Hong Kong!

Alba, Manena, and I were in Hong Kong from Thursday, March 27^th until Sunday, March 30^th.

We all went out Wednesday night to our usual club. I think everyone was already starting to feel like our time here is getting short so we made an effort to get a lot of people to go to the same place. There was a huge crowd of exchange students so it was a really fun night. When they turned on the lights and played the last song we all joined into a giant group hug so that was pretty cute. Then the French guys started obnoxiously singing their anthem and the guards were trying to clear out the club so we finally left. We didn’t get back to the apartment until about 4am and our flight to HK left at 6:30am! So we finished our packing, grabbed something to eat, and headed straight to the airport without sleeping. Luckily the flight is 3 hours so we got a little nap then.

Thursday – We arrived at about 10am and went to find our hostel. It was a great location on Kowloon but was of course tiny given our tight budget. (just an FYI: all of hong kong includes Hong Kong Island and Lantau Island, then Kowloon and New Territories which are connected to mainland China.) We had lunch then headed for the giant Buddha statue on Lantau Island. We took cable cars to get there which I expected to be a 5 minute waste of money but actually it was really nice. The Statue is kind of in the middle of nowhere on a mountain. So it’s about a 15 minute ride really high in the air going over the water and green-covered mountains. I didn’t expect to see so much green in HK so we enjoyed it. We assumed it was the biggest Buddha statue in existence since everyone always calls it the “giant” Buddha. Though when reading the Lonely Planet we read that actually it’s only the largest outdoor, sitting, bronze Buddha. We laughed a lot when Alba said “what if it’s the only outdoor, sitting, bronze, budda statue?!” Either way, it was enormous and impressive.

Afterwards we headed to Hong Kong island. We took the “peak tram” up to the top of Victoria Peak. This is the highest point in HK and the tram goes at 45 degrees all the way up. This is where all of the typical skyline shots you see of the city are taken. It was a bit foggy but we took some good pictures then headed back down. (below is a random picture of the Calvin Klein ad that took up the entire side of a skyscraper! we loved it! The middle two area at Victoria Peak an the last is by the Bank of China)

A girl from Alba and Manena’s university in Spain is studying in Hong Kong this semester so they had told her we would be coming. Her name is Sue and they were only acquaintances back in Spain but she was so nice and determined to show us around the city! So we met her for dinner at a Malaysian restaurant. We planned to just have dinner and a drink but it ended up being a much more eventful night. After dinner Sue took us to an area called Lan Kwai Fong where there are a bunch of bars and clubs. There was a huge international rugby tournament in HK that weekend so the city was even more packed than normal. Foreigners were everywhere. The streets were closed off from cars and so packed with people we had to hold hands and just push our way through the mob. She took us to a place that has an ice bar. It’s obviously really cold in there so they provide ridiculous, oversized, fur coats for us to wear. We did quite a bit of picture taking.

After a while we headed to a nicer bar up the street where it wasn’t so chaotic. We stayed here until 2 or 3am just talking and hanging out. We left and were considering going home, but we decided to stop in another bar that we passed by for a last drink. Turns out they had a live cover band that we fell in love with and a small dance floor. The bar really started to die down around 4ish and pretty soon we were basically the only people dancing. But for some reason we were extremely enthusiastic about this band and were acting as if we were at a rock concert and this kept the place going. They loved us as well, the singers kept kneeling down with the microphone and having us sing with them. The guitarist was incredible. The band finally stopped and kicked us out just after 6am. We didn’t get to bed until about 7am. Since we didn’t sleep the night before other than on the plane, this was quite a ridiculous decision on our part!

Friday – We let ourselves sleep in until about 11:30 then headed for Disneyland! The HK Disneyland is smaller than the ones in the US and has been losing money ever since it opened so it’s not exactly a must-see in the city. But, Manena had her heart set on going and forced Alba and me to agree. We were happy she did though because we ended up having a really great time! We got ourselves psyched up the night before so we arrived probably more excited than the little kids. Before anything else, we all bought matching Minnie Mouse ears and wore them the rest of the day. We went on all of the typical rides like the teacups and space mountain and watched the parade. We went to the show “The Golden Mickeys” and stayed until the fireworks show at the end of the night.

