HONG KONG, SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION, CHINA

Sunday, December 31, 2006
HONG KONG, SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION, CHINA
The Hong Kong part of my winter vacation was completely mellow…Ivan and I flew from Beijing to Hong Kong, which actually ended up being the longest flight of the vacation…3.5 hours…not too shabby…the Hong Kong airport is a lot nicer and more modern than the Beijing airport…MUCH more modern…the oddest part of the flight was checking in at the Beijing airport…you have to go through customs before you check in…very strange…getting off the airplane in Hong Kong was nice…it was a LOT warmer, so we didn't need 67 layers of clothes anymore…we hopped into a cab, and found the hostel where I had made reservations…it was in chungking mansions, which is basically one GIANT building…filled with many hostels, stands to buy just about anything, a few places to surf the internet, Indian restaurants, money exchangers, etc…and tons of touts…Beijing was nothing compared to the number of people who are trying to sell stuff or get us to go to their hostel/restaurant…I'm glad we had reservations ahead of time…we checked into our room, which was tiny…newer than the Beijing hostel, and with a TV…we found it had the wonders of bbc, one of the best news channels ever…
Since we had a few hours, we decided to go to the peak, to see Victoria harbor at night…I'm glad we did, even though it was pretty windy and chilly up at the top…after taking the subway/bus and walking a bit, we found the bottom tram station…the tram ride up is really steep…enough so that they build the steps in the middle of the tram at an angle for those who end up standing…the view at the top of the peak is great…at night, when all the buildings are lit up, it's amazing…many of the buildings are supposedly coordinated together in a light show, but we didn't really see that…there are definitely buildings with changing lights, but they didn't seem coordinated…Ivan is much more a photographer than I am, but I think the two of us took equal numbers of pictures…I played around with the settings on my camera for the first time ever, and found all sorts of good ways to take pictures…black and white, sepia toned, adjusting the shutter speed, etc…fun times…
The next day we didn't set an alarm…didn't even bother to think about what we wanted to see until after getting ready for the day…we walked for what seemed like ages to find breakfast, but we didn't see anything…annoying, so we ended up settling on a convenience store breakfast…ice cream, chocolate and chocolate milk for me, a sandwich for Ivan…we decided to check out Hong Kong park…it's built in the middle of Hong Kong, an 8 hectare park…it's not a huge park, but they have managed to cram a number of areas into it…a fountain plaza, conservatory, Olympic square, viewing tower, museum and aviary…it's a bit odd to see the contrast in photographs, with the park surrounded by skyscrapers…the aviary is nice to walk through, according to the signs, it is home to 600 birds of 90 different species…we did howeva, skip the museum of tea ware…we figured we didn't need to see a museum full of antique tea ware…bowls, teaspoons, brewing trays, sniffing cups and teapots…how exciting does that sound??? Not very…after wandering around, we had lunch at a small sandwich type of place…I guess it was later than lunch, but not really dinner yet…after that came the Hong Kong space museum…it's shaped like a ginormous golf ball…there is a lot about Chinese space history, some of the legends of space, and some hands on exhibits illustrating the laws of physics…you get to see a lump of moon rock, and the 1962 space capsule from Mercury…some of the exhibits were outdated…for instance, Pluto is still listed as a planet, and at least one globe showed Yugoslavia as a country…there is also an IMAX theater…Ivan and I each picked a 'movie' we wanted to see, and agreed to come back the next night…dinner was at Murphy's pub, an Irish pub…they had street signs from a few places in Ireland…one of them was from Ivan's hometown, and a town very close to his…what a small world…
The next morning was the morning Saddam Hussein was executed…since it was pretty much the only thing on the news, it prompted an interesting discussion between Ivan and I about the death penalty…it's always interesting to hear the reasons people have for the way they feel…or the lack of reasons…we ended up getting moving late again, and after breakfast at the Irish pub again, we got on the subway to see the chi lin nunnery…it's a Buddhist nunnery…it's not as large as other temple complexes…but it still has plenty of gates, as I've come to expect…it's like Hong Kong park, in that it's very peaceful…until you look up and see the skyscrapers close by…(also like Hong Kong park)…we didn't actually see any nuns while we were there, but we did see a number of buddhas…after coming back, we walked along the wharf, seeing all the buildings as they slowly lit up for the night…it was pretty hazy, though we weren't sure whether that was due to pollution or just not so clear weather…(the pollution is one of the worst things about Hong Kong)…either way, it wasn't as clear as we would've liked…we went to the Irish pub for one last dinner, before heading up to our room to pack up…over to the space theater again to watch our two movies…Ivan chose one about the exploration of the moon, I chose one about speed…(movement, not the drug)…both were good…howeva, I got really really motion sick during parts of the movie about speed…who would've thought I could feel that sick from just a movie?? Ugh…a quick walk back to the hostel, a taxi ride to the airport, and hop on our flight back to Seoul…arriving back in the land of cold and wind…but it's home, at least for now…