April 15th, 2010 5:08am - Posted By: Tyson
Howdy All!
So here's a quick summary of our Hong Kong visit. We will again post more on the site when our connection is faster when we get home. This is for 4/15-4/20.
We leave tomorrow to catch a 15 hour flight back to LA, and then a few hour flight to Denver.
Hong Kong has been awesome! We both really like this city... Good food, stuff to do, easy to get around.... If you know what to look for it isn’t that expensive. We were able to get a full dinner for $7 US dollars one night for both of us! The MTR (subway) is very easy to get around. Taxis are actually not bad either..compared to other big cities. We can get from our hotel to most of the main places for about $5 US dollars.. Not bad at all. We covered our list of ‘must sees’ that we got from some sources and our friend from the trek who was here for part of the time with us. Her friend lives here and gave us a list of things to see which was cool. Some of the things were already on our list, but some were things we would never have known to see.
Our first day here we pretty much took it easy. We were beat from the flight from Kathmandu which was overnight, but only 5 hours. We needed to catch up on sleep. After our nap we decided to go to Avenue of the Stars which is like the stars in Hollywood. We had to take the metro over to Kowloon, which is the main land part of Hong Kong. The main part of the city is on an island. The view of Hong Kong island from Kowloon is amazing. You stroll Avenue of the Stars and look at the city. At 8pm every night there is a light show with lasers that a handful of buildings participate in on Hong Kong island. You watch it from Kowloon and it is all choreographed to music. Kinda like one of those free casino shows you see out front in Vegas but at a MUCH LARGER scale. Pretty neat to see sky scrapers flash and twinkle and show laser beams off their tops all synced to music. We can see this show from our hotel room as well. After we strolled Avenue of the Stars we explored a bit around Kowloon and ended up on Nathan Street. Just imagine Time Square, but a little bigger. Hong Kong has many areas like this. We found a restaurant, ate some dinner, and then went back to the hotel.
The next day we went to Ocean Park with Taru, which everyone raves about. Um... Let’s see... We lasted maybe three hours, saw a couple pandas, rode the two worst roller coasters ever, and ate some pretty crappy park food. There was nothing really special about this park, and the roller coasters? Um, I think the people that live here are wussies. They were both super slow, breaked at every turn, and barely made it over the one and only loop. Though others on the ride were freaked out of their mind.. Eh.
We left the park and went over the Stanley, which is a market right on the waterfront. Stanley was very nice and definitely worth it. It is located on the opposite side of the island near Repulse Bay. It is a funky little market next to a modern shopping center. The market had all sorts of gifts, gadgets, local art, etc. We hung out there for a few hours and caught a taxi back into town. We had a language barrier with our cab driver and ended up off Hong Kong island and clear over in Kowloon. That set us back 45 min and taught us a lesson on how to tell drivers here how to get back to our hotel. We had a low key night, explored around the hotel and ended up on King’s Road, which is like Nathan Street, and found a little local joint that served Congee. This is where we got our $7 dinner and it was actually pretty good. Kinda funny, we have had to use chop sticks here way more than we ever did in Japan. We are chop stickin’ pros now! Ehh, not really. I fake it, but it gets the job done. Stabbing works well too ;).
Next day was a city day. We explored downtown and The Peak ALL day. We started by taking the metro to Central which is pretty much downtown. We ended up at the IFC Mall, which is the base of the IFC towers (International Financial Center). ICF Two is the second tallest building in Hong Kong. The tallest building in Hong Kong is actually in Kowloon off the island. The mall had some places to visit on the list we got from Taru’s friend who lives in Hong Kong. One of the places was a really good coffee joint called Fuel. Dang it was good. There were a couple of restaurants in the mall that were suggested too, but we skipped them this time around. We explored the mall a little, checked out IFC One and Two, and then made our way to SoHo (South Hollywood Street). You take escalators up to Hollywood street which they call the longest escalators in the world. Well we were expecting a very LONG escalator. It is like 10 of them all in a row... Pftt. It was still neat I suppose and it got us where we wanted to go. We made it up to Hollywood Street and found a Mexican restaurant called Tequilas. We were not planning on going there but HAD to check it out when we saw it. Always curious, but a very risky move half way around the world. Actually it was not bad at all. The margarita I had was a little TOO strong, but the food was pretty darn good. It actually fulfilled our Mexican food crave, which is unheard of over seas. Well, Hong Kong has a Mexican food restaurant. Now don’t get me wrong, it was no Efrain’s or Casa Alvarez, but it was better than Mexican food joints we have tried in other cities in the states, so that says somethin’ ;) After lunch we ventured up a little more on the worlds biggest escalator (pfttttt) and then walked over to the Peak Tram station. This was kinda a disappointment. The tram was supposed to be something to ‘not miss’, but I kinda wish we had ‘missed’ it. It was super touristy and busy. Everyone was pushing and shoving like the tram was going to leave and never come back. It was kinda like a tram we took in Rio that is a train pulled by a cable vertically up a mountain. The one in Rio was more fun, old, and scary. This was refurbished, crowded, stinky, and took FOREVER! We could have ran up the friggen mountain faster... ;) However, the top of the Peak was nice. There is a mall, couple restaurants, and neat tower at the top, along with trails around the peak itself and amazing views of the city. We looked around and then met back up with Taru with her friend at this restaurant called The Peak Look Out. It was a really nice restaurant, but SUPER expensive. All we got was dessert and it was more than a nice restaurant in Boulder, yikes! But the ambience and views were nice. After we said goodbye to Taru because she was flying home the next day and we took the lovely tram back down. From the tram station we started our ‘hike’ around Central to look at all the famous buildings and parks of downtown. We didn’t realize we would end up walking around for hours on end. It was fun, but we were a little beat. We ended back at the IFC Mall, had a snack, and then took the metro over to Kowloon back to the Avenue of the Stars. We went over there to hang out at a bar we saw earlier and watch the 8pm light show, but didn’t make it to the bar. We saw the light show, and then got caught in a crowd of people watching the setup of the red carpet of the Asian Film Awards. This is like the Academy Awards of Asia and we had no idea it was going on. It was pretty cool to see it all setup and getting ready for the show the next night. We decided to take the Star Ferry back to the island instead of the metro to get another view of the city. It was ok, but not too exciting. We got back to the island and took the metro back to our hotel and zonked.
