Bringing in 2012 in Hong Kong

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Laura, Pete and I flew from Hangzhou to Shenzhen in order to save money on the "International" flight from Mainland China to HK. When we arrived at the Shenzhen airport we could see lots of construction on expanding the current airport. I also was excited that the subway now was open at the airport so we could take it directly to the Futian Checkpoint and cross into Hong Kong without getting on a bus.

I believe the subway ride took us a little over an hour and cost us 8RMB=$1.27. Laura finally would get to experience the highly secured border crossing between Mainland China and HK. Plus she would get to experience HK for herself as she has heard us rave about HK ever since we first went there ourselves in 2009. During our border crossing Pete and I bought a bottle of rum at the duty free shop and planned on drinking this instead of spending money at a bar.

Pete and I had celebrated NYE in Hong Kong when we brought in 2010 with Staci, Martin, Kris, Kelly, Jimmy & Cali all of who we still are in contact with. We should have known that you can never duplicate an experience or even try.

Once we got our bags into our tiny triple room at Lee Garden Guesthouse, we ventured out to find our favorite Mexican restaurant, Tequila Jack's, in Kowloon. My amazing sense of directions found it within walking distance from our hostel and we enjoyed the happy hour beers, margaritas, chips and food. It was around 8:45pm when we finished our dinner and we knew we wanted to watch the fireworks from the Kowloon side as we had watched the fireworks from HK Island last time.

Laura got some beer at 7-11 and we bought some coke at the local Burger King(BK). Pete and Laura thought it was ok to drink inside the BK but I was not so sure until I saw plenty of others drinking beer inside also. Come to find out BK sells beer in Hong Kong. We drank plenty until we realized we should make our way down to watch the fireworks. I guess the time had gotten away from us as we walked down Nathan road(pedistrian only on NYE) as we couldn't get even to Chungking Mansion. The street was just filled with people and it was getting close to midnight.

The 1st sign we knew it was 2012 as we saw a few fireworks in the sky off in the distance and then the crowd starting counting "Ten, Nine, Eight.....Happy New Year" Darn I thought to myself as we could barely see anything.

We then pushed our way through the crowd and got on the subway to hit up Lan Kwai Fong (bar street on HK Island). I guess Pete and I were pretty tipsy as Laura kept talking video of us that we watched the next morning and it was quite funny. We had a great time even though it wasn't what we were envisioning in our heads but that is ok.

Other highlights of our trip to Hong Kong: watching the Oregon Ducks win the Rose Bowl by getting up at 6am (2 days in a row since it was on Jan 2nd this year instead of Jan 1st), hiking around Victoria Peak area, doing the Hop On/Hop Off bus tour, Pete and I got our skin checked at a highly recommended dermatologist, switching from our cramped hostel to a real hotel Temple Street Night Market, Victoria Harbour Laser Light show and eating amazing food (visited Just Salad 2 times).

We also made a day trip to Shenzhen to have lunch with Eric, our Chinese friend, who Pete plans on doing business with. We got to see our old neighborhood that has been upgraded since the Universiade games were held there this past August. We actually rode the subway from the Luhou border crossing all the way to Longgang. We wandered the Da Fen art district area in Buji where Laura purchased a few paintings.

It was neat to go back to Shenzhen as it is a different city after being away for 18 months. The subway network was only 1.5 lines while we lived there and now has 5 long lines connecting what used to be far remote areas. It still takes a long time to get from one place to another due to the sprawled out city, but now there was no need to worry about traffic due to the subway.

We didn't make it to Macau as planned but all of us were ok with relaxing more instead of packing things in. Laura was at the end of traveling for 4 weeks around Cambodia, Vietnam, China and Hong Kong and we had just started 5 weeks of being on the road.

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Photos

Laura putting up with our craziness
What can I say we get excited when we have visitors

Read the Sign "Queing Day"
not the fact that it is in British English, but they have 1 day a month where they must stand in a line. FINALLY CHINA.

Eric, myself, Laura & Pete
having lunch at our favorite Sichuan restaurant, some of the workers we recognized

completed stadium in Longgang
said to say they didn't even use it for the games..what a waste of resources