Hong Kong

Asia » Hong Kong
January 13th 2009

Published: February 10th 2009

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AmandaandGonzalo

HK Symphony of light

Hong Kong!

Amazing!

Wow!

It was definitely a blur of a stop over the three day in HK. We realised immediately that we need it more time there. The airport express to the city was first class top of the world stuff. Neither of us was expecting the efficiency in which this city works. We got a handle of the Metro in a few minutes and from there everything went smooth. Whenever you needed a bus or a metro station, it was just around the corner, and the bus was always there waiting for us.

And at night! The lights! We’ve never seen anything so bright! Not just the signs, everything was illuminated! They even got a city size orchestra light show! The high rise buildings were astonishing. And the skinny double deck trams (so funny looking,) and buses were all over the place.

And in the middle of all that glitter we stayed in the cheapest and crappiest building on probably all of HK (or may be China) The infamous Chungking Mansion! 16 floors divided in many small hostels of considerably low cost! Or that’s how it looked from the outside: totally out of place

HK Symphony of light 2

since we had the Holliday Inn just around the block and the Sheraton across the street!
Whenever we walked into the entrance way we shuffled between a full mixture of doggy looking people of all sorts that seamed to be always hanging around in this place. We had to nervously line up for the elevator for 10 minutes every time to wait our turn to go up. The entrance was a hall full of Chinese food selling houses, dodgy money exchange places and crowded markets.
When we finally arrived to our room, we always felt good, because among all of this, we actually got a very clean and cute little apartment (and by little we mean 2 meters square, with a bed and a TV hanging from the wall).
We visited a relaxing Chinese garden and the famous Victoria Peak with a great view of the city. The first night we had dinner outside on the street, on a little table, in one of the street markets. Such a fun experience eating right next to crowds of people walking by and looking at your food. The next day we found our favourite restaurant for lunch (a small and cute Chinese

Movie Theatre in HK

Hong Kong was preparing the celebrations for the New Year of the OX (Amanda's chinese year animal!)

place with all the menu enlarged on the walls, and little boxes with tables to eat) where we tried different flavours of hot teas and we came to find our favourite dish: Noodles soup with Shrimp wontons.
That night we had to laugh as we fell into the typical tourist trap, and ended up in an incredible overpriced Boat-restaurant called Jumbo. Actually, it was the biggest and oldest in Hong Kong, with hypnotizing bright lights and a free ferry to it. But we ended up spending three days worth of our budget on a awful meal. Catching the bus and metro back to the hotel we got an ice cream to forget the experience and we hoped that India will be cheap enough to make up for the loss!!!

We’re at the airport finally ready to go to India. Can’t hardly wait! And to meet up with Natalie and Scott!

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