Hong Kong
Trip Start
May 29, 2008
1
64
102
Trip End
Dec 19, 2008
Hong Kong,
China
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The next day we decided to take a ferry ride across the river to see Hong Kong island from the water. We took the Star Ferry across and it was a real nice experience
Delicious
. The city views were fantastic and provided a different perspective. We saw some buildings and areas that we never got from the other perspectives we had in other locations. When we finally arrived, we took a metro ride to a relatively unknown park/garden called Nina Lian Park. This place was absolutely amazing and we were so surprised that we had never heard of it before from people that had traveled to Hong Kong before. It wasn't really marketed too much, but I found it in one of the travel books I was reading. The place had to be one of, if not the most beautiful, gardens we had ever been to. It was immaculate with lush landscaping and intricate plants that well placed and precisely pruned. We had never seen a place like it as it was in the center of a densely populated area of the city. High-rise buildings in the foreground while the mountains were in the background made it a fantastic backdrop to take pictures in as the gardens were the centerpiece. It created a really fabulous contrast. The pictures really don't do it justice. The buildings were well-maintained and looked like they had fresh paint on them, the walkways were clean and winding. They had a tea house on site as well as a vegetarian restaurant that was enclosed by a waterfall. The ponds had huge fish swimming around and the water was extremely clean and free of debris. The red-bridge pagoda was a real cool site as well especially surrounded by the vegetation and ponds. What was also interesting was that Nan Lian Park was developed by the government for the benefit of a nunnery onsite and maintained by the nunnery for $1. We really can't say enough about this place other than the fact that anybody traveling to Hong Kong should not miss it. That evening we decided to make it over to the Avenue of Stars and the Promenade to watch a light show created by lights from all of the skyscraping buildings on the Hong Kong island coast. We started our night at a Tapas restaurant in the Shangri-La hotel
Modern toilet
. The food was really good and surprisingly reasonable considering it was Shangri-La. We sat on a tapas bar window facing the water. We enjoyed our tapas with a modern marvel that we had never seen before - it was a spoon, fork, knive combo or as we coined its name the Sporknife! Patent pending we're sure. Rachel and I need to register that trademark ASAP. The Sporknife (® - coming soon) is a modern marvel that we think will easily rival the iPod as the most significant contribution to man in the 21st century and be almost as vitally important to life as the Pet Rock was in the 80's. Keep it on your radar. After dinner, we walked down the promenade gazing at the nightsky and the building's lights glaze over the water. We took a couple of pics of ourselves and decided to ask an Asian man if he could take a pic of the two of us. We've heard from other people that Asians have a tendency to not take pictures of the focal points in a shot but rather only the people but we had no idea it was that bad until this guy took the shot. I mean seriously. Look at the picture. Yes, we really were hoping that you would focus in on the cumbersome bright orange guardrail instead of the skyline. You really can't find a great looking guardrail like that in any other place in the world other than Hong Kong. I'm really glad we found such a brilliant photographer like him that could capture the most amazing experiences of our lives. At any rate, we lied and told him it was a good shot, thanked him, and gave each other that look with the snicker as we walked away. A little bit further we got to the Avenue of Stars which is similar to the one in Hollywood but with Asian celebrities. We saw Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee hands and a special tributary statue of Bruce Lee. After this we walked further and sat to wait for the light spectacular. The light show was one-of-a-kind as the city somehow synchronized the lights in the vast majority of the skyscrapers on Hong Kong island to create the largest outdoor light show in the world
1-Modern toilet
