Hong Kong Visit

Leaving Shanghai, we took the Maglev train to Pudong airport. The Maglev was a pretty cool experience. It is the fastest train in the world. As the train runs on magnets, it is a very smooth ride. And the speed... The first 4 minutes of the ride we accelerated to 431 km/h (or 266 mph). The scenery flies by very quickly at that speed. After only 20 or 30 seconds at maximum speed the train has to begin slowing down. It was a fun way to end our trip to China.

Wet Arrival in Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong after an uneventful flight and took the bus into the city. It was rather warm and humid. Fortunately, we did not have too far to walk to our hostel. However, that was not the end of the walking. Unfortunately, we discovered that the Noble Hostel was not being very noble when it overbooked the rooms. Even though they had confirmed the room just 2 days prior, they said they did not have room. So, we were sent to another guesthouse, the Bin Man Special Price Guesthouse. No, I did not make that up!

Hong Kong has quite a few places to get relatively cheap and good sushi. We were able to fill up on some good sushi which is something we had been missing.

Later, we met up with Vamsi and Madhavi (friends from school) at an Irish pub in Kowloon. It was great to meet up with friends and see some familiar faces.

Special Price...Surprise Visitors

We got back from the hostel and were greeted with a surprise. Mike went to turn on the air-conditioner when he noticed a very large cockroach on the headboard of the bed! It quickly ran away. This was not a very good sign. After some frantic searching the creature was found and killed. Of course, this was disturbing to both of us. We asked to move rooms and the lady said "tomorrow." We thought we would try to move to a new guesthouse.

Rainy Day in Hong Kong

We woke up the next morning after a very unrestful night's sleep. It was raining quite hard. Given the amount of rain and that we had only seen 1 cockroach, we figured we would not bother trying to deal with moving.

The poor weather made it difficult to do very much. Lucky for us, there was a movie theater nearby so we decided to X-Men III. It was an entertaining movie. Not as good as the first 2 movies, but solid action.

We spent some time walking around in the Central Hong Kong area and then returned to Causeway Bay for dinner. We ate at a restaurant Mike had been to when he was in Hong Kong last year. It has amazing garlic chili shrimp. After eating quite a bit we head back to the guesthouse.

Things were finally looking like they had turned around. Good meal, hadn't seen anymore uninvited guests. We started getting ready for sleep when Mike noticed yet another cockroach! This one on the ceiling. We killed this one and again told the lady we wanted to switch rooms. She said tomorrow. There were plenty of rooms available which we saw. They just did not want to have to clean 2 rooms. Pretty ridiculous. We hosed down some of the room with bug spray and figured that should hopefully do it...

It did not. Just before getting ready to fall asleep, Mike saw yet another cockroach flapping about! Now, this was ridiculous. It was right not that Mike was really missing the US. At a US hotel, there would have been a lot of complaining and yelling, followed by demands of a free room. But instead, this was Hong Kong and we were just lucky we were able to demand that we change rooms (we tried calling a nearby hotel, but they were filled). Of course, we still did not sleep very much.

Bin Man Special Price Guesthouse is Terrible!!!!

I just wanted to point that out in case anyone missed it and is thinking of staying there.

Hong Kong continued

We got up the next morning, finished packing up our stuff and left. We went to another guesthouse where Mike had stayed last year. It was quite a nice change. Clean, nicer rooms, Internet access, helpful staff and...no uninvited guests.

That evening we met up with Tom, Chad, Vamsi and Madhavi. It was like a mini Michigan reunion. We watched the light show on the buildings from Kowloon and then went out to a restaurant. Had some good food there and then headed out to a bar.

The bar was an amusing experience. The crowd was a mix of people from probably 20 until 50s. Young people hanging out, travelers, business expats and...prostitutes! The dynamic created a lot of amusement for the group as we spent a lot of time speculating who was one and who wasn't. It became pretty easy to pick up on.

Leaving Hong Kong

Our last day in Hong Kong we did some more walking around and then went up to the Peak. The Peak provides spectacular views of the Hong Kong skyline. Fortunately, there the clouds were high enough that we were able to get a nice view.

Hong Kong is a great city. It was just unfortunate that we hit it when there was a lot of rain and were stuck for 2 nights in the Bin Man Special Price Cockroaches are Us Guesthouse. It was great to be able to meet up with friends from school and get to see at least some of the city.

We headed to the airport and off to Singapore.

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