We decided to sleep in the next day and just ease into the day. After we got up and got moving we took a taxi to the Macau Ferry Station and took a Jet Boat to Macau Island, which is basically a little Las Vegas. The Jet Boat was an experience. This sucker moves really fast and the seats look like airplane seats. You get an assigned seat and have to put on a seat belt... But on a boat? Well, the engine on this sucker is made up of two jet engines, made by Boeing. I am not sure how fast we were going, but it only took an hour to get to Macau. Honestly, overall we didn’t care for Macau. Now, we didn’t see the city really, or its historical sites... We ended up just seeing the friggen casinos. Some were neat to see, like Wynn, and MGM Grand. We also saw the largest casino in the world... The Venetian Macau. All three of these are the same casinos in Vegas, just their Macau versions... Totally wild. We also visited the Hard Rock Hotel and ate at the worst restaurant on the trip. We basically had butt nachos and crap hole burgers (sorry for the bad language, but you would ALL think the same thing after eating it). The Venetian was crazy. For those who have seen the Venetian in Vegas, this is basically the same thing but 10 times bigger. Everything is bigger... The hotel, the casino, the canal shops, and front. The casino looked like a convention all filled wall to wall with games. It was a tad too big honestly. You look at it and have no clue where to start. We were also very under dressed. Apparently you need to be wearing formal wear to gamble here. Ehh, not fun. We figured we saw what we needed to see, got our passport stamp, and decided to go back to Hong Kong. We got back to the city, took a cab back to the hotel, got room service, and went to bed. This was kinda a butt day.... But OH WELL! ;)
Today was Disney day! We also lucked out with weather. It had been overcast everyday until today so us wearing our jackets and jeans kinda sucked once we got to Disney. It was very hot and humid, but much better weather. We were excited. Hong Kong Disney was very fun. You took the metro a little ways out of the city to Lantau Island where you switched subway lines to the Disneyland Line. The subways had Mickey Mouse windows and Mickey Mouse hand grabs for standing while on the train. There were also character statues through out the train and old vintage pictures... Too cool! Disney must have made some sort of deal with MTR of Hong Kong to do this. Disney has their own subway station, which was pretty much the more fancy subway station we had seen yet. All Disney themed and all marble. You walked out of the station and right into the entrance walk way. Hong Hong Disneyland is the smallest park of them all, but it was still very fun. Disney built the park smaller with an expansion plan over the next 10 years. I am sure they did this after the Disneyland Paris (EuroDisney) disaster experience. Start small and then grow based on demand. Well it was supposed to expand a couple years ago, but the demand wasn’t there. However, they broke ground last Dec on the expansion which won’t open until 2012. The park is missing all of Frontier Land, but the new expansion will include a ‘version’ of Frontier Land, but with a new flare. It actually sounds kinda cool, so another reason to come back to Hong Kong! But, I won’t go on and on about that... And all of you know I could :D. Anywho, the park is small so it isn’t open late. It closes at 7:30 after the fireworks so we had the entire evening after the park as well. The park was pretty dead, so we were able to do every single ride. Now keep in mind it has only a third of the number of rides of Disneyland in California. Adventure Land for example has 1 ride... Jungle River Cruise. One friggen ride! No Pirates of Caribbean, no Haunted Mansion, no Thunder Mountain... Oh well, we rode SpaceMountain 7 times which made up for the lack of other rides ;). Actually it is probably one of the best Space Mountains compared to the others! This park is only 5 years old, so everything was brand spankin new as well. After the park we went back to SoHo and ate dinner. We ate at a good pizza joint and then went back to the hotel and zonked.
Our last day was very low key. We went back up to the Peak to shop a little and then we walked back down to the city. This was fun for a little while until our knees gave out from walking downhill for an hour and Brittany started melting from the humidity so we decided to grab a taxi back to the hotel. We just hung out all day, getting ready for our flight out.
That brings me to now! We will go out to Causeway Bay tonight for dinner. There is a building called Times Square in this area that has a ton of stuff in it, including a good Chinese Restaurant, so we decided to go there. Causeway Bay is another neighborhood, but pretty much part of downtown.
Talk to you, and see some of you all soon!
T&B
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