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Published: August 16th 2010
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Today was our day for touring Hong Kong. Our hotel is on the Kowloon Peninsula, north of Hong Kong island and this morning we took the subway underwater to Hong Kong. We got off and searched for Victoria Park, the biggest public park in Hong Kong. Once we found it we walked around inside for about an hour, it's a really big park with trees and jogging paths, a swimming pool, a courtyard, tennis, basketball, and soccer courts. I had my second breakfast in a small restaurant right outside. Some authentic dim sum and beef with rice. We didn't really have a plan for seeing Hong Kong, so we just played it by year. All the locals speak Cantonese and usually they either speak English or Mandarin so either Jie or I can communicate with them. We decided that since we had some time to kill we would go see one of the malls. It turns out the mall was 3 buildings and each was 4 stories! I felt more lost in there then I did my first day in China. Designer store after designer store, over and over. It was definately cool to see such a huge metropolitan mall but
I didn't buy anything, Hong Kong is already really expensive by itself.
The weather wasn't that great. It was raining in Kowloon when we left, we beat the rain to Hong Kong but it eventually caught up to us. The mall was nice cover from the rain but we decided to go out anyways.
After that we did something really stupid - Jie told me there was a fortress on the island so we took the subway to the Fortress Hill stop. Haha, we got out and started looking for the fortress and couldn't find any signs or anything. We finally asked some passing locals, who spoke a little English.
"Hi, do you know where the fortress hill is? We're trying to find it."
"Oh, fortress hill? Subway stop? This way!"
"No no no, the fortress, there's an actual fortress right...?"
"hahahah uh no, there no fortress here."
Haha I felt like Alan from the movie the Hangover - at Caeser's Palace, Las Vegas - "Hey, did the real Caeser live here?"
Anyways, later we decided to go to the Hong Kong Coastal Defense Museum, which was pretty interesting. By then the
rain had stopped and it was really nice and sunny out. The museum was next to a bay, and a lot of the museum items were cannons or other outdoor artifacts so we had a good view of the water and it was located inside a former defense fort. It had a lot of exhibits about the British too, and how after they settled in Hong Kong they added to the defense with more advanced weapons and tactics.
We were starving by the time we saw all the exhibits so we took a taxi to a nice, small street with a lot of restaurants. We ate at a tiny Japanese restaurant and it was delicious! Right outside the restaurant was a small Buddhist temple that we went through. A lot of the temples (including this one) don't let you take pictures. But they do let you walk through and see all the rooms and statues.
We decided to get dinner back in Kowloon, near our hotel. So we took the subway back and walked around the streets outside our hotel, looking for food. We found another restaurant that had the weirdest bathroom I have ever been in. First,
you go through the door "to the bathrooms", but as soon as you enter, you're in the women's restroom.....and there is another door, past all the stalls, which leads to the men's room....
haha well it was interesting I guess.
Anyways, it must've been a successful day because my legs are pretty tired. Tomorrow we fly to Beijing, then immediately back to Nanjing (Jie's hometown), where he'll pack up for our trip back to the United States. I found some cool sights that I didn't see last time I was in Nanjing, so while he's packing, I'm going to take a taxi and see those. I'm hoping we can still see the expo in Shanghai! We just might be able to fit it in on the 18th if we get to Shanghai early enough 😊
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