Hong Kong, the pearl of China

Hong Kong, the pearl of China, well, the pearl of the parts of China I've been to so far. Hong Kong is a truely modern city, the practically spotless subway, the neon lit streets, the giant hotels, and not to mention Disneyland Hong Kong! Hong Kong has also eliminated smoking in public areas as of 2007, so thats a nice touch as well!

Upon arriving in HK we bought a 3 day subway pass which included a ride on the Airport Express subway line to get us into the city proper. It wasn't exactly an effortless expreience riding on the crowded lines with our big backpacks, but it worked just fine. We had a short walk from the subway to where we wanted to stay in Kowloon and all along the way we were approached by many different guys whispering under their breath "guesthouse" or "hotel" "you need a place to stay?" Knowing that these guys would get a comission that would probably just be added to the price of our room we said "no, no" and finally figured out that telling them we already had a reservation literally got them off our backs. After going up and down a big building called the Chungking Mansions (no idea why its called that, dirty, dingy, and small rooms) we found a small room with a bathroom and TV for a good deal.

We ventured out on the town looking for internet and finally found one on the ground floor of our building between a place selling wallets and another place selling cell phones and sim cards, all about 10x10 feet little rooms, mixed with around 200 other crowded stalls. After internet we went over to Hong Kong island and found the cable car up to Victoria Peak for a great lookout over the whole city. The lights on the skyscrapers were glittering in the haze in all different colors. We had a sushi dinner there looking out to the city and got to see the 8pm light show. For the light show all the buildings had their lights going all different colors, flashing, and some even spelling out things, it was neat. We went back to the hotel after dinner, thinking going out might be expensive and lame cause it was a Tuesday night, plus we were tired. That night we got to watch David Letterman and it was great to get a small dose of America before bed.

The next day we started off with a walking tour of some markets and streets lined with antique and art shops, the best was the shop selling huge ivory sculptures. Some of which were carved directly into the huge tusks of what could have been a mammoth. The carvings were extreemly intracate and delicate, but they wouldn't let you take any pictures. A little over half way through our walk it started to rain and we decided to skip the last couple markets and head over to Disneyland of course.

Disneyland was even better than I had expected. I actually had forgotten it was even there and it wasn't even mentioned in our Lonely Planet since its just opened. We took the subway out to "Sunny Bay" and got onto the Disneyland Line, complete with mickey shaped windows and mickey shaped handles, thats when I got really excited, giggling and smiling as if I was a 5 year old. It felt like I was going home. (most of you are aware of my love for Disneyland, but for those who don't know, Aaron and I had season passes while we lived in LA and I'd had them in high shcool as well, basically I love the place and can't get enough of it) So going to Disneyland was a real treat, and now I'm going to have to go to all the other Disneylands too. When we walked into the park it looks almost exactly the same as in LA, the main street is surreal, it was so weird. The whole park is set up very similar, but way smaller, and they don't even have Frontier Land or Toon Town. Our first ride was Space Mountain, followed by Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, which were both again almost exactly the same as back home. It was funny, instead of the Pizza Port Restaurant that is in Tommorrow land they had a place selling Noodles and other Chinese dishes. We then went over to Adventure land to go on the Jungle Cruise, which was funny but in a totally different way than back home. Normally they make silly comments and puns about all the stuff you see on the cruise, but instead the Chinese boat driver just honestly pointed out the crockodiles and hippos with a heavy accent. They had most of the same attractions on the cruise, but ended with a volcanoe explosion with fire and water shooting out of rocks, it was nuts. The jungle cruise went around Tarzan's Island, where you could find Tarzan's treehouse. There were only a few rides but there were lots of shows, and some of them were really great. The 3-D show was a montage of all the famous disney songs, we saw a Lion King live show with amazing dancers, costumes, and great singers. The best had to be the "Stitch Encounter" which is like "Crush Talk" at California Adventure in LA, but with Stitch. Its an animated Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch) but its mixed with a real live voice and live movements, about half way through the show, Stitch started talking to Aaron and I and even took our picture, it was cool. The park was only open til 7pm and we stayed til closing to see the fireworks, which were great. It was just like a quick trip home for me. Not to mention the ease of being in a place where we know how everything works.

That night we tried to find a restaurant recomended by a friend of mine, Catherine, but we ended up at the wrong Shangri La hotel and couldn't find the place she was talking about, so we ate some yummy italian food and headed home to watch Letterman again.

The next day we were leaving HK and bought our train tickets to mainland China at the nicest train station we've seen since, and took off on our journey to Guilin.

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