Honkers!

So. Hong Kong. The big move.  Been wanting to (some time) move here for years and now that it finally happened I spent my first day thinking 'Aaaargh... Someone please remind me why I wanted this?!'  But luckily that was mainly my lack of sleep talking. We're now on day five and I am truly happy the man and I decided to come here.

First of all: it's cold. We had to ask reception for a heater. Apparently Sunday was the coldest day in 59 years. And we're kinda lucky: in other parts of Asia things were much worse. Tomorrow should be better and I am looking forward to not having to shiver in my summer coat.

Second: food. So many options here. We had fantastic fried rice at a very random restaurant in Kowloon, stumbled upon a roast goose resto that happened to have a Michelin star (sharing tables, food served within five minutes and main under a tenner, not your average 1* restaurant) and had some fantastic sushi. The choices are endless and I can't wait to further explore all HK has to offer food wise.

Then of course we need a roof over our head. We're currently staying at 2 MacDonnell Road, a serviced apartment in the Mid Levels. Thanks to an upgrade we have 60sqm which is pretty big for local standards. In a week we have to pay for accommodation ourselves and we'll move to a serviced apartment in Fortress Hill, an area a bit east of the center. We'll swap the big rooms for a 40sqm apartment and the amazing view of the island's sky scrapers for a wee bit of harbour but we'l be in a much livelier neighbourhood and the apartment itself is very nice. Plus it has a rooftop terrace that all the residents can use. Nice!

Most of our days so far were spent apartment hunting. The sister in law of a friend of mine is a HK estate agent and she's awesome. She showed us loads of different places in different areas and also suggested we'd try Kowloon when we had asked her to find us something on the island. And though we will still view two more apartments on the island, we really liked the southern bit of Kowloon, TST (or Tsim Sha Tsui). More Chinese, cheaper and some great condos. We might just end up with a very decent sized apartment with a gym and infinity pool on the premises and view of the harbour. Not too shabby!

And finally: I've never seen so many people look at their phones when walking. Pretty annoying as they really really really slow down and Chinese aren't the fastest walkers to begin with. So when I was looking at google maps while walking, I made sure to keep my pace. Which I did. Just straight into a pole. Ouch. My arm is still blue. The locals might have a point....