Hong Kong Highlights

Hong Kong was excellent. Man, we had ourselves a time! Now prepare for a large and in charge photodump.


On the plane from Beijing to Hong Kong..that there's some mountainous China below.


grabbing a couple of free plane beers


We made it! HELL YEA! Here's the beautiful HK skyline along the harbor.




On the Avenue of Stars, which is just like the one in Hollywood, but with a whole lotta Asians.






Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yun Fat.. OH MY.


Later that night, we stumbled upon the dress rehearsal for the next day's New Years Parade. Or so we thought...maybe we really stumbled upon a commune of pod people and were lucky to get out alive, and semi-conscious!
Now, onto the next day.. We decided to make it up to the Big Buddha man (Tian Tan Buddha) on the top of a mountain on Lantau Island. Little did we know going to see this Buddha was the number 1 activity of everyone in China and 18 of their relatives. Oh yea, they flew themselves over just to stand in front of us in line for about 89239023 hours. Well, maybe 3. We sure waited a long time, but I guess it was worth it in the end.




It already felt worth it when we made it to Lai King station. LAI KINGS UNITE!


After 3 hours of solid patience, we finally made it to the front of the line. About to embark up the mountain on a thrilling cable car ride..




Quite the steep drop!




There's that Buddha we've been longing to see.




Let me just reiterate how much I LOVE my sweet camera.




Well, aren't we just cute?
We were pretty exhausted after the Buddha trip. My Dad always said standing in one place is way worse than walking for hours and hours, and it turns out he wasn't lying. Our feet were in mortal pain by the end of our trek to see Mr. Buddha. Standing in that line pretty much did us in, in terms of energy levels and tolerance for walking/standing/being upright in any way. After that, we really enjoyed cab rides and chairs.

We wanted to see Victoria Peak the next day, but after scoping out a similarly terrible line situation to get onto the tram that takes you up the mountain, we opted for a cab. Not quite as charming or scenic, but once again, F standing in lines. Plus, once we made it to the top, we realized it's just a shopping mall with a terrible food court and a so-so view. Glad we went for the seated, instant gratification option on that one.




At the top.


Random "year of the rabbit" photo op.
After checking out the Peak, we decided to cab it again (thank mercy) to Stanley Market, one of Hong Kong's famous touristy attractions. In addition to the many shopping opportunities, we found some sweet rocks to take pictures on, some really cute dogs walking around, and an overall nice place to relax with a beer.














I ♥ Stanley.
After a relaxing afternoon of people watching, Kinder chocolate eating, and ewok dog coveting, we wanted to head back to our hostel (Hop Inn) to reconvene with Nuala, who had been sleeping off a late night out. Unfortunately, we missed our ferry by minutes due to the fireworks show which was going to be set off from the harbor itself. Blast! We wanted to watch the show from the other side of the harbor with Nuala, but there we were...stuck (didn't know how big of a theme that would become on the trip)! But ALAS! What did we find???? Drumroll, please.


The Power.
The Glory.
The Pirate.
Yes, folks, this beer is 8.5% of pure piratey PASSION. And they were like a buck each. SCORE! Suffice it to say, we managed to occupy ourselves despite logistical mishaps.


Arr, the life of a pirate for me!
Anyways, we knew trying to meet up with Nuala was a moot point since it had now been so long since our meetup time and none of us had phones. We decided to check out Temple Street Night Market and see what kind of goods they had available.


Cassie = FEELING IT




Some awesome signage.
Some of the stuff out for sale was amusing, but I didn't buy anything. Cassie and I did, however, get to see some action from the fake designer bag guys. It was pretty impressive. Imagine a mix of women from around the world shouting over Louis Vuitton bags and wallets (I saw them...they looked so real they might have really "fallen" off the back of the delivery truck). Then, when the scene gets a little too hot, the guys pack everything up back into black, plastic bags and tell us all to come back in half an hour. Very intriguing, indeed.

Shortly thereafter, we had our only yummy Chinese food experience in Hong Kong. We sat down to eat at an outdoor restaurant and ordered a plethora of fried noodles, soups, rolls, and bits of chicken. It was delicious, but don't expect Cassie to remember any of it. The Pirate will do that to you, matey.

Onto the next day...our last full day. We decided to take a day trip (so we thought) to nearby Macau to see what the former Portugese colony had to offer. We went to the ferry terminal early in the day to get tickets and were able to get a departure at 2pm. We were told to get our return tickets upon arrival in Macau (ha). We had several hours to kill, so we went to Kowloon Park to relax and take in the rare (to us lucky residents of Korea) joy of open spaces, greenery, and pretty flowers.












It was really nice to spend a couple of hours walking around a beautiful park and taking pictures alongside the hobbyists out there with their backdrops and water spray bottles. After not too long, it was time to go back to the ferry terminal and get ourselves to Macau!

After an amusing ferry ride (Cassie made friends with a Chinese boy), we made it to Macau, got our passports stamped again, and went to buy our return tickets for later in the day....only to realize that they're all sold out. Until 7am the next day. Scheisse. Unfortunately we couldn't quite swing the private helicopter ride back to HK, so we tried to prepare ourselves for a homeless night in Macau. It wasn't too bad at first. We hired a driver to show us the sights for a couple of hours until it got dark.


Cassie's bff










Macau's non-casino sights. The last one is the front wall of a cathedral, the ruins of St. Paul's, that burnt down too many times to keep being rebuilt. I guess enough is enough.
Our Macau experience really wasn't that bad until then, when we realized oh hey, aside from the couple of sights we just saw, Macau only has casinos. Huge casino after ridiculously huge casino. Our tour ended at the Venetian, where we quickly realized that we had nothing at all to do, since most of us had no interest in gambling, being short enough on money as it was. We had a meal at an Irish pub and plotted ways to make it through the night. It was only 8pm and I was already tired. Danger! We decided to go across to the Hard Rock for a change of scenery and a few cocktails (I discovered that I'm basically a senior citizen because I really enjoyed my Tom Collins). We managed to milk that place until around midnight and then they started closing up shop. We heard from a few locals that there was a karaoke bar not too far away, so we decided to give it a shot. Well, I can now say that I've sung karaoke for a Chinese audience. This venue only brought us to 2am, and we had plenty more hours to go. We left the awkward karaoke place and went to a restaurant to get some late night, last chance Chinese food. Oh dear lord. Words can't even describe the nastiness of this meal. Let's just say there were chunks of random pig flesh (except it was more bone than anything else), with skin and all, maybe trotters? And there was the worst tasting soup I've ever experienced. We think it was Birds Nest Soup. I don't even know, but it looked and tasted like bloody vinegar. With chunks. After this "meal" I think everyone wanted to just get to the terminal and wait, and not think about food ever again. We found the coziest bit of concrete floor available, curled up and tried to get a bit of shut eye before getting on the ferry. It wasn't so terrible in the end. At the very least, it was yet another bonding experience that we won't soon forget! Thanks, everyone, for a great trip.

There are even more photos of our HK extravaganza here.