The flight to Sydney was a little out of the ordinary. About an hour after take-off, an announcement came over the tannoy asking any doctor of medicine on the plane to make himself known to the cabin crew. That was the first time I have ever heard this cliché not on a TV comedy show, and I was mildly concerned that someone was ill, but nothing more was said so I thought no more of it.

Until, half-way through the seven hour journey, all the lights came on in the cabin and the pilot announced that he was sorry to wake us, but that we were diverting to Darwin because the ill person from before needed hospitalisation. Suddenly I realised my connection in Sydney was at risk; it wouldn't have been so bad, only I had a slight concern over the issuing of the ticket to me (LANChile wouldn't do me an e-ticket when I bought my flight online with them) and I knew it would take extra time on what was already a reasonably tight connection. Oh, and of course I was concerned about the well-being of the ill person. Honest.

We duly touched down at Darwin, and hung about on the tarmac for an hour while paperwork was filled out, the patient taken off in an ambulance, another passenger (sat a few seats away from me) was administered oxygen - to be honest, for a while my neighbour & I thought this was the person they were bringing the ambulance for, he was so ashen and near-death-looking - and the plane was refuelled.

As soon as we were underway again, I decided not to fret about missing my connection because there was nothing I could do about it anyway. I couldn't really sleep again though, so I just closed my eyes and listened to music for the remaining hours of the journey. Luckily for me, we had been running ahead of schedule, so even with the delay in Darwin we were only 90 minutes late into Sydney. That left me 45 minutes to get my ticket & boarding pass from the transfer desk. Unfortunately, there was a massive queue at the transfer desk, most of them people in my position. I felt bad pushing to the front of the queue, but when the final boarding call was made for my flight I knew I had to act, so I squeezed past hordes of other disgruntled airline customers to the front. There was just enough time to get all the paperwork sorted and then I ran to my gate.

The LANChile flight was rather less comfortable than when I've done this route with Air New Zealand or Qantas. Perhaps it didn't help that I was knackered from the HK-Sydney leg and the worry of missing the plane. Thankfully it's only a couple of hours, and when I got on to New Zealand soil I felt much better. Perhaps this had something to do with the girls in Duty Free who were handing out free samples of 42 Below vodkas; it was my duty (groan!) to try them all, even the manky feijoa flavoured one that I know I dislike. But I was only being polite... I met Gayle at her office feeling a little giddy, and she dropped me off at the club where Phil (her sister Sharon's partner) works. I had a few beers with Phil, then we went to have dinner in the restaurant area.

Friday 10th (today) was the day that New Zealand's new no smoking in pubs & restaurants law came into effect. Walking in to what used to be a smoky pool hall, the difference was clear. The air quality was much improved, and there was only minimal moaning about having to go outside for a smoke. Just wait until winter!

Phil took me back to his house and I tried to wait for Sharon to come home from work before I fell asleep, but I couldn't. She found me sparko on the sofa, so after a quick hello I retired for the evening. I had lots of sleep to catch up on!

I had a great time on Saturday, with yet more new relatives and friends. Sharon's daughter Melissa came with her Scottish boyfriend Gordon to pick me up and take me to brunch. We picked up a Canadian friend of Melissa's called Shannon and then headed down to Mission Bay, to a delightful café called Riva. This place is run by a Croatian, which explains why they had Yugoslav-style burek (a puff pastry parcel stuffed with yummy curd cheese that I came to love when I was in Belgrade last year) on the menu. We shared a portion of this between us, and each had eggs benedict as well. It was all extremely tasty.

After we'd dropped Shannon off at her flat, we went back to Melissa & Gordon's house and spent the afternoon chatting and having a laugh. Gordon is a keen gardener, both for his work and in his spare time, and their garden is amazing! It's like walking through a botanical reserve (which is apparently one of the reasons they chose this house). Melissa works as a manager of a backpacker place in Auckland. We chuckled when we realised that, had I not stayed with Lynley & Kerry when I first came here, I might well have met Melissa without realising we were related!

