Round 2 in Hong Kong

Note: The roads in mainland China leave nearly as much to be desired as the toilet facilities. Ouch.

The bus ride back from Yangshuo was better than the one there (mostly due to having a much better designed sleeper bus), but was still a jarring experience. Don't take an overnight bus for that length in the mainland and expect your brain not to be a bit tenderized at the end. I think we topped the bathroom fun this trip with our first in-the-middle-of-nowhere-at-night-without-lights fun. As can be expected, the guys were spoiled and opted to stay out of the building to utilize the moonlight while the women ventured into the unknown abyss. Poor ladies - I mean it. Those things are frightening when you can see where you're stepping.

The net benefit of the bus ride back was very positive, though, as we met up with another pack of friendly Israelis. This time it was three girls who were traveling to Kowloon Hong Kong like us, so we formed a posse and navigated the bus terminal and Lo Wu (though, it was confusing since on the China side, they apparently spell in LoHou) together.

Sarah had discovered mention of a nice sounding place to stay in the SouthEast Asia Lonely Planet (whereas before we used the Hong Kong one) so we made our way to it and were pleasantly surprised to discover that their comment of “immaculate” was dead on. The room is tiny, but it seems very recently updated and is incredibly clean. As an enormous bonus, it has a mini fridge! (Yay for cold water.)

The Hong Kong return agenda was to check-in, clean up (badly needed), have a lunch and head off to the Stanly Dragon Boat races. Like the trip into the mainland, the trip back took about 40% longer than predicted and we ended up getting to the dragon boat races with only 2 hours left. It ended up working out well, though, since honestly they're quite cool, but not necessarily something you want to watch hour after hour of. After the races, we bummed around the market and surrounding area before heading back.

Since we keep seeing signs for “The Spaghetti House” around Hong Kong, we decided to give it a go for dinner before heading back to the room. It was very yummy, but Sarah was sad to find that the Crab Meat and Spinach Cannelloni apparently had mustard in them (strange...) After the yummy dinner, we stopped off for some water/snack/etc. supplies and passed out.