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Published: March 30th 2010
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Chi Lin Nunnery
in middle of HK city, a little bit of serenity... Day One of my "I'm heading to the Northern Hemisphere at the beginning of Spring thinking there will be frolicking chickens, bunny rabbits and mooses, not below 15 degree weather or the coldest winter on record for centuries..." I arrived at Hong Kong airport and followed the signs to the exit. After picking up my bags I exited through customs expecting there to be beagles, search lights, a cardboard cut out of Yao Ming telling me what I can and can't bring into the country, I simply walked through. No declaration card and search of bags even though you have nothing to declare. I could have brought triple the amount of Tim Tams and Vegemite!
I exited to find Carley and her Mum waiting for me with the key to Hong Kong (an Octopus card) and a can of coffee!!! Amazing coffee in a can, it can be heated or cooled. It is so amazing. I will be searching China Town when I get home for an entire carton or three!
Our first adventure was finding a place that served Dim Sum in Prince Edward. Dim Sum is pretty much the same thing as Yum Cha. I wasn't aware
that is traditionally a breakfast dish, that didn't stop it from being very delicious and much to the amusement of the other (randoms/strangers) sitting at our table I was able to master the ancient art of chopsticks. In the event that your are completely retarded (like myself) you can always stab it, especially for those slipperly little suckers that are covered in sauce, but so tasty!
One of the reasons I like HK is because it's not hard to find anything. If you want sneakers, you go to sneaker street. If you're heart desires a bird, you go to bird street where you can buy birds, buy live crickets (mmm extra protein), cages, more birdies or if you already own a bird you can take it for a walk in its cage? After visiting all the various streets, fish st, plant st, ladies markets (for clothes, not ladies) we headed back to Carley's place in the New Territories. Their house is on Wong Shek bay and has a beautiful view of the water. Sadly in my time there I didn't see any of the fabled pink dolphins or smugglers, but when we visited the pier there were signs of
Do Not even look at the fish
Do Not this Do Not that, we must be close to China various sea monsters and giant sharks so we didn't dilly dally there.
Our next adventure was back heading back into HK city using the amazing Octopus card, Brisbane's Go Card isn't even in the same league. You can buy so much stuff with it, beers at 7/11, maccas and more stuff. We headed to Chi Lin Nunnery at Diamond Hill. It's quite amazing that a such a quite place can be in the middle of HK, oh the serenity. We visited another temple that is famed for its fortune telling, but wasn't as nice as the nunnery.
Possibly the highlight of HK (other than the PANDAS) was seeing one of the last Junks in HK habour. I suspect that Carely knew it would be appearing around the time headed to the Kowloon Penisula. It was soooooooo cooool. Essentially is a Chinese Pirate ship!, minus the pirates. Once we had taken more photos than the entire area of mainland China we caught a ferry across the harbour to the IFC building. More famously known as the building from the Dark Knight that the Batman base jumps from and catches the plane with the mafia accountant dude. I have renamed
Do Not Feed Me
This carp was the size of a small dog, in fact it probably eats small dogs. it the Batman/Kenny Wong building because that is where is Kenny Wong works. So we then ventured in the alleyways of HK to find a Dai Pai Dong where we had dinner. The Dai Pai Dongs are traditional street food venders, but not just anyone can start them up. Apparently to start one up you have to prove your family has been running one or something ancestorly related. The food was delicious and the beer plentiful.
On the way back to Carley's place which is located in a country park and as a result has much wildlife in it, including wild cows, we were stopped by said wild cows choosing to sleep in the middle of the road. Our taxi driver who clearly is an ex cowboy simply just flicked the lights at them, which they responded to by staying in the middle of the road. After about 5 mins of this I used my super excellent cow moving skill and got them off the road. Other cool wildlife that I saw were monkeys, and the shadow of a porcupine.
Due to the weather it was few days before we ventured to the Peak, which on a fine
Chi Lin Nunnery
Me at Chi Lin Nunnery to prove I didn't rip them from the net day has spectular views of HK harbour. The day that I ventured up their on the tram of death. I have a healthy distrust of things that go slowly up a very steep hill. We arrived at the peak only to magnificant views of mist mist and more mist. Visability was maybe 50 meters or so. I heard that I missed a epic battle in the harbour between a giant sea monster the two remaining junks in HK. The Junk's scared off the sea monsters, but I imagine they will return in Mega Shark v Giant Octopus 2. So the epic battle may not have taken place, but the fact that we couldn't see means that it could well have taken place.
My final day in HK was the best day in the entire world, mainly because we visited Ocean Park. The home of GIANT PANDAS in HK. It was awesome. We went to the adult giant panda enclosure where I found my soulmate An An. He is a male panda who was born in 1986 (the best year in the entire world) and he likes to chill out and eat. He is amazing. After watching him for hours
A Junk
with only 2 left in HK, I was very luck to see this one. we then visited the other pandas who were a gift from mainland China and it was declared that these pandas will mate and there will be many baby pandas. Alas this hasn't happened because these two pandas fight so perhaps pandas are one of the only living creatures in the world who don't submit to China's will. In the same area of the giant pandas are RED PANDAS. There racoon like creatures I was informed don't grow up to be Giant Pandas. Which much to my suprise makes sense. How does a ranga grow up to have black and white hair? When talking to one of the keepers that was the main point he kept harping on, red pandas DON'T grow up to be giant pandas. SO please don't confuse red pandas with giant pandas even though they look nothing alike. More interesting facts is that giant pandas eat the equivalent of 9 big macs worth of energy each day, so support their habit of eating and sleeping and more sleeping. SLACKERS! A good point that Carley raised was where do they grow all the bamboo for the giant pandas? And if one of the reasons for the decline of
giant pandas is the destruction of habitat and food sources, where do they grow the bamboo?
The grand finale of the HK was attending the races at the HK Jockey Club. I've heard that it takes something like 3 days for note to pass through the Jockey Club. I would have been a willing participant in such behaviour but after a few beers we couldn't figure out what the odds were, instead we bought beers in jugs of 2L, amazing its almost double the size of Australian jugs!!! And that was the end of my Asian adventures.
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pickwah
non-member comment
i glove you hard
hahahaha you know when you read things, and you acknowledge that they're funny, but sometimes it barely raises a smile? Your entry was a true lol moment. and not the fake 'lol i have nothing else to say lol'. a real one. You WILL submit to China's will! bahaha and a ranga panda. i glove them. have fun many spoons. pickle!