Hong Kong Tonight!

---

Holy crap! Hong Kong was pretty sweet.
We left after a very hectic Friday. There were dozens of loose ends to tie up in New York, including all of the christmas shopping and subsequent shipping of gifts. Not to mention Em had to finish up a few papers and then go take a final. From the final we hopped a train to the airport and arrived just in time to sit there and wait for the plane for an extra hour and a half. Once we got in the air things were fine although our flight route meant we were in for a long trip. First we went from New York to Anchorage, then from Anchorage to Taipei, then from Taipei to Hong Kong. Total travel time was 28.5 hours.
We arrived early in the morning on Sunday. We lost a day on the way there courtesy of the international date line. We also managed to fly in total darkness for the entire trip until just before we landed in Hong Kong. 30+ hours of darkness. It was a little strange to say the least.
Hong Kong is quiet impressive I must say. I love when cities have there on style or charachter and this can definately be said of Hong Kong. The whole city if built straight up. It makes New York look a little squat. The apartment buildings seem to start at around 30 stories and just go up from there. This makes for a high population density, at least in the areas we were, which makes for a rather frantic feeling environment. It actually felt a bit like an ultra clean New York.
Did I mention how spotless the entire city was. No gum on the sidewalks. No trash floating around the streets. The subway was well thought out and immaculate, not to mention reasonably priced. It's always fascinating to see how other cultures handle Urban infastructure and I must say that Hong Kong does an impressive job. I think its probably safer to eat off the ground in the subway there than to touch anything in the New York subway system.
So we checked in to a decent little guest house and went out to get some lunch. Finding guest houses in Hong Kong is difficult because they are tucked away in high rise buildings, often without signs and the buildings are locked or have doormen, so it isnt very easy to get in. I was quite thankful that we had purchased a lonely planet book for Hong Kong otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to find this place.
The room was a bit small and spartan but was relatively reasonable priced. Hong Kong is priced similarily to New York and we were on a budget so saving a bit on accomadotions was essential. Not unlike Bangkok, HK has an obsession with malls and shopping in general so much of our trip was wandering around the city from mall to mall checking things out. The temperature was pretty nice, around 70 during the days and 50s at night, so it was great weather for wandering.
We checked out as much of the city as possible. Alternating between walking and taking the subway. We also took the ferry to an outlying island that had a much slower pace of life and some traditional Chinese houses and shops. Not to mention a mini-great wall that was really just a stone walkway that went around a couple miles of the island. It was cool though as there was tons of nature which was a nice little respite from smoggy HK.
Enough typing for now. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

---

Comments

[Julie]

Love the Blog
Funny! I mini great wall! :-) Glad you had a great time! You'll have to give us tips for our trip there someday.