Blogs from Hong Kong, Asia - page 358

Rest of May May 18th Take the MTR to Lok Fu to buy a mattress. Waste of money. But not a waste of time because we take a look around the area and find Kowloon Walled City Park, a truly elegant place built to replace and commemorate an old walled city slum. Serene, it is landscaped with ponds, flowers, and greenery, surrounding Qing styled pavilions - part of the original wall still exists at the southern boundary of the park. May 20th Errands and wandering around (again) today. We stop at new place that seems to have popped up overnight on Queens Road. That’s what happens here. An empty 100 square foot dumping ground of a shell yesterday, no frills cut tag shop or chic eatery today. You can watch the daily progress in Sheung Wan ... read more

Hong Kong can be a very confusing city. Well at least for us. On our first day of exploration we could not find anything we set out to find without a lot of work. Our first plan of action was to visit the museums on the bank of Victoria Harbor near the Walk of Stars. Some how we ended up getting out on the farthest MRT station from the water that their was. See MRT stops here branch off in many directions creating a vast network of underground tunnels. So during our walk we stumbled upon Kowloon park which was quite interesting. They had a public pool, some exotic birds, and nice water features. Anyway back to our mission. We then stumble around some other street for about another 45 minutes until we see the walk ... read more

It was a brave man who once said "Aaaaz fray Wukintun". Thankfully, after more than eight years, he remembered me, and was equally brave to invite us to stay with him in Hong Kong. At first, "Whamsey", or in his new cosmopolitan Hong Kong playboy incarnation, "Holmsey", apologised for his flat, saying we would have to sleep on the futon in the small living room, space being at a premium in HK. To make matters worse, he is an IT night owl whilst his flatmate is an early rising fitness guru. What ensued was a high octane ninety-six hours which left us both bruised, battered and desperate for sleep, with our host apologising "We're not normally like this in HK." Our train from Guilin to Shenzhen on the HK border was perhaps the best in China ... read more

We arrived on the Asian continent only 24 hours after our wedding. 6:20am Hong Kong local time. We immediately hit the sites and saw some beautiful things right off the bat. First stop was Lantau Island which is about 2 hours drive outside of Hong Kong. What is Lantau Island? It's an island that is famous for the largest outdoor bronze Buddha statue in the world. We had no idea what this entailed until we saw it with our own eyes. When we stepped off the sweaty, stanky bus (a sweaty man kept leaning on Teresa) in Lantau, Teresa was covered in shadow by something above. When she looked up, she yelped as the size of the enormous statue towering over her... "That's a big ass Buddha!" Actually, literally -- it was a BIG ASS. The ... read more

Exhausted today so I'll keep the blog short... it turns out the relatives I stayed with last night have broadband and I could've connected the Powerbook to upload pics but I didn't have it with me so too bad :p Took some good ones the last couple of days which of course I'll share later on... looking forward to and dreading developing all the photos and the effort I have to put into making a nice photo album - it'll be a fun project but I just like whining haha. Was terribly impressed by th HK Airport as usual, and it seems to have improved with a Starbucks and foreign currency exchange kiosk right out of customs even before the arrivals meet-and-greet with family and friends! They also had several information centres along the way but ... read more