Tuesday 16th

Today we went to the Peninsula Hotel for afternoon tea. It's very similar to tea at the Ritz in London, very opulent and olde worlde, with teadance music playing quietly in the background. The cutlery is all solid silver, as is the teapot and cake stand, and the crockery all made exclusively for the Peninsula by Tiffany's of New York. The staff are perfectly trained, just passing by to refill the teapot or remove empty plates.

I could really take to that sort of lifestyle!

After our very filling tea, we went to Wan Chai and Causeway Bay just for a look. We also went into the building where N_M's brother manages the gym and went up to the 46th floor for a look, but it was pretty cloudy today. We had a quick catch up with bro. before returning to Kowloon.

With N_M back in Fish Shop Street buying more bits and pieces, I had another wander round the market, picking up bits for Christmas presents. Then we found a market stall selling nail polishes and false nails, and I had a manicure with gorgeous scarlet nail polish, for $60 - less than £4!!

The lady had a great chat with N_M, whose knowledge of the spoken Chinese language never ceases to amaze me. He was doing all the translation bits so that I could have a chat with the lady too. We talked about life in Hong Kong, and how the trend is for girls here to be permanently on diets. We'd already noticed that you see very few tubby girls or women.

She told us that most couples are choosing to have just one child, or in many cases none at all. It is so expensive that both the couple need to work, so the child would have to go into daycare, or have a maid, and they just can't afford it. She and her husband have already decided to have no children, and she works until 11pm each night! In the West, the average number of kids per family is 2.2, in Hong Kong it is 0.7.

And all this from N_M's translating skills - very impressive!