Today (Monday) started out really well. I walked to work, got stuff done at work and was all set to stay late and write reports when I found out my lodger in my apartment in the UK has moved out. Yes, moved out. Apparently she emailed me noticed on 1st December but I haven’t received anything. This is the first I’ve heard about it, and only because I texted her asking where the rent was. Gah!

My first instinct was to go out for food and drinks with friends in order to complain and bitch about the whole situation and what an awful lodger she’s been the entire time she’s lived there. However, I remembered my challenge and that I have a couple (or five) bottles of wine at home. Instead, I posted an ad for my apartment (which cost 324.6rmb), got a taxi home (much too cold and wet to walk, even from the bus station), then poured myself a nice large glass of merlot. It was tempting to just say ‘sod it’ and order pizza, as I really wasn’t in the mood for cooking, but instead I raided the cupboard, chucked out a few things that were way out of date (best before 2015!), and went for the good old classic tomato soup (from M&S in HK). 

A nice glass of wine and bowl of soup (with added cheese) soon warmed me up, and a few messages to my sister and a video call to my parents made me feel much better. 

It’s amazing how quickly we turn to material things to comfort us when angry, stressed or upset. I wonder where that comes from originally?

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It’s now Sunday and this has turned out to be a very expensive week compared to last week! I still haven’t bought any ‘stuff’, so that’s good at least, but I have eaten out four times (twice today), and for some reason had to top my phone up again (200rmb).

The other two times were for my flatmate’s birthday: one on Thursday which was her actual birthday (144.4rmb), and one on Saturday which was the official night out with a group of us (237.7rmb). This was followed by a few drinks at one of the regular places we go to (120rmb) and of course a taxi home (23rmb).

I spent today in Hong Kong meeting two different friends, one for lunch and the other for dinner. My usual thing when I go to HK is to buy lots of lovely food from M&S. However, this time I didn’t buy anything, even though I went in the store not just once, but twice! Once with each friend – the first is American and hadn’t heard of M&S but is now a convert; the second is British and was trying to persuade me to buy something, but I managed to resist. 

The first expense of the day, other than getting to HK was lunch. After a bit of a detour to a restaurant that turned out to not have much choice of veggie food, we went to a really good Mexican in Wan Chai for lunch (Agave, not Coyote, which is almost opposite). Eating out at Western restaurants in HK is always expensive, and this was no exception at a total of HK$551 (about £51) for 2 main meals, 2 soft drinks and chips with salsa. I ended up paying only HK$190 though as my friend insisted she’d eaten all the chips and salsa so I had to pay less. 

After lunch we took a short metro ride to Admiralty station where we went to Hong Kong Park and the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware (free admission), which actually had some really interesting information about Chinese tea and the tea ware to go with it dating back to about 1100BC. We then had a wander around the park, which is really lovely if you haven’t been, then went and found a cafe in the nearby shopping mall for a short sit down and a cuppa (HK$38).

After this my friend headed to her hostel for an early night as she’d just flown in this morning ridiculously early, and is only in HK for two days. I went in the opposite direction to meet my other friend who lives in HK. As neither of us were particularly hungry we ended up deciding to have dessert for dinner at a place called ‘Sweetish’ by Honeymoon Cafe, a well-known dessert cafe in Asia. My friend recommended I try a specialty of the place, and I’m always willing to try new things (within reason!), so I had mango pomelo sago soup (which is cold). Strange sounding to us foreigners, I know, but it was actually really good. I’d never had a sweet soup before. It was kind of like eating melted mango ice cream. I would definitely have it again, and try other dessert soups. 

We wandered around the shopping mall chatting some more before I had to head back to the metro to catch the last-but-one train back to the border. My final spend of this week was for the taxi home, the reasonable sum of 19.5rmb.

The final total for this week is 1163.5rmb plus HK$536.1 (some of which I already had in cash left over from my last HK trip, the rest I got out of my HK account), which is a total of about £181 – almost six times what I spent last week! On the plus side, I didn’t buy any ‘stuff’ and I resisted the urge to buy really tasty but unnecessary food from M&S, which probably made it my cheapest trip to HK ever. Next week will hopefully be cheaper!