Asia's World City
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2009
1
24
47
Trip End
Jun 25, 2011
Hong Kong,
China
Friday, April 13, 2007
Our trip began with an afternoon spent watching the national sumo tournament in Osaka! I learned a lot about sumo and now understand the more cultural aspects to the sport, and see that it's not only huge men smashing into each other. In the book I'm reading it says, "If you understand sumo, you understand Japan." I could bore you with the rules I learned, but it wouldn't mean anything unless you've actually seen it
01 sumo tournament in osaka
. So back to the real part of my vacation...We left the next morning for the airport and after a 3 hour flight we arrived in warm and sunny Hong Kong!My parents traveled to Hong Kong when I was young and loved it, Lily and Justin both studied abroad there, and Sara traveled there with her family a few years ago. Everyone just raved about it. I knew I was going to love it, and everything everyone said about it was true! First impressions were of a bustling city built on a mountainous island, a beautiful skyline of tall skyscrapers with cool architecture, full of people from all over the world (lots of ex-pats from Britain) speaking many different languages. I felt more at home being in such a diverse city, whereas Japanese cities lack diversity, it was nice not to pointed and stared at for a week! Japan doesn't understand what the 'real world' is like.. Because England had control over Hong Kong until 1997 most people speak pretty good English. That was also, a very refreshing change from Japan. Whenever we ate out at restaurants people seemed to be enjoying themselves, engaging in conversations, laughing and being loud - also very different from Japan.
The day we spent exploring the areas around our hostel, riding on the MTR (very easy to figure out, fast, and cheap!) walked around Causeway Bay, saw "Times Square" and of course sampled lots of delicious Chinese food! I love that there were palm trees on every street, it was really cool being in such a modern city and at the same time being in southeast Asia! We walked around Hong Kong park which was beautiful and right in the middle of the business/financial district. Inside this massive park there was a Tai Chi area, a SARS memorial (people still seemed to get nervous when you cough in public), a bird aviary ( but it was closed to avian flu), a wedding license place, and an Olympic park
02 beginning of the matches
! We were stopped by hordes of Hong Kong middle school students surveying foreigners on their thoughts of the city. It made all of us really sad, because their English was SO good (unlike our students)!! We took an hour long bus to southern part of Hong Kong Island to 'Stanley Market' and walked around shopping for a few hours then worked our way over to Aberdeen for an expensive dinner on one of the famous floating restaurant-literally a huge boat that was turned into a restaurant.Our first day trip was to another nearby island, Lantau. The island isn't nearly as inhabited as Hong Kong Island but it does hold the new airport and new Hong Kong Disney Land! I read they are planning to build a multi-billion dollar prison in the coming years also. So I'm glad we visited the island now before it gets even more built up. After a short ferry ride we hopped on a bus to Tai O a small fishing village, there wasn't much to do except walk around, look at the houses that are built on stilts over water, and browse in the few shops. We did have a good lunch at a very authentic Chinese restaurant, though! We all shared about 6 dishes and tried these HUGE shrimp-like crustaceans.
After lunchwe were on our way to the main attraction on Lantau - the world's largest outdoor seated Buddah
03 this coffee is called "Depresso!" haha
! The weather was cloudy and since the Buddah is located on one of the higher points of the island, it felt like we were literally in the clouds! The fog was moving so fast at times you couldn't even see the Buddah as we hiked up the long set of stairs. At first I was disappointed because we didn't ride the cable car to the top (nothing to see), but it ended up being cool because it made the Buddah seem more mysterious being hidden in the fog. Throughout the rest of the week we were always busy, we did a ton of walking and exploring. I was really happy we had so much time to do/see the things we wanted to. Highlights of the week included:
1. Food! Almost everyone we met when asked what they had been doing in HK replied EATING! We went to lunch one day with Lily's friend from college (who is from Hong Kong and was home on vacation). He took us to a delicious restaurant where I tried dim sum, dumplings and sweet buns for the first time! The waitress also gave us complimentary pigeon and chicken feet as a part of the lunch special!
