I had seen the quality and so a small boy was dispatched to fetch the goods. He came back with the watch in a plastic bag and the fact that I could hear it rattling as he walked back in was not a good sign. To say it was crap would be an understatement. Still, you can't go to Hong Kong and not buy a fake watch so I asked how much. The man told me that because he liked me, I could have it for $450 dollars (£45). I told him I liked him and I really wanted to do business with him so I would generously offer him $10 (£1). He didn't seem phased and offered me 10% off the price. After a lot of haggling (which I did not enjoy) we settled on $45 dollars (£4.50) (forty for the watch and five as a tip). It was hardly a bargain as the strap is already falling to bits but at least it will make a good souvenir.

After a final look in a few camera shops to confirm that digital video cameras are in fact more expensive in Hong Kong than they are in the UK I headed back to the hotel. Before I stated re-packing my bag, I went down to the harbour for one final look at Hong Kong Island (and to take a few more pictures) and then headed back.

I had to leave at 9 o'clock the next morning to get to the airport for a 1:30pm flight to Singapore. The bus driver once again showed the dexterity of a contortionist as he weaved the coach through seemingly impossible gaps. The road to the airport is obviously a popular building spot (even more so than the rest of the Hong Kong) and there are hundreds of new apartment blocks (thirty to forty stories high) being built along the whole road. The fact that there are mountains covering the whole area does not seem to be a problem. The builders simply carve a flat bit out of the side and stick the building on that. Quite how any of these building can survive a cyclone or worse an earth quake I have no idea.

The plane left on time and it was only a three hour flight to Singapore. I then had three hours to wander around Singapore airport. This was fatal as I was carrying a large amount of unspent Hong Kong dollars. A quick bit of checking at the bureau de change and a few taps on the calculator determined that the exchange rate was rather favourable. An hour later and I was the proud owner of a new watch, a large quantity of Swiss chocolate (for presents) and an assortment of bits and pieces from the computer shop. Another hour and I was on my way to Australia.

Australian immigration and customs could not have been more different to Hong Kong. The initial 'man behind the desk' interview asked why I was here, how long I was staying for, where I was staying, had I been before, what was the purpose of my visit etc, etc. I answered all the questions and he wrote something on my customs declaration form and sent me on my way to security. Before I had taken two steps two more people came up to me (both of whom had been in earshot while I was taking to the man behind the desk) and one of them asked all the same questions again. He then said he was going to hand me over to his collage and he walked off. She then went through the same questions for a third time. Finally she sent me to have my bags x-rayed. They put them through the x-ray machine and then asked if they could search my suitcase as they had seen something suspicious. This didn't bode well as I had my fake Rolex in there, a collection of pirated CDs and all my computer equipment that would not fit in my laptop bag (because that was full of chocolate, empty watch boxes, dongles and work CD's). I opened the suit case and they went straight for ..... four bars of soap that were lined up across the bottom. The woman took one look at them and went, oh it's only soap and closed the suitcase lid. I decided not to make any comments about plastic explosives and zipped it up quickly. I was just about to leave when she asked if I would mind hanging on a second while the sniffer dog checked my bags as well. He seemed very disinterested (obviously not a big chocolate fan) and that was it, I was in Australia.