Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong early Friday morning and it was a pretty stunning arrival.  The city is impressive and the skyline is something to marvel at.  I was disappointed to think that I wouldn’t get to see us depart the following night, which I think would be amazing. 

I only had 1 day in Hong Kong and wanted to make the most of it.  Once the ship was cleared, Jodi, Chris, Sam, Shannon, and I headed out to go see the giant Buddha on Lantau Island. 

A little overview of Hong Kong before I go any further: Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China.  2 systems, 1 nation.  They have a different currency and government but are technically part of China although they have many of the freedoms not open to people on the mainland.  Hong Kong is made up of several land pieces – the Kowloon peninsula, Hong Kong Island, Lantau Island, and some other outlying islands.  Our ship was docked on the Kowloon peninsula, all the fun happens on Hong Kong Island, and Buddha is at Lantau.

So we went down to the subway to figure out how to get to Lantau.  It was set up similarly to Singapore’s, except a little more tricky.  I don’t think any public transportation will compare to Singapore’s.  It was magical.

Anyway, we hopped the train to Lantau and when we arrived we grabbed a quick lunch outside.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous – about 80 degrees F or so, low humidity, sunny.  Perfect.   We headed up to get a ticket for the cable car to get to Buddha.  Man, the line was long.  But we waited and finally got into our cable car and headed over many green hills.  We could see Buddha in the distance and he was giant.  Just as promised. 

We arrived at the park and all thought it felt very plastic – it was certainly built up as a tourist destination in the past several years.  We walked through the park and headed up the many, many stairs up to Buddha.  It was pretty cool and a gorgeous view.  The statues surrounding giant Buddha were just as beautiful.  We walked around up there for a bit and perused the trashy tourist shops.  My favorite item at the Buddha tourist shops:  wooden shoe magnets that said “Holland.”  Completely appropriate for a Buddha statue in Hong Kong.

We left Buddha and wandered down to the nearby monastery.  Seriously, the Buddhists have some of the most striking handiwork I have seen on this voyage.  The colors and the detail are unmatched by any other decoration I’ve seen.

We stopped for some ice cream and then headed back to the cable car.  It’s funny, I like ice cream, but it’s not really been a “must have” in my real life.  For some reason though, it is consistently a much-sought-after port treat.  I think I’ve matched my 2 year ice cream total in the past 3 months. 

Buddha took way more time than we had anticipated and as we bopped down via cable car we realized we wouldn’t make it to Victoria’s Peak by sunset. We took the train over to Hong Kong Island and wandered through the subway/city/park maze looking for the tram.  This is when I really felt the overwhelming city vibe from Hong Kong.  There were hoards of people walking down the sidewalk, walking through the subway, driving down the street: it was almost too much.  It always seems that it’s during THOSE moments that you pick the wrong way to walk and need to backtrack.  Which is what we did. 

We FINALLY got to Victoria’s Peak and the sun had completely set.   I should probably mention that Victoria’s Peak is a great lookout point to see the skyline and all of Hong Kong (especially at night).  We got in line for the tram that takes us up the STEEP steep hill and ran into about 20 people we knew (when you only have 1 night in HK, you see a lot of the same people over and over…)  The view was definitely impressive and we were able to see a bit of the light show that happens every night at 8pm.  We were on the “wrong” side to see the light show in full though, but I still appreciated the effort.  And again, the city is beautiful at night.

At this point we were all pretty tired and hungry so we ended up grabbing dinner at a very strange Chinese diner near the tram.  The food was okay-ish (I had some noodles or something… I honestly can’t remember.  It wasn’t standout).   We took the tram back down and hopped another train back to Kowloon to check out the night market.  We walked through the night market and balked at some of the prices after experiencing Vietnam.  Oh Hong Kong, you’ll get your money on the Spring voyage when the ship sails West and nobody knows how inexpensive things get in Vietnam and India.  Sorry we couldn’t help out.

It was about midnight by this point and Chris, Jodi and I headed for home.  The ship was docked in a terminal that was attached to a very high-end mall.  The walk seemed endless, but we finally got there.  Instead of packing my bag for Beijing the next day, I went to sleep :)