2. Markets! The second favorite activity for tourists in Hong Kong is shopping! We spent a large amount of time walking around the large number of themed markets throughout the city. There were whole streets devoted entirely to one thing: Gold Fish Street, Dried Seafood Street, Flower Street, Birds Nest St. (real swallows birds nest are a delicacy that's eaten in HK!), Antique St., Sports Shoes St., Temple St. (Men's Market), Ladies Market (clothes, jewelry, shoes, etc..)
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04 the only kind of dorito's in japan :( TACO flav
. Light Show-every night at 8pm there is a light show all across the magnificent skyline. The best spots to view the show are on the opposite side of the harbor on the Kowloon side. We took the famous Star Ferry across (about a 5 minutes ride) and walked along the Avenue of the Stars (monuments to Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan) to find a good spot to sit. At 8:00 on the dot each skyscraper lit up each in a different color of the rainbow. The coolest part was that the show was all synced to music! It was really awesome and lasted about 15 minutes. I liked it so much I went back again later in the week. 4. Hong Kong International Film Festival-While on one of my 93 trips to Starbucks (I had to get my fix!The closest Starbucks to my apartment is 4 hours away!) I picked up a magazine that listed the films showing that week at the Film Festival. I stumbled upon a local director/producer from Hong Kong, and I thought some of his films looked interesting so we all bought tickets to one films premiere. The film was called 'Whispers and Moans' and was about the Hong Kong sex industry. There were lots of people lined up at the convention center waiting for the theater to open so we knew we had picked a good film to see! They had the whole actresses walking down the red carpet deal too which was fun. All the actors/actresses and the Director all introduced themselves on stage and said a bit about their experience making the movie.
5. Victoria's Peak-maybe the most talked about thing-to-do in Hong Kong as a tourist is ride the 100 year old tram up the mountain (at a 45 degree angle too!) to get fantastic panoramic views of the city and surrounding areas. We went up on a cloudy day but it was still great. There are tons of shops, restaurants, a walking trail, and a Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum at the Peak which made for a nice couple of hours
05 first look at HK from the airport bus
. 6. Temple of 10,000 Buddah's at Sha Tin-We took the MTR train a little bit outside the city to a fairly run down temple that gets barely a paragraph of press in any tourist information we found...but Lily had been before and recommended it! The name alone is intriguing - 10,000 Buddahs!? There were never ending steps to reach the actual temple, but the path was lined with large golden buddah's seated on little podiums, each with a different expression and pose. When we finally reached the top we were face to face with the most colorful temple I've ever seen! (Japanese temple complexes are very simple, and not colorful) It was interesting but a little overdone I thought. We hung out at the top for a while and rested from our walk up the stairs.
7. Macau is another Special Administrative Region to China, just like Hong Kong, and is famous for being the oldest Portuguese settlement in Asia and it's casino's! We took a high speed boat to the island and arrived in one hour. The bus to the 'downtown' area took us down the Strip that looked similar to the Las Vegas strip - complete with a lot of the same casino's that you find in Vegas. Believe it or not, in 2006 Macau actually brought in more money than Vegas. We walked around the old down-town area, which felt a little like Europe with its old windy streets and architecture, to the icon of Macau: St.Paul's Cathedral ruins
06 first night in Hong Kong, walking around
. We had a quick look around and then hiked up to the old city fortress which gave us an oh-so spectacular view of the city [see pictures]. Then it was time to hit the casino's!!!As if it was an April Fool's joke (funny thing was it actually was April 1st) our room didn't wake up for the 3 alarms I had set on my cell phone, so we were late meeting Lily and Kendaal for the taxi's she had called to pick us up at 4:30am! I hate being late so this didn't make me happy! Great start to a looong day of traveling. When we got to the airport, Katherine's bag fell and a bottle of nail polish cracked on the airport floor! To top everything off after arriving at 5:30am, we checked-in only to find out our flight would be delayed until 9:30am! At the time it wasn't funny, but at least they had Burger King!
That's about it! There are lots of pictures as I couldn't decide which ones not to include. Enjoy!
