Up and About…. Checkin’ Out Hong Kong
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Well, we’ve been in Hong Kong for over a week now but I don’t really have much to report. The whole first week and a bit were pretty much just visiting relatives because almost everything was still closed for the New Year Holiday. So, we continued our trend of waking up, having lunch with some random family members, going to see a few touristy streets in Hong Kong, meeting up with family for dinner, stuffing our faces until we couldn’t move, and then going home. We continued this for quite a few days.
Finally, we had our last planned dinner with family and we were free to do whatever…. and what did we do? We went to the horse races! I guess in Hong Kong, horse racing is quite big. My relatives here invited us to the Hong Kong Jockey Club for the races so John and I got all spiffed up in formal wear… something quite different than the old rags we’ve been wearing for the past 5 months. I’ve been to the races at Northlands before but this was totally different. We were up in the members’ area where everyone is pimped out in suits and what not… AND we got to go down to the owner’s area to see the horses and the jockeys too. That was pretty cool. In terms of the actual winnings, we didn’t really win big or anything like that. It was fun watching the races and stuff though. It’s amazing how fast the day went by.
We also went up to see the World’s largest bronze Buddha on Lantau Island. That was pretty cool. We got to ride a gondola all the way there so we got to see quite and amazing view of Hong Kong, the island that the airport is on, and Lantau Island. On the island, it was pretty much what it looked like from a distance: A big bronze Buddha. It was quite beautiful and the surroundings (lush green mountains) made it seem quite peaceful even though there were quite a few tourists there. John was a trooper and came for the all vegetarian lunch… which was pretty good… but not great. There wasn’t much else up there other than the temple, some gift shops, and cafes. So, we headed back down and did what we’ve done way too much of out here… shopping. We ended up going back to Kowloon for dinner because we wanted to go to the night market. After dinner, we went to the night market… where we picked up all sorts of things. It was a pretty fun experience. There are fortune tellers of all sorts there… even ones where birds pick out your fortune. There are also really shady characters selling fake name brand watches and loud people calling you to come to their stall. I guess it’s actually not that different than a lot of the markets we’ve been to on this trip… just that everyone is Chinese instead of African or Indian… hehe.
The next day, we found ourselves taking a REALLY steep tram up to “the Peak”… I think it’s actually called Victoria Peak, which is the highest peak in Hong Kong. The weather held out so we got an amazing view of Hong Kong.. and as we walked around the peak, we got an amazing 360 view of everything around Hong Kong. Getting that little bit of excercise was quite refreshing as well.
Ummm, other than that, it’s still just been shopping and chillaxin. I guess that’s all from Hong Kong for now… I have a feeling it will be pretty uneventful for the next couple of days but I will post when we leave for China.
cheng.ev