3 Days in the City

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We wanted to do a short trip in the region and didn't have much time off to do it in. We decided to try for Hong Kong. We ended up booking our flight through a local travel agent and this combined our flight, hotel and transportation to and from the airport. We were on our own once we checked in but that was okay because J and I usually avoid the organized tourist stuff anyhow.

Our hotel was in Kowloon, which is across the bay from Hong Kong City, but is a great place to be in its own right. It has lots and lots of shopping and tons of close by food places. We explored the area a bit that first night after checking in. We found a cool boardwalk that had great views of the city across the bay and being that it was during December the Christmas lights were awesome.

The second day, we got up early and headed to the MTR station. They had a tourist pass that was for three days that you could buy for about 6 USD and it allowed you on and off all the MTR facilities (buses and subways) as much as you wanted. We purchased two of them and were off to the city. The subway goes under the bay to Hong Kong City.

We walked around the city all day, taking pictures of huge buildings, cool temples, and lots of statues and plaques. At the time, there seemed to be quite the contest to have the tallest building in the city built so there were several that were under construction. One of the most amazing things about this was that these 80+ story buildings were being built with bamboo scaffolds. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it....these huge scaffolds completely constructed from bamboo that just went straight up into the air around these structures. One of the finished buildings boasting to be the tallest at the time would even allow you to go up in it and take pictures from an observation deck. We did and it was an amazing view. There are some beautiful old churches/cathedrals in Hong Kong that we would highly recommend seeing as well. Near the end of the day, we got on one of the double decker buses so we could check out more of the city without having to walk it. It was great, we had a fantastic veiw of the city and got some awesome video of the busy intersections at rush hour.

In the evening, we headed back over to Kowloon to get some food and then came back to Hong Kong City in the evening to take the tram up to Victoria Peak. Unfortunately for us, it was foggy that night so we didn't get the best view from there, but it was still a lot of fun to explore the facility and to look out over the lights through the haze.

The next morning, we explored some of the parks in Kowloon, and visited a few temples. The temples in Hong Kong are incense intensive...I mean you can barely breath in those babies. Afterwards we got lunch at a dimsum place that was awesome, and the waiter was the one that ordered most of our food for us since it was all in Chinese and he only spoke a small amount of English. I would highly recommend eating some authentic food while you are visiting Hong Kong because it is so fabulous. After lunch, we went to the convention center. They have a great exhibit inside that details the hand over of Hong Kong back to China. There is a really cool monument in the back near the water that we checked out and while we were back there a junk like boat came up.

After we hung out at the convention center for a while, we decided to take one of the ferries back to Kowloon so we could check out the bay. The ride on the ferry was really cool and the bay is absolutely awesome looking. In the evening, we went back to the boardwalk to check out the lights and enjoy our last evening in Hong Kong, because we were flying in the morning back to Japan.

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Photos

Hong Kong Temple
A beautiful incense filled temple in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Boat
Cool looking boat floating near the convention center in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Monument
Monument to signify the hand over of Hong Kong back to China.

Comments

[HaHa]

Hong Kong Construction
I am amazed that the scaffolds are of Bamboo construction, but I know it is very strong. If you have a picture of that, I am sure it would be fun and interesting to see also. What were the prices like in Hong Kong for goods. Just curious...

[Mishka]

Scaffolds
I might have a picture with me in it that I can send to you...let me look. The prices weren't too bad but nothing was dirt cheap. The Japanese tourists were buying up a lot of electronics and such because it is much cheaper than Japan's prices but not really cheaper than American prices at least for that kind of stuff.