It was so nice to spend some time with Melissa & Gordon. They are about my age, and have both travelled plenty in their time. We had lots to talk about and I think similar outlooks on life, and I look forward to meeting with them again.

I joined Sharon & Phil that evening for dinner at a lovely little Italian (run by Bulgarians) suburban restaurant. They dropped me back off at Melissa & Gordon's, where I watched a few movies with Gordon and accompanied him into town to pick up Melissa after her works Xmas do. She was smashed, and so amusingly too! It was quite endearing.

The next morning I went for another wander round their garden, taking pictures of all the plants I liked. There were many pictures. We had a quiet morning / lunchtime, the highlight of which was a super tasty fried breakfast complete with "healthy" fried bread - well, it was bacon fat on one side but extra virgin olive oil on the other, and they cancel out, don't they. In the afternoon we all headed over to Sharon & Phil's for a barbecue. Also there were Phil's daughter Lisa with her partner Nick & two kids, and Sharon's son Ricky (who looks just like his sister, it was uncanny) with his two kids.

After people left, we had a quiet evening. Sharon & Phil both work in the hosptiality industry, in private members' clubs, and this being Xmas party season they're both working long hours at the moment.

The biggest island in Hong Kong after Hong Kong Island itself is Lantau, the one which is host to the new airport. It was this island that Clare & I decided to visit on Tuesday afternoon. We met just after lunch and caught the MTR to Chung Tung, the end of the newest MTR line and the biggest settlement on Lantau. It's a soulless agglomeration of new but cheap blocks of flats, designed as affordable city-centre-ish housing (it only takes half an hour to get to Central).

We didn't hang around there, but immediately set out on a long walk. From Tung Chung we were aiming to walk up 600m of altitude (and several k's of distancitude) to the foot of the world's biggest outdoor bronze seated Buddha image. The walk was good fun, but a bit of a slog through the afternoon heat haze, and not very well signposted.

We were following a sort of map that led us through some of the original fishing villages on Lantau. These had way more character than we could handle, in the form of big scary dogs that growled and barked at us in most menacing ways. Eventually, we found our way past several mini cerberuses to a village square and asked directions of two tiny wizened old ladies, only to discover that they were sending us back exactly the way we had come! We braved the hell hounds once more, hoping that by walking slowly and keeping the crones in sight any angry dog would choose to attack them instead of us. Happily, no-one was mauled that day.

Eventually, with much shortness of breath and sweatiness - and much miserable chuntering on my part, much to the amusement of Clare - we finally reached a point high on the path that afforded a view of our goal: the big bronze buddha. This gave us new strength, and we covered the last half an hour with raised spirits.

The buddha itself stands on a big hill and enjoys a panoramic view over western Lantau, down over the airport and Tung Chung to the north, the central hills to the east, a huge reservoir to the south and the rugged coast to the west. It was built in the 1980s and modelled on buddhas centuries older in central China.

The other buildings in the temple complex were in the typical Chinese style that I was familiar with from Malaysia, with intricately carved wooden gables & pillars and plenty of incense burning everywhere. After a brief walk around we caught a bus down to Mui Wo and went to a Turkish restaurant opposite the ferry terminal. Clare knows the owner, a British Indian, and we had a pleasant evening's chat with him.

The ferry ride back to Central was only 45 minutes, and had some splendid views of Kowloon to port & Hong Kong to starboard. We caught the end of the daily 8pm fireworks & laser show just as we were coming in to dock. And as we were both pretty knackered from the day's exertions, we headed straight home and to bed.

Wednesday was my last full day in Hong Kong, and I had to make the most of it. I met Wai-Chung & Antoinette for lunch, first popping in to their flat to leave a copy of my photos of their wedding with them on Wai-Chung's hard drive. Then we took a bus into Admiralty and walked along some of Hong Kong's elevated pedestrian pathways to a nondescript office building. Hidden away on the ninth floor of this edifice is one of those Hong Kong need-to-know basis restaurants, this one frequented in the main by Customs & Excise staff. We ate a variety of dim sum and had warm tofu & caramel pudding for dessert.