The subway ride back to our hostel took about 30 minutes, and it was pretty busy so there were no available seats, so we just sat on the floor. I’m not sure what subways are like in the U.S. but in my 4 months living in Asia I’ve never seen someone sitting on the floor of one so we got a few stares, but we were too exhausted to stand. And we were still wearing our Minnie ears and all ended up falling asleep on each other’s shoulders. We looked like 5 year olds. Anyway, we did meet Sue for dinner and she introduced us to a few of her exchange student friends at a bar afterwards, but we were so tired we left pretty early to get some sleep.

Saturday – This was our biggest day of exploring the city. Random fact: here it’s considered common courtesy to wear a surgical mask if you have a cold in order to not infect others. At first when seeing people wearing the masks we thought maybe it was to protect themselves from the high pollution in the city…then we saw signs in the subway station instructing people to follow this courtesy. Anyway...we met Sue early and went to a big mall to have some breakfast. We then headed to a temple on Kowloon. When we got there we noticed everyone kneeling on the ground and shaking a can with wooden sticks in it. We asked someone and found out it’s a way of telling your fortune. You ask a question in your head, then shake the can of popsicle-like sticks until one falls out. Each stick has a number on it. There are books where you can look up the number and get the answer to you question, but they’re obviously very broad since the answer has to apply to any question. Or, there are a bunch of little stands with “fortune tellers” and you can pay to have them hear your question and see the number you got and interpret a more specific answer for you. We knew it would be a joke but it was only a couple dollars so we all did it anyway. Based on the answers we got it was obvious the guy just made everything up, but it was fun.

We then planned to take a 45 minute boat ride that goes up and down between Kowloon and Hong Kong island, but we were running late and it was pulling out just as we got to the station. We didn’t want to wait an hour for the next one, so we just took the 10 minute ferry across that is just a form of transportation rather than a tour. It was nice and about 1/50^th of the price of the tour boat. We wanted to tour Kowloon more so we just turned around and took the ferry back across right away!

We then walked around the higher class shopping area. They only let a certain number of people at a time in some stores so there was like 35 people waiting in line outside Louis Vuitton! (I’m sure they have that in some U.S. cities too but I don’t go to those stores so it was the first time I’ve seen that!) HK is obsessed with lights, so we took plenty of pictures on the streets covered with lit up billboards and signs.

After lunch we eventually made our way to the ladies’ market. This was very similar to other markets I’ve visited in Asia, except it’s all geared towards women. (though I think most shopping is geared toward women anyway so it wasn’t that different…) So we spent a good amount of time shopping there. We finally headed back down to the tip of Kowloon for the 8pm light show. There’s a street called the Avenue of Stars that goes down the southern edge of Kowloon by the water. The sidewalk has the stars and handprints of Asian celebrities. There’s a long bench going all down the street that’s right on the edge of the water looking over to Hong Kong Island and is the best place to see the skyline. At 8pm every night all of the buildings in the financial district put on a “light show.” It’s set to music that is played on the Avenue of Stars. All of the lights are colorful and flash to the beat of the music. The most impressive building is the Bank of China that has zigzag lights down each side. It’s always notable in HK skyline pictures.

After the light show we headed to the food market. We met Sue’s friend Neil there and had dinner. Afterwards we were planning to go out, but ended up sitting at one calm outdoor bar until like 3am just talking so we never made it to a club.

Sunday – This day we explored Hong Kong Island. We visited the “Times Square” mall, then took the tram (double decker street car) around downtown just to see everything. We took the mid-levels escalator which is the longest, outdoor, covered escalator system in the world (once again, it's much less impressive when they have to have that many adjectives in front of it), operating downhill until 10 am for people going to work, and then operating uphill until midnight. It’s 800 meters long. On the way we stopped off at Hollywood road and the Soho area. Sue was busy in the morning so we met her later to have lunch. Her classes are right downtown so she showed us around as we took pictures of all the skyscrapers. We finally headed to the airport (where Manena misplaced her boarding pass somewhere in the airport and almost missed the flight!) and got home about midnight Sunday.

After getting home late Sunday night, I already left again for Bali Tuesday night! I was there 7 days so I’ll be writing about that trip soon…=)