. It was a very impressive light show. You know, if we wouldn't have known that it was a light show for tourists, we would have thought that all of the companies that had offices in these buildings had karaoke night or something because we would have had no idea what was going on. After the light show, we went to the Felix restaurant at the top of Peninsula hotel. The view from up top was real nice and the décor was super chic but that wasn't why we wanted to go to it. The main attraction here at this restaurant was the bathrooms. We had to see the bathrooms and more specifically the men's urinal. The urinal originally was a glass urinal overlooking the city. You could aim at the building you wanted to piss at on the glass wall and bullseye. For some reason, they changed up the urinal arrangement and when I went in it was ultra-modern urinal receptacle instead of a glass wall. I could only think that they must have pissed someone off from an adjacent building looking in. It was pretty disappointing but still a real cool effect at a bathroom. The last day, we decided to go and see that largest outdoor Buddha in the world at Ngong Ping. We took the cable car called Ngong Ping 360 up to the top of the mountain which had views of Hong Kong, the airport, the ocean below, and a real picturesque view of the mountains housing multiple monk monasteries. We finally arrived to Ngong Ping village and took the trek out the Buddha
2-Modern toilet
. The thing is massive and you have to take 300 stairs up to it. Thereafter, we decided to walk to Wisdom Path to see some ancient Chinese pillars. It was a calming path leading up to the pillars and Rachel could feel herself getting smarterer with each step she took on this Wisdom Path. The end result as a beautiful mountain valley-like area looking down into the sea where they had these large, flat, wooden pillars marked with Chinese symbols arranged in an infinity 8 figure dotted on the mountain side. It was kind of like an Asian Stonehenge to me. Not too many people knew about it. It seemed like there were only Chinese tourists up there, not too many tourists from other parts of the world. It made it that much cooler. At night we decided to go to the Night Market. We stopped in at a cozy restaurant near our hotel called Tea House restaurant. The place was really reasonable as Rachel and I had a glass of really good Chilean white wine for $3. The style was more French than it was Chinese and the English in the menus was coherent which led us to believe the proprietor wasn't Chinese. The food was Chinese though and pretty good Chinese at that. It was Duck, vegetables, and delicious cream corn soup. After that, we headed to the Night Market which was crazy busy. They had everything and anything but the prices were much more expensive than much of the hype would lead you to believe. We went there looking specifically for a cheap watch (we had found a functional watch for $1 in Dubai) and couldn't find any decent watches for under $7
3-Modern toilet
. Yeah, sounds cheap but we're shopping for relative value. We'll wait until we get out of the city to find a $1 watch. By the way, the watch we bought in Dubai was destroyed by a monkey in Thailand that was giving a show at the monkey museum - we had volunteered our watch for the show but didn't know he'd throw it into the bottom of a pool. On our way back to the hotel, I saw a sign that said "Modern Toilet." I was about to think nothing of it, but the sign looked too compellingly attractive to only be advertising an actual bathroom. The pretext to this story is that Rachel had previously heard about Toilet Restaurants in Taiwan where you eat out of toilet bowls and everything is bathroom themed. She thought it was so weird, it'd be fun. She had been looking forever to find a Toilet restaurant in a location we were visiting, but could only find them in Taiwan and Singapore. So I pointed the sign out and we said, what the heck, let's see if it leads to anything. We entered the building and there was a lot of wires and construction going on so we were skeptical until we got to the 3rd floor and *angel noise - aaaaaaahhaaahaaaaaaaaaaa* there it was, The Modern Toilet. Yes, a restaurant devoted to everything bathroom-oriented. The tables were glass covered sinks or claw-tooth bathtubs, the seats were toilets, there were rubber duckies, showerheads over tables with lights in them, and all of the dishes were served in miniature urinals, toilets, sinks, etc. The décor was eclectic and novel. When we arrived, we came out like Japanese tourists seeing the Status of Liberty for the first time, taking pictures left and right, giggling like schoolchildren all the while everyone was eating their meal like they were at a TGI Friday's or out to eat on any other night. The toilet theme seemed commonplace with these people. It was weird, but interesting
4-Modern toilet
. We narrowed our food selection to the foods that were served in the receptacles we wanted. Instead of curry chicken we chose the teryaki beef because it was served in a toilet and just to make sure we asked our waitress and said if it doesn't come in the toilet bowl then we don't want it. Talk about being a discerning patron. Rachel also got kiwi juice in a urinal and we had to order the chocolate ice cream in a poo shape for dessert. The whole thing was one of the most original experiences we've ever had and we were lucky to find it. Apparently, they had just opened a couple of months before in Hong Kong. They were primarily based in Taiwan. We were lucky to be one of the sophisticated world travelers to be privy to something as classy as a toilet restaurant - thanks The Modern Toilet. The unofficial slogan that we made up is "Eat or Get Off the Pot."
