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deepest China was not on my wish list. In fact, going to Hong Kong was a huge step for me, having never undertaken a flight anything longer than 6 hours and with certainly no idea why anyone would even want to visit the Far East. It is simply not normal, is it? With an 11 hour flight looming, I thought I should surely be as mad as a frog in a box and would have to be escorted off the plane in a straight jacket.

But no, I can say it all went off without a hitch. I sat and behaved, ate all the meals I was given, accepted (almost) all the drinks I was offered, watched 5 minutes of every film from the large selection available, stretched my legs as advised and went to sleep when I was supposed to. And when I woke up, I was almost there.

Lantau Island, where the airport and the hotel are located, is a very gentle introduction to Hong Kong. Life is slow, the beaches are golden and the restaurants are the sort where you get to meet and greet your fish before you eat it. You can also tick off items on the tourist itinerary: the largest, seated, bronze Buddha in the world in all his glory and then take a reality check as you peer at fishermen's tiny tin houses constructed on stilts over the water. From Lantau, you also get to jump on a ferry and check out the small neighbouring islands such as Pang Chau, Lamma and Cheung Chau where the use of a map will hardly bother you. Here you can explore, eat, walk, eat some more and start to flex your shopping muscles in the completely un-touristy markets.

For Hong Kong Island and its neighbour Kowloon are full-on shopping. If you have ever dreamt of shopping on a grand scale in the top shops where a white-gloved doorman silently greets you, or haggle in downtown Mong Kok in the denizens of fake everything, then you are in the right place. And you can do it for days on end and still barely scratch the surface. By mid-afternoon I was begging for mercy and of course you can only window-shop for so long. And any new purchases would have to replace existing ones in the already full rucksacks, as we gapper-girls know. But one thing was clear; we needed to move from our beach-side retreat on Lantau and get into the jungle of achingly tall skyscrapers and crowds of people with their vibrant clatter that is the very heartbeat of Hong Kong itself.

Staying at the hotel had been my treat, but now it was time to put Catherine and Paul back on a diet of tough love and let them pay their own way. This meant, quite fairly,

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