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April, 2008 I spent 3 days killing time in Hong Kong while in
the city for an eye appointment. My favorite thing about
Hong Kong was the smells. It wasn't a perfect-smelling city, but compared
to the place that I have been living, it had some wonderful moments.
I loved walking down the streets and hardly ever smell cigarette smoke.
Instead I passed by many people wearing perfume or cologne, and many
stores that were filled with the scent of freshly baked croissants,
honey, and toasted almonds. Yum! I also liked how clean the city streets
were. There were some pristine malls and many lovely boutiques. And
I found my favorite chocolate in the whole world on sale in the Hong
Kong stores; "Ritter Sport Yogurt." Man - I love that stuff!!!!
My least favorite part of Hong Kong was exploring
it alone. I was really wishing I had someone to share the experience
with, rather than walking the busy streets all day by myself. This
led to me taking many pictures of city landscapes and self portraits.
It was a huge and crowded city. I loved the lights
on the skyscrapers at night. Sometimes the buildings were so tall,
towering around me from every side, that I had a hard time finding
the sky. It was one of the cleanest big cities I have ever been in.
My favorite picture from this trip can speak for itself: This is the world's biggest fire hydrant. Seriously. I enjoyed drinking Starbucks about twice a day. I
was in heaven! I also ate at Krispy Kreme!
With nothing to do but wander around the city all
day, I got lots of exercise and didn't feel too guilty about eating
some great "western food". My meals were some of the highlights
of my trip. It was great to eat food that I can't get in the city
where I live. I explored the city using their very convenience subway
system, called the MTR. It was often crowded, a few times was PACKED,
but during the day it was quite nice. Traffic was not too bad. There were many options for
public transportation in addition to the MTR. The public busses were
very nice and clean (like everything else). Some were so tall and
skinny I couldn't believe they didn't tip over when they went around
corners. The city of Hong Kong is kind of on a hill. There
was one part of the city on the island where you could ride an escalator
through the city all the way up the hill. The escalator would open
up every 50 feet, or so, for people to get on and off. It was a really
cool part of town. Unfortunately the escalator only went up, so when
I got to the top I had to walk all the way down. But it was worth
it. If you ever visit Hong Kong, find the escalator hill. I took a fast, international train to and from Hong
Kong. I really enjoyed traveling this way. It isn't quite as fast
as flying, but it was much more roomie and took much less time to
get on and off the train then the 2 hours you have to spend waiting
around at airports. When we were leaving Hong Kong, the train was
getting ready to leave and we had one of those movie scene moments
of running along side of the train to get on before it left. It wasn't
actually moving - but they were all yelling at us to hurry up! I took
pictures as I ran! When I arrived back in my country's train station,
they had some dogs smelling the suitcases of the passengers going
through customs. It was called The Beagle Brigade. So cute! December, 2008 My friend helped me shop for groceries and we had a fun, busy day together. But the big city was really tiring so we had some sushi for dinner and she headed back home. The next day I hung out with other friends who had
some business in the city. After a busy day, we rode the ferry to
the island and ate dinner on top of the Peak, overlooking the city.
It was a lot of fun. The next day was very similar to the first. We had
a busy day and then went out to dinner together in the evening. This
night we found a little Mexican restaurant, then found a little Gelato
shop, found a Starbucks, and then we wandered around the city aimlessly.
We were very full and had a lot of fun. I had a dentist appointment the next day, but in the
morning I met up with my friends for some sort of brunch that the
locals like to eat. It's called Dim-Sum. You order a ton of appetizer-size
dishes. We ordered 19 things for 6 people and were all pretty full
by the end of it. That afternoon I bought some books and went to (surprise!) Starbucks to sit and chill and read. It was one of the highlights of my trip, as I rested and had time to think. The next morning I got up and saw the new movie "Four Christmases" at a nice theater. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie at a theater. It was so fun! By the end of the day I had ridden the subway, train,
taxi, plane, and another taxi back home to my city. I had filled my
suitcase so full of groceries that I didn't know if I'd get it all
in under the airplane weight limit. I was barely able to lug it all
up the six flights of stairs to my apartment. I unpacked and displayed
it to share with you the quantity and selections of food I bought
in the big city. It might not be healthy, but these are some of the
things I crave when I don't have any access to American foods. |
