Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2009
The greatest city on earth & Asia’s Las Vegas… What’s not to love about these two, right? After a day of bumming that included the famous ‘water puppet show,’ we left the friendly confines of Hanoi for the modern marvel that is the existence of Hong Kong. We had almost 3 days there to check out all we could, not enough to discover all of the wonders our friend Laurel had so graciously offered, but enough to give us the vibe of city life that should suffice for, basically, all of eternity.
We got into HK in the middle of the night after a delay in Hanoi. Fortunately, this place wasn’t the sleepy little burg we’d find in Montana. We had to do all kinds of wandering around to find the guest house, 11 floors up in a building, barely labeled and surrounded by far more “copy Rolex, custom tailor?” salesmen that we could ask for, but we found it and settled into our crackerjack box as soon as we could. We stayed in Kowloon, and wouldn’t technically be in Hong Kong until we crossed the water tomorrow.
We got up early and headed straight down to the waterfront
to take in the panorama of skyline along the “Avenue of the Stars.” It was quite smoggy, but the immensity of the buildings was still pretty amazing. The Avenue of the Stars is basically that Hollywood walk of fame thing with famous actor/actress handprints set in concrete- except they were all Asian or Hong Kong stars, pretty foreign to us, but cool nonetheless.
After finding Jackie Chan, we headed right over to the Star Ferries, the famous boats that have crossed the water from China into Hong Kong for decades. We were amazed at the sheer amount of traffic in this little waterway. We dodged the boat and container ships until we docked and set foot on actual Hong Kong soil, destination Victoria Peak.
Right behind town, there is a tram that goes up to the peak overlooking town. Since it was heating up to ridiculous proportions, we rather enjoyed the waiting in line under the air conditioner. Unfortunately, the view from up top was less than thrilling, but we saw enough to know that it would be on a clear day. Noticing the unyielding amount of sweat that everyone was exuding, we were in search of some
shade for a bit.
Not far from the tram was the Hong Kong botanical gardens and zoological park. It offered a wonderful respite from the hustle and bustle of the streets (that I was looking for) and the sun (which everyone was looking for). Here we developed a scale of sweat, 1 to 5 stars. One star sweat is the normal dampness you get from, let’s say wearing a backpack in the summer, all the way to 5 star sweat looking like you’ve just gone swimming in your clothes. As gross as it may be, we definitely saw a few 5 stars (picture… dripping shorts), while I was hovering right around a 4!
We grabbed something to eat and the decided to check out the escalators. There is giant escalator, or series of escalators, that run up an entire neighborhood on the side of the mountain. We bummed around the little streets and markets of what is called ‘Mid-levels’ and headed for Soho. This is a funky area of town that we really enjoyed. Here, I found a proper margarita and Cass got a quality mojito… and we savored every last drop of them. After some shopping, we
started to head back to the Kowloon side for dinner.
As if the Hong Kong skyline wasn’t impressive enough at night, there is a nightly laser from the buildings that is set to music. It was pretty astonishing the choreography of all the buildings, lights, and music. I’ll try to get a video up, to share, but being there, like so many other things in the world, is so much better.
The next day we were up early, because we were heading to Macau, Macau was a Portugese colony- different than the former British colony that HK once was, and you can see the differences in immediately in the architecture. There were some cool old church ruins and great narrow streets to check out, plus the Venetian Macau- the largest casino in the world- and what we found to be the greatest restaurant on earth.
Rocking some serious 5 star pit sweat, yet again, we wandered through the fisherman’s warf, which wasn’t much, and opted for a taxi from there to the church ruins. The façade of this wonderful cathedral stayed intact while fire burned the rest and now is a landmark in the city. What was
even more interesting was the neighborhood it was in. We walked through the narrow streets and lined avenues in awe of the Portuguese architecture and lazy atmosphere. This afternoon was definitely a highlight of the area, maybe because of the bucket of French fries we ate, who knows.
Off to Fernandos, for a pile of their shrimp and sangria. I’m no exaggerating this at all when I say this, but it is the ‘Greatest Restaurant on Earth,’ and that’s not the sangria talking! It was quite a ways away, and a hit with the local expats, so it was crowded and we had to wait a bit, but it was the greatest meal and an awesome recommendation.
Then to the Venetian, the largest casino in the world and it truly is immense. I’ve been to Las Vegas’ version of the casino, and while having the same degree of grandeur, it by no means matches the scale of this place. The casino itself must more than double its counterpart, and it seems that we kept stumbling on different moats with entirely different walking malls lining the banks. It is really a marvel of human engineering. I wanted to let
it all ride on the roulette table, to say I’ve gambled in Macau, but when we saw the table was 3 rows deep, I gave Cass a lesson in the game and settled for a few bucks at a slot machine- I know, lame.
We headed back to the ferry for the hour drive back to Hong Kong, another go at the laser show since it would be the only other opportunity we’d get to see it, and then to bed. We had yet another long day of travel back to Korea in the morning.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.046s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0223s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
samson
non-member comment
macau is no longer a Portugal colony, but is a part of china, like HK