The day before New Year...

... which I guess makes it Chinese Hogmanay. Tomorrow evening I'm heading over to Kowloon to see the big New Year parade and then the following evening will head over again to watch the fireworks over the island. Did I mention we get 2 days holiday for New Year :-) The festivities go on for several days and end with the lantern festival around the time of the full moon.

I did take some photos of the New Year market where I bought the traditional flowers for my apartment - but have left my camera cable at the office... So here's another photo from The Peak. It shows the IFC Tower on the right hand side and the under construction ICC Tower on the left (across the harbour in Kowloon). You get an idea of how tall the 420m IFC Tower is as you feel it's almost as high as you are when you're on The Peak. The ICC Tower will easily become the tallest bulding in Hong Kong as it will reach 490m.



The top 16 floors of the ICC Tower are going to house the Ritz-Carlton Hotel (not sure what happens if there's a fire alarm!!). The existing hotel, which is next door to the AIG Tower where RBS is based, doesn't generate enough income for its footprint! It closed on 31 January this year and will be demolished with a new skyscraper built in its place. This photo is taken from the Star Ferry and shows the AIG Tower (large building left of centre - RBS has floors 26-30 of 35 floors) and the old darkened Ritz-Carlton to its right. The tall buidling with the triangles is the Bank of China buidling - which was itself Hong Kong's tallest building for a short time.