Christmas in Hong Kong

Hong Kong

I know its a little late, but I'm finally getting around to posting about our Hong Kong trip.

When we got back from Hong Kong our internet was extremely slow at best. Now things have picked up a little bit, but its still slow and some sites just don't work. I guess the earthquake in Taiwan severed some cables that we need to access this WWW superhighway thingy.

So posting pictures took weeks, but I finally got quite a few up to my google web album.

Our trip was great. Nine of us left Friday night the 22nd for Shenzhen, which is a major economic city in mainland China that borders Hong Kong. Because of the weird desctrepancy between China and Hong Kong, flying to Hong Kong from mainland China is not considered domestic. So we flew to Shenzhen, crossed the border and rode the train to Hong Kong. This saved quite a bit of money, but also took extra time.

Hong Kong is very different than Shanghai and the rest of China. The British influence is apparent and heavy. They drive on the wrong side of the road for one. The streets are much cleaner; spitting and littering is heavily dissuaded by the numerous signs warning you of the fine you would incur for such offenses. Every bus is a double decker and they have double decker trolleys or "ding-dings" running down the main thoroughfare. Hong Kong is quite a bit more expensive than Shanghai and Shanghai is quite a bit more expensive than most of China.

We arrived late at night and needed a place to stay. Four of the girls that came with us decided they wanted to go all out and stay at a nice hotel, so we parted ways at their train stop. We actually didn't see them again until Christmas day. They five of us cheap skates went hostel hunting. We determined that the Kowloon side of Hong Kong would be the cheapest place to stay. Kowloon is the end of the peninsula directly across for Hong Kong Island. In Kowloon there are two 15 to 20 story decrepit high rises affectionately and incorrectly named mansions. They have markets on the bottom floors and "Guest Houses" and hotels as well as apartments mixed throughout.
After some effort we found a reasonable accommodation for the first night, but it was for that night only, since Christmas was coming up and he was already booked for the next few nights. So the next day we started bed hunting.
Long story short, we got turned away from about twenty hotels before we found a dump of a place that wanted the equivalent of $13 US each. Since we were sick of looking, we just went for it. This place was one of the worst places I have ever seen. I have stayed in a lot of gnarly places in Central and South America, especially Bolivia the home of the "Bolivian backsagger". So we left our stuff and went exploring for the afternoon. We returned a few hours later to a horrible stench. The cleaning lady had poured some sort of extreme draino-type solution down the drains, that smelled like sulfur. One of the tiny rooms we had didn't have a window and the smell was unbearable. We told the manager we could not stay there and demanded our money back. But before we left we wanted to make sure that we would have another place to go, so half of us went bed hunting again. After some time we found a reasonable place. The three of us guys each got our own room and the girls shared a room with two beds. The place was not amazing, but it was good enough, and Kenny, the manager, was a great guy.
That evening we took the ferry across to Hong Kong Island. The Ferry goes from Kowloon to either Central or Wan Chai on the Island. The trip takes about 10 minutes and costs about 25 cents. We had planned to meet up with a family friend of mine who was studying in Hong Kong. Kathryn was once a student of my mom's and her mom and mine have kept in contact. It was very nice to have a local show us around. We were able to get our bearings a lot faster. We met Kathryn at Timesquare in Causeway Bay. She showed us all around the city. We went to a very nice Indian Restaurant for dinner and took pictures and enjoyed the Christmas lights all over the city.
The next day the guys (Erik, Adam and I) went exploring on the Island. We found Hong Kong Park which has an aviary as well as beautiful ponds, waterfalls and plant exhibits. Overall, Hong Kong is well planned out for a large city. You can really get into a more natural type environment and still be surrounded by high rises, than you can in Shanghai. The first thing I actually noticed when we got off the airplane was that there were hills and mountains. In Shanghai the only 3-dimensionality to the landscape is buildings.

To be continued...