Hong Kong…

Day 1- The Arrival- July 9th-10th, 2008:

Buildings Buildings Everywhere

After a twelve hour flight from LAX to Seoul, Korea followed by a 3 hour flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, I was ready to hit the town…not. I slept on both flights but I don’t know if that was the best idea. When I got in I found the way from the airport to my hotel Renaissance Kowloon quite easily. I refreshed myself and although I was extremely tired, decided I needed to get out and see something. I started one of the walking tours that I printed out from Frommers and it took be down to the harbor. I saw the clock tower, which was what remained of the old train station, which was right on the Harbor. The harbor was an amazing view. The only drawback was that the weather was foggy, cloudy, and rainy. Pretty much like Seattle but add 300% humidity.
From there I decided to go to Harbour City which was a shopping plaza (kind of) comprised of 700 shops. It was one of the most confusing places I’ve been. You could only access certain floors through certain parts of the building. There was like 3 of every store from Burberry, Chanel, Nike, and tons of other name brand stores. If there is one thing I have learned about the Chinese so far, it’s that they love their designer labels. I decided to have lunch in the most authentic place I could find; Pizza Hut. Definitely a strange experience. I ordered a sunshine pizza which was pepperoni and corn but minus the corn for me. The interesting thing was how the waiters and waitresses worked. One person took your order, a different person brought your drink, another person brought whatever part of your meal came out first and then another would deliver your bill but someone different would return with your change. Plus, they just stared at you the whole time waiting for you to finish your plate so they could take it.

Day 2- Disneyland- July 11th, 2008


Nothing is better than that slice of Americana in a foreign country. Hong Kong Disneyland is pretty much the same as the Disneyland in Anaheim but not as developed. They lack many of the key rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan and others but they did have some awesome ones of their own. There was one called Mickey’s Philharmagic, which was a 3-D show similar to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids show at Disneyland Anaheim but this was better because it had smell a vision and Disney songs. They also had this really cool Lion King show that was in a 360-degree room and the action was in the middle of everyone. It kinda felt like an abridged version of a Broadway musical. We also took a little tutorial on how to draw Daisy Duck in Cantonese, which wasn’t that hard to follow actually.
We decided after Disneyland to head to the largest, outside, sitting, bronze Buddha in the world. There is this gondola experience that you can take that takes you all the way up there because it is on the side of a mountain. It’s called the Ngong Ping 360-degrees. The tourist’s books said it was one of the best things to do in Hong Kong. It closed at 6 and we got there at like 6:05 pm but they still let us go anyways. This had to be one of the scariest fucking things I have ever done in my life. This gondola literally went up the side of the mountain and then when you thought you might be there, it just kept going up and up. It was 30 minutes of hell. This thing had to have been at least 500 feet off the ground. We got so high at the end that we were in the clouds. But we survived it. Unfortunately, because we got there so late we didn’t have time to go all the way up to see the Buddha because the last bus down the mountain left at 7pm. We just snapped a few pictures and left.


Day 3- Side trip to Macau- July 12th 2008

This was another recommendation that the tour book talked up left and right, I personally wouldn’t recommend it. First, you have to take a ferry out to Macau from Hong Kong, which takes about an hour each way. The map in my book made it look like a small island; we quickly learned how big it was. It is called the Vegas of Southeast Asia. They have a Venetian, Sands, and a bunch of other Casinos. I mainly wanted to go to see the Macau tower because it was on the Amazing Race. Our plan was to see at least 3 to 4 sites because we had about five hours there; we left at 11:45 am and our return ticket was scheduled for 5:45 pm. The very first thing we did was find the largest chandelier in the world in the lobby of the Sands hotel. We headed for one of the things, which I can’t even remember the name of. It was what was left of a church, basically a facade. We were first going to walk and then seeing how big this island was we took a taxi. The best part was that they had these different blow up versions of the Olympic mascots in the front of it (strangely out of place) playing different sports. Really random in my book. We then walked to a bus map we found on one of our maps. There bus system was a lot more confusing than the lovely tourist book pretends it is. We wanted to go to a temple on the southwest corner of the island but instead we rode a bus for 20 minutes to the northern part of the island. We were pretty much pissed by this point. We had to walk to find another bus in the right direction. Another 30 minutes later we arrived at the A-Ma temple. It was very interesting and ornate. They had a lot of characters carved into the rocks surrounding it. By that time it was time to head back to the Ferry terminal. We finally found the right bus at about 5:20pm. By the time we made it back to the ferry it was 5:50 and we missed our ferry. The best part was that they don’t let you change the ticket once the time had passed so we were out another $20. When we got back we had to change hotels to the West Hotel that is the starting part of our tour. But we still have 2 more full days left in Hong Kong.