Then, with a brief stop at the post office to buy stamps for postcards, they walked me to the pier from which I could catch a boat over to Tsim Sha Tsui East. We said our farewells, and agreed to try & meet up in Australia during 2005. (Anyone out there reading this, if you're likely to be in Oz at any point in 2005 let me know and we can hopefully meet up!)

Over on the Kowloon side, I walked up from the small pier into Hong Kong's most recent museum district, past the Science Museum and into the History Museum. There was a special exhibition of bronze & lacquerware of the Dian culture, which flourished in western China about 2,000-2,500 years ago. Some of the pieces were truly exquisite: delicately moulded bronze statuettes depicting hunting scenes and other rites, with remarkably life-like animal figures. A popular theme seemed to be tigers attacking bulls, and many of the tableaux were finished off along the bottom with one or two swirly serpents biting something's tail or foot for good measure.

In the evening I made my way back to Clare & Pete's, and after some delicious home-made kebabs there we went over the road to watch some of the horse racing. I am told that more money is wagered on each & every race that takes place here of an evening than is bet on the Grand National in the UK! That's a lot of betting. Needless to say, I didn't win a penny. But it was good fun all the same watching the thousands of people trackside getting so excited and worked up.

Pete went home after that because his knees are still giving him a lot of gip since Sunday's rugby at Stanley Fort, but Clare accompanied me on a little night-time excursion. It was my last night after all, and I really wanted to see some of the snazzy top-floor bars there are in Kowloon. It was strangely reminiscent of being on business trips for me (yes that's right, readers, my erstwhile employers saw fit to allow me to go to some pretty nice bars over the years), I think because normally I wouldn't spend that much of my own money in a cocktail bar. Of course, if it's company money, that's another story...

The views out over the Harbour and across to Hong Kong Island were breathtaking. It's a pity there was no outdoor area; luckily the windows were clean and the lighting in the bar subdued enough to let the neon skyline dominate. A few drinks later we decided to turn in for the night, so we caught a taxi home. I was impressed by how Clare was managing to chat in Cantonese with the taxi driver.

Thursday was most definitely my last day in Hong Kong. I spent the morning packing my bags, and then Clare took me for lunch at a fantastic buffet place in Tsim Sha Tsui. There was all sorts of food on offer, but what most caught my eye was the piles of sushi and the towering mound of desserts. After stuffing our faces well & truly, we waddled out onto the street and then decided to take the weight off our feet somewhere nearby by having a reflexology foot massage.

Just around the corner we found a good place. The girls that were sent over to do us spoke no English, but Clare's Cantonese was good enough for us to be understood - most of the time. There was one point where it seems I said "I have an ache in my testicular area", which was met with peals of tinkling laughter from both masseuses. What I was trying to say was "what part of my body are you referring to when you say 'tong'?" It was only after an emergency phone call to Clare's Cantonese teacher that we realised the girls were asking us if we had any pain ('tong') in any particular area of the foot!

As soon as we got back to Clare & Pete's flat it was time for me to go. I caught a bus back to the airport, checked in, returned my Octopus card (I think they have them in the London Underground too now, only there they're called Oyster), went to the gate, and stepped onto yet another Boeing 747-400.

The Day After. Not as bad as for some weddings I've been to this year (notably Mike Y's!), because there isn't a big tradition of boozing at Chinese weddings. In fact, I felt pretty fresh & lively on Saturday. So much so, in fact, that when Pete suggested I walk the Dragon's Back path to Shek O village I jumped at the chance..

The Dragon's Back is a walking track that ascends the mountainous ridge in the southeastern corner of Hong Kong island and takes you up to the top of Shek O Peak, from where you have a panoramic view over the village of Shek O to the east, the headland of Cape D'Aguilar to the south, Stanley beach to the southwest, Tai Tam Harbour to the west, Shau Kei Wan town peeking at you between the mountaintops to the north, and Big Wave Bay to the northeast. You could quite easily forget you're only minutes away from a metropolis.

