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Published: January 11th 2007
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Jan 6/ 2007
Well well well....look who it is
Lets start this little blog off with a personal insight into something I have discovered while in Hong Kong.... the air is made out of one part diseal... one part oxygen... and one park peper spray.... enough said for how my eyes and lungs felt while here...
But with that said, I am happy to say that I am in love with Hong Kong... definetly one of my fav cities in the world...almost beating out Paris. This place is alive 24/7, which is perfect for me as small town often bore me (See Guelph, Ontario). The shops here number in the BILLIONS and if you ever needed to obtain a piece of an endangered species, heres the place to find it...and if required..eat it.
We (my parents and I) arrived to a strangly quiet airport which is at the very least 4 times bigger then pearson international airport in toronto. And wouldnt you know it...right off the bat we were being scamed by a taxi driver who was asking for 70 HK dollars more then what was expected to reach our hotel... luckily my dad figured this out
and we gave the guy the boot. Arriving at our hotel I began to realize that space is the most precious commodity in this country, as every corner was rammed with shops and apartments which were larger then I had ever seen before... But as i discovered once i opened our hotel room door...rooms themselves are way beyond small. After a 20 hour flight to Hong Kong we all decided that we needed to get out and stretch our legs, with a walk to the harbour several km from our hotel. Our walk led us through market after market of counterfit goods which we made sure to check out...but as we walked closer to the harbour the prices increased and markets were replaced with stores featuring Prodda(I dont know how to spell it) Columbia and Verccai. The harbour itself was sweet and the view was amazing and our first day was finished with a ride on the star ferry, which took us around the harbour and gave us a great view of the skyscrapers surrounding the water.
Jan 7/ 2007
Lesson of the day... Birds should not be kept in cages smaller then a shoe box
After
a nice 12 hour sleep, we went to a local bird and flower market... definetly the highlight of the day. I could not believe how many birds could be kept is such small cages... There were hundreds of bird cages stacked like cans of soup throughout the market for dirt cheap prices... which made me wonder what people wanted them for...KFC anyone? Once we had seen all the birds we could... we made our way over to Hong Kong Island via the subway... which easily put Toronto's to shame (imposible you say?) It is by far the easiest system i have ever used, which was a must as there were thousands of people pushing past us. Once in Hong Kong we were again met with more shops... and thats when a much needed question needed to be answered... why are HALF (SERIOUSLY HALF) of all the shops in Hong Kong and Kowloon watch shops? could this be a fetish I pondered or have the chinese begun to take part in body motification and grafted a third wrist somewhere on their body? I am sure no answer will justify this strange occurance...but at least i got to see alot of watches.
WE then grabbed the worlds longest escalator... which until this point i had never heard of.. This outdoor escalotor was huge... like 10 or 15 kms longs and cut through the city. This escalot was to take us a tram that goes to the top of victoria hill which overlooks Hong Kong...but no.. it took us several km from this tram as we soon discovered and gave us a nice little 2 hours walk on the side of a busy road...sweet!
The tram to the top of Vic mountain was sooo cool... going up at a 60 degree angle the tram allowed us to see the harbour as dusk arrived. Once we arrived at the top we were greeted with an even better view of the harbour as the lights on the skyscrappers began to turn on... most of my photos of this did not turn out so i will put on the least crappy.
Jan 8/ 2007
I had watched an episode of the lonely planet once that showed a fresh fish market in Hong Kong where tons of live fish rarely seen by North American eyes were sold... In honor of this episode I went
to go find this market... and find it I did... though it was not quite what i expected. It seems they dont have all the crazy stuff on the episode just some of the biggest crab, lobster and grupper i had ever laid eyes on. The cool thing about this place was that each little aquarium where these fish were housed lay directly across from a restaurant that would cook up anything that you pointed at... sadly i was full and the 10 pound king crab that i was eyeing for 185 hk (45 CN dollars i think) survived for one more day... though i am sure Holly and Chris are happy to hear this.
The rest of the day we explored some more of HK and I bought some knock off items
Well I could keep writing but I dont wanna ...so there!
Catch ya on the flip side!
- Ryan
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TheDean
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frogs
I think you're suppossed to lick those frogs Ryan.