I had been getting up early for school for two days, so getting up at 7am wasn't much of a problem. Even though I was exhausted the night before, I forced myself to to some ironing, so I managed to get myself packed fairly quickly. I walked the five minutes to the bus stop and was able to catch the "freedom bus" at 8:15am and arrived at the airport a little after 9am. I met Jongsoo in the Cathay Pacific line, where he was right up near the front. It's a good thing because, it being the first day of a long weekend, the line to get through immigration and security was quite long. I got my money exchanged, stopped at the dutyfree, and made it to the gate with barely five minutes to spare. Mental note for next time to arrive a little early. Although in my defence they had moved up the departure time by 15 minutes, so I should have had more time.
I love the airlines out here. Maybe all airplanes are like this now, but when I fly out here I get my own little TV in the headrest in front of me where I can choose from a selection of movies, TV shows, music, or play video games. This really makes the time fly by. I watched Paycheck, I had already seen it but thought it was worthy of seeing again. We landed into Hong Kong (or whatever island the airport is on) on time and managed to get onto the train headed to Hong Kong Island, where our hotel was located. They have shuttles to basically any and every hotel, so we managed to find our way quite easily. We only went the wrong way once, but with basically everyone able to speak English well, it wasn't a problem. We checked into our 4 star hotel located in the Causeway Bay area--The Regal Hong Kong--by 4pm. We asked the concierge about tours and found that they arrange quite a few different ones. We tried to get onto an interesting looking night tour, but found that it was already sold out. So we decided to set out and explore the island ourselves.
We wandered around aimlessly for awhile with just our little tourist maps to guide us. There were a lot of interesting buildings and a lot of people milling about, but we didn't find anything oustanding. Later, heading back to our hotel, we found a small store, so we decided to buy some beers and snacks to take back to our room. The prices of the stuff in the mini-bar were somewhat ridiculous(eg. $30 for water). Actually the funny thing about Hong Kong is that they use the Dollar, but worth it's about 6 times less than the Canadian dollar. So it's strange to go into McDonalds and see a sign saying "$22.50 for a combo", or "Supersize for only $2." ?I mention McDonalds because we had our first meal there. I wanted to get some Chinese food because I hear it's fabulous in Hong Kong, but Jong Soo was hungry and wanted to eat quickly. Also, I think I've eaten McDonalds in every coutnry I've been to (and it does all taste the same), so I figured I should keep the streak alive. :)
After going back to the hotel we had a beer and discussed what to do for the evening. We ended up deciding to take the ferry across Victoria Harbour and explore the Kowloon side. We wandered around taking pictures while the sun was setting and eventually found our way to the ferry station. My brother had made it sound much closer than it actually was. The ferry ride across only takes about 10 minutes and the view is fantastic. After getting off, we walked over to the Hong Kong Island viewing area. From where we were there was music playing and the lights on the buildings across the harbour dance around to the music. It reminded me of the fountains of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Only these lights were on top of sky scrapers...I little more impressive.
After doing that, we wandered in the direction of the Hard Rock Cafe. I wanted to grab some shot glasses and I figured it might be a good place to eat. In Tokyo they had Japanese style food on the menu, but in Hong Kong it was basically all Western Food. So I had a burger. Tasted great even though it was my second of the day. We stuck around there drinking beer while listening to a band. The band looked South American and our waitress was from Tibet. I was starting to wonder if anyone in Hong Kong was actually from there. We stuck around there for quite awhile, but then went out to wander around some more. We wandered around aimlessly buying souveniers and ended up back at the ferry station. We had just missed the last ferry back to Hong Kong Island, so we had to head back to catch the subway. We got back to our hotel at a little after 1am, and even though we were talking about staying out later, we figured that by going to bed early we might be able to get onto the early tour (had to sign-up by 8am). As it turns out we didn't make that tour. We both got up at 7:30, but decided it was better to catch the afternoon tour.
When we finally did roll out of bed at 9:30 we headed down to our free breakfast buffet that came with our air/hotel package. This was amazing. It had basically anything and everything ever served for breakfast anywhere laid out. So I filled my plate with the standard scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and toast (not easy to find in Korea), and then added fried rice, yogurt, pastries, and fruit. I put it down at our table and then looked up to a chef making salmon omelets, so I grabbed one of those for good measure. Of course I couldn't finish all of this food (made a pretty good dent though), but it was nice to have a little bit of everything. We walked away stuffed and went down to the concierge to sign up for the afternoon tour of Hong Kong Island.
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