It's really downhill from there on, but only geographically. The walk itself is charming, taking you north along the ridgeway, then through long winding tunnels of tree & bush, along the sides of hills and finally down into Big Wave Bay. From there it's a short (well, it would be short, if your feet weren't about to fall off the end of your legs) walk to Shek O and the delights of the Chinese & Thailand Seafood Restaurant: mmm green curry!

I caught the bus back to Causeway Bay, and somehow managed to shuffle up the road to Clare & Pete's flat without collapsing. Sore ankles! Sore toes! But the three-hour walk was well worth it.

On Sunday morning I accompanied Clare to Stanley Fort, where we took advantage of a bit of corporate hospitality given by Pete's employers. It was the Professions Sevens, a rugby 7s tournament featuring teams from banks, lawyers, and companies in Hong Kong. There was food and beer aplenty, and it was a nice sunny day (although there was a bit of a nip in the air, especially later when the sun went down). I met lots of nice people and had a lovely day. The same can't be said of Pete's knees, which I'm sure would rather have been anywhere but on the concrete-hard grass pitch of the army barracks, which they were forced to scrape along on several occasions.

Later on, a bunch of us headed down from the Fort to Stanley proper to grab some more beers. There was hearty singing on the bus, as the gwailos (that's whiteys to you and me) took over the upstairs deck and sang rugby songs all the way down. When we got off, we saw that the downstairs deck was crammed full! But no-one had dared to come and sit anywhere near us. Can't say I blame them really; we were a touch rowdy - not aggressively so, just loudly in a way that could scare you if you didn't know who you were dealing with.

After a couple of beers the three of us jumped in a taxi and went home, giving a lift to an American rugby friend of Pete's - how about that then? I didn't have the faintest inkling that there are people in the States who play rugby, but apparently there's quite an underground rugby movement there on the east coast.

I had a quiet Monday, mostly just reading or checking my mails. I managed to leave the flat on two occasions: once for lunch at a typical Chinese lunchtime noodle place (I impressed myself by ordering an ice tea in Cantonese, and being understood), surrounded by business types on their lunch break; and once in the evening, where I found myself drawn inexorably to a Japanese restaurant that had tasty sashimi and exquisite California maki, not to mention a yummy miso soup and a bizarrely good pumpkin icecream that tasted like Indian kulfi.

Friday 3rd December was the day of Wai-Chung's wedding. Since I was to be one of his "brothers" for the purposes of the day's events, I had to get over to his flat nice & early - in fact at eight in the morning - to be in time to help get things going. I met up with Wai-Chung and the other brothers (Eric the best man, Hah the MC, Bertol & Philip) there, and soon we were on our way to Antoinette's flat to bargain for her hand in marriage.

The first, and possibly most important, function of the brothers of the groom in a Chinese wedding is to participate in the mildly humiliating (for brothers) but immensely amusing (for onlookers) 'tests' that the sisters of the bride impose on the groom and his party. The idea is that the groom must show himself worthy of the bride, in addition to handing over a wadge of bribery money called "lei si". There was a ribbon across the livingroom that symbolically prevented us from entering the house and stealing the bride; we had to stand on one side of it and perform our tasks to the satisfaction of the onlookers on the other side (the bride's family & friends, as well as her "sisters").

The main test was a trivia quiz of details of Antoinette's life (eg what shampoo does she use), the answers to which Wai-Chung invariably got wrong. Our forfeits were mainly food-based: we had to eat various bizarre items, such as a whole slice of lemon, rind included, or a bowl of pretty gross turtle-flavoured bitter herb jelly. We balked at the prospect of eating the wasabi cracker sandwiches the sisters had prepared for us, so in a moment where the girls' attention was distracted Hah nicked the little plate of horror from the table and hid it in the kitchen. As punishment for this act of what the girls saw as cheating, we all had to do ten press-ups as an extra test.

