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Published: November 22nd 2009
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To get from Cambodia to Hong Kong I had to catch a flight from Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur, then take a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore before finally flying out of Singapore to Hong Kong. So, in the space of about 24hours I'd been through 4 countries - it was a tiring day! The first thing I noticed after arriving in Hong Kong was that it was much colder than what I'd been used to the last few months. I expected it to be a little bit cooler but not by that much and it gave me a bit of a shock at first. On the day I arrived there I decided to not do too much as I'd hardly had any sleep the last two days and I needed a rest. After a nice sleep and feeling refreshed, the next day I headed for the central area of Hong Kong Island to have a look around. I've been to quite a few different cities in Asia in the last few months so initially the city centre felt quite similar to other places such as Singapore, but, there were a few interesting things I found which made the place stand
Market street in between the skyscrapers
I found this street which looked a bit out of place as it was amongst all the skyscrapers in the central business district out as different. Firstly, right in the city centre I found a couple of market streets which were wedged between the skyscrapers, this was quite a bizarre sight to see as they looked really out of place. Even more crazy, on the outskirts of the central area there is the start of a steep slope which goes up to what's called the 'mid-levels' area of the city where all the expensive apartments are. At the bottom of this slope I found an escalator in the middle of the street which I discovered goes on for about 1km all the way to the mid-levels area. I got on the escalator not knowing how long it went on for and I was on it for about 20 minutes!
One thing I spotted very early on during my visit to Hong Kong is that for some reason there seems to be an absolutely ridiculous amount of bakeries and cake shops around in every part of the city which you go to. It seems sometimes as though every other shop is a cake shop - I don't know how the Hong Kongers aren't all fat. It's well known that people from Hong Kong
A bit of afternoon Tai Chi
The best bit was just before I took this photo the road sweeper guy was cleaning between them all really enjoy their food and you can tell from the great selection of places to eat in the city. I found a lot of good Japanese, Vietnamese and Malaysian food places which I ate at and I got to have some of my favourite dishes which I'd discovered when visiting these countries earlier in my trip. Although Hong Kong is generally quite an expensive city, I still managed to eat good food even though I was on a pretty tight budget - food is definitely one area where you get value for money in the city.
In case you don't know, Hong Kong is made up two main islands; Hong Kong island and Kowloon. I was staying on Hong Kong island a few subway stops away from the central district. On one of the days that I was there, I went to visit Kowloon. I think I must of accidently chosen the busiest day possible to go to Kowloon as it was a Sunday and the area I was in seemed to be absolutely heaving with people shopping. Whilst walking around Kowloon I came across two quite strange streets, the first street was full of places selling hundreds of different types of pet birds such as parrots and budgies as well as bird feed etc. All around this area I kept seeing old men carrying bird cages with their pet birds in looking as if they were taking them for a walk or something. A few streets away from this area I found another similar street except this time it was full of probably about 50 shops all selling pet fish and turtles. There were tanks in these shops that were absolutely rammed full of fish so that in some of them it looked as if the fish wouldn't even be able to move - it looked quite uncomfortable for them! It must of been the 'pet area' of town which I'd stumbled across.
On my last full day in Hong Kong it suddenly went really, really cold. It was much colder before than what I'd been used to the last couple of months but on the last day it felt like it was below 10C. It was probably a bad day for me to choose to go up to 'the peak' which is an area at the top of a nearby hill which overlooks most of the city. At the top of the peak there are a couple of fancy mansions where the really rich people live in the summer to escape the heat as it's a bit cooler up there (which was bad on this particular day as it was already freezing). I went to the top on the peak tram which was on an incredibly steep track, I didn't spend too long up there though because it was too cold. I just took a few photos and had a quick look around before heading back down. Every evening there is a light and sound show across the water from the Hong Kong island central district on Kowloon. I went across on the ferry on my last night to check it out and it turned out to actually be quite good. Basically, at 8pm they start to play some music and then all (or some anyway) of the skyscrapers on the other side of the water (so the ones on Hong Kong island) start to flash their lights in time with the music. It goes on for about 20 minutes and there's a few laser lights as well which light up the sky. The next day I had a flight to catch which means that's the end of my time in Asia and now it's back to the heat as I've got a month of Australian summer next!
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Uglymeat
Awayang Rai
Great
Hey, Dave! Yea, you're right, I'm currently residing in Hong Kong, and I tell ya, the weather is really cold!! But it doesn't last too long. I usually go watch the 8pm Light and sound show, and it's great and I've never felt bored. I guess because no matter if I go there everyday, there's always people clapping afterwards when it's over which helps me not take that show for granted. But I don't think you noticed that it's not only the Hong Kong side that displays the light show, but also the TST harbour - Star ferry (most probably where you were). Anyways, hope you had a blast! By the way, you definately should have gone to The Big Buddha!