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Published: April 14th 2010
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With Brett finished work and an extra few days to spend checking things out in Hong Kong we made the most of the couple days. One of the first things we did on Brett's last day of work was head to White Spot which I had just randomly stumbled across the other day in one of the many shopping malls. For those not from Vancouver, White Spot is an iconic burger restaurant started in 1928 and famous for their hamburgers, Triple O sauce and Pirate Pak and only in British Columbia. Or so I thought... I had no idea that they had any restaurants anywhere else in the world, let alone Hong Kong so it was quite a surprise. When I texted Brett that day to let him know what I had stumbled upon, don't know how he made it through an afternoon of work! Apparently there are 5 White Spots in Hong Kong, and another in Seoul and they say the Hong Kong franchises each record more than twice as many sales as the average location in BC. Anyways, enough about hamburgers (and yes they were delicious!).
We also took in the famous "Symphony of Lights" which happens every
night at 8pm and runs for 20 minutes and has been named by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest permanent light and sound show. It involves 44 buildings on each side of the harbour in a light and laser multimedia display accompanied by music. Don't know if it was maybe the weather that night which was a bit cloudy, but we were expecting a bit more and we ended up leaving about 2/3 of the way through. And you know it probably was really good at the end because we left! haha.
No trip to Hong Kong is complete without Dim Sum so on Easter Sunday we decided to head to Maxim's at City Hall which is one of the most famous Dim Sum restaurants in Hong Kong for lunch. We had heard that Maxim's is always packed but we arrived after the main rush and only had about a 20 minute wait. It is one of the few dim sum restaurants left in Hong Kong with it's intimidating trolley ladies who practically scream the names of the dim sum at you as they put them on your table. We did pretty well though, nothing that we
didn't want to, I mean couldn't, eat (no chicken feet!) There's a small English menu but it doesn't cover everything, so we just pointed and picked what looked best, and it was amazing. So amazing we went back 2 days later. We were hooked!
After our dim sum lunch we wandered over to Soho and both had a Thai Massage since Brett was so sore from working and me from all my walking around. It was about $17 for an hour and it was great. We followed that up with a few happy hour drinks at a bar in Soho that is alongside the Mid Levels Escalator and provided some of the best people watching. The streets get filled with people spilling out from the different restaurants and bars and sitting on the steps having their drinks and food. It was packed for a Sunday afternoon.
The next day we decided to head to The Big Buddah on Lantau Island so we hopped on the MTR to make our way out there. The trip cost $20HKD (about $2.80 AUD) each one way and took about 35 minutes from Mong Kok. From the train station we decided to take
the cable car up (instead of the bus) as you get a pretty good view that way. The 20 minute, 5.7 km trip on the gondola like cable car takes you over steep hillsides and across the South China Sea to the Ngong Ping plateau where the big Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery are located. Below the cable car you can see the foot path that the monks use to take to get to the monastery up above, and there were several people hiking up below us, what a long way! Needless to say we were glad we were riding in the cable car!
The big bronze Buddha was allegedly the “biggest outdoor and seated Buddha in the world" prior to 2007. He is 34 meters high and weighs 250 tonnes and was built in 1993. He can be seen from airplanes arriving and departing the Hong Kong airport as well as the island of Macau, but it would have to be a pretty clear day, which we are beginning to think is pretty rare here in Hong Kong. You climb up 268 steps to reach the Buddha and he really is huge when you are standing beneath
him. From the Buddha we made our way over to the Po Lin Monastery and had a look around then caught the Cable Car back down. We were lucky we went first thing in the morning, because by the time we got back down the line up looked well over an hour to get on the cable car where we only had to wait maybe 3 minutes.
Our last night in Hong Kong we went to the Temple Street Night Market to have a look around (and didn't buy anything) and grab some dinner. The market is full of the usual knockoff handbags, watches and sunglasses as well as fortune tellers, really funny karaoke areas set up (and no Brett didn't stop) and Chinese Opera Singers. Our feet were beat by this time so we made our way back to the hotel and packed our stuff up. We really enjoyed our 2 weeks and a few days in Hong Kong. The people were really friendly, the food was amazing, it is easy and safe to get around and if you love shopping it is the place to go. It was probably a good thing we had so little luggage
space with all Brett's tools as we could have filled up an extra suitcase I am sure. But then again, when your home is only 14 feet long on wheels, there isn't much room there either!
Over the last few days we have been trying to figure out where to go next as we thought we are so close to some of these other countries that we might as well go check somewhere out when we got a call from Brett's boss who has an empty house in Margaret River on the West Coast of Australia which has definitely been on our list of spots to check out. So Brett's work rerouted our flights through Perth, and next thing we knew we were hopping on flight out of Hong Kong at 9pm, with a 2 hour stop in Bangkok and on our way to other side of Australia, finally!
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Gena
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What a Life!!
How intereesting to read your blog. You are so fortunate to be able to see so much of that part of the country. I know it is a chore but someone has to do it. Good on you. Will try to remember to read more about your trip. Just happened to stumble on your blog this morning.