Hong Kong is one of the most exciting places in the world and you never know what you are going to see around the next corner. Luxury apartment blocks live side by side with old semi-ruins and you can eat at a roadside stall or at a five star restaurant. The streets are full of lights, smells, and noise. I only had a couple of days there and it was not enough.

My arrival in Hong Kong was not auspicious. I had been happily watching a movie on the plane, (the Bridget Jones sequel and very funny), when I suddenly felt very ill and passed out for a few seconds with my head in my husband’s lap. The cabin crew put me at the back of the plane where I could sprawl out over some empty seats. Hubby did his Florence Nightingale bit and soothed my brow with a cold sponge. By the time we reached Hong Kong, I was feeling a lot better but the crew insisted that I was met at the airport with a wheelchair, so I sped through Hong Kong’s wonderfully immense airport on wheels. One of the cabin crew had told me to get myself checked out at the hospital, just to make sure everything was OK.

My husband and I booked into a budget hotel in Kowloon, unbelievably managed by a man named Charlie Chan, (older readers will remember a certain Chinese-American detective).  We took our breakfasts at Delaney’s Irish Bar where American patrons gathered to watch the basketball games.

I duly went to the out patients department at the hospital and told the doctor what had happened on the plane. They hooked me up to an ECG and concluded that I was perfectly fine. I never did find out why I had fainted and I’ve never been ill on a plane since.

One of the best things to do in Hong Kong is to explore the food markets. There were some strange looking fish and vegetables that I couldn’t identify. As we walked round the streets, we came across buildings with bamboo scaffolding. Well, they say bamboo is very strong. The waterfront with its majestic skyscrapers will always stay in my memory, particularly when we saw all the lights twinkle at night. We chanced upon the Chinese Arts and Crafts Centre when we were browsing. This is a high-class shop that stocks mammoth ivory collectibles. Mammoth ivory is legal and the pieces were beautiful with an enormous price tag attached to each one.

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To get out of the crowded streets for a while, we ventured into the hills into the New Territories and visited the grandly named Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery. It’s a long way up the steps to the top of the hill but the view is worth it. Statues of Buddha line the way and there are more of them at the top. In fact, there aren’t 10,000, there are about 13,000. It’s an unusual place and I’m sure that you’ll never see as many Buddhas in one place, anywhere else. They were painted in a gaudy looking gold in a series of different poses.

We were moving on to China, so we had to go to the Foreign Affairs Office to obtain our visas, allowing entry. I anticipated a long wait and mountains of bureaucracy but it was quite painless and relatively quick. It was hard to leave Hong Kong and I would love to return one day.