When I took off my jacket to do my set of press-ups, there was much amusement at the prospect of seeing me struggle and twitch like a beached whale. So imagine everyone's surprise when I did my ten and didn't even lose my breath! (I am sure there will be plenty of people reading this who are similarly astonished. But it's true: I can now do press-ups - something I've never been able to do before in my life, ever - because for the last few months I've been training myself to do them, starting with girly knees-to-hands ones and graduating to the real feet-to-hands thing some time ago. I'm quietly impressed with my own performance, but essentially I'm still a bit of a fatty.)

Following a karaoke rendition of Antoinette's favourite Cantopop song first by Wai-Chung and then in a crooning chorus of all the brothers, Antoinette was led out of the bedroom she had been hiding in. She was full of emotion - either that or Wai-Chung's singing had hurt her ears! Next, the traditional tea ceremony was held for Antoinette's immediate family, where Wai-Chung & Antoinette knelt on special red cushions and handed a succession of aunts & uncles special tea.

Then it was time to go to the register office and actually marry them. This lasted all of five minutes, after which we all headed round the corner to a fantastic dim sum restaurant in the Town Hall buildings. There I was presented with dish after succulent dish of random animal parts, including whole chicken's feet, sliced up calf's stomach lining and meatballs of indeterminate provenance. I did my duty and ate one of each, but thankfully there were plenty of other tastier morsels, such as crispy wontons, spring rolls, cannelloni-like prawn noodle tubes and sago & mango pudding.

There were five tables of wedding guests, each seating ten or twelve people. I was sat next to a two-year-old girl and her mother, and I was amazed by the prowess with which the littlun was wielding her chopsticks. We all joked that she had a better technique than me, and the sad thing is it was true!

Next stop was Wai-Chung's flat, for the tea ceremony for his relatives. I think it's a nice tradition that the newlyweds formally seek the blessing of both families. In western weddings the family doesn't really get a look-in, except if the father of the bride gives a speech.

The tea ceremony over, it was time to decamp once more, this time to the venue for the evening's reception, which was being held at the Hong Kong Jockey Club's pavilion in the Happy Valley racecourse - handy for me, because it meant I could walk home that evening. Upon arrival, a horse & carriage were brought forth and a series of photos taken with the newlyweds & sundry guests arranged on and around the carriage. Then we went inside, and for the first time that day we could relax a bit. Most of the guests retired to their hotels for a couple of hours, but the brothers stayed on.

Bertol, it transpires, is a very keen mah-jong player back in Toronto's Chinatown. He was kind enough to teach me & Philip how to play. Just for the record, it's nothing at all like the computer game! It's more like a hand of whist, only with lots of different suits that you can collect sets of three tiles in. And you have to be able to read a minimal amount of Chinese, to work out which tile is which. I picked up the basics of the game without too much difficulty - indeed, when Philip & I played a few games with Eric later in the afternoon, beginner's luck kicked in and I won three games in a row! - but as with any game it's the strategy that will take me years to master. And of course, it being almost exclusively a betting man's game, you have to put your money where your mouth is, which we weren't doing. Something tells me I would be a fool to think I can win a game 'in anger', as it were.

Later in the evening, all the guests from the daytime plus a load more evening guests showed up. In all there were about 200 people there for the sumptuous ten-course dinner banquet (once again, all the Chinese favourite dishes were there, including shark's fin soup and abalone stir-fry), during which Wai-Chung & Antoinette walked from table to table greeting all the guests and wearing different outfits - Antoinette had been wearing a beautiful white wedding dress during the day; now over the course of the evening she wore the white dress, a Chinese traditional red & gold dress, and a lovely blue evening gown. Wai-Chung also had a special Chinese silk gown, but the rest of the time he stuck to his dinner jacket & bow tie.

As is traditional for me, I was one of the last guests to leave. The brothers saw Wai-Chung & Antoinette off in their taxi to their hotel, and then we parted company, each going his own way home.