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Week 22- Y4(Aug 10th to Aug 16th) |
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Sunday:
And I'm off to Hong Kong! I booked this trip very spontaneously, so it feels kind of crazy but fun to just be "hopping off" to Hong Kong for a week. At first I was a little worried about leaving 2 almost strangers in the apartment, but now that I've met Fred, I think everything will be okay!
The flight was about 3 hours, and from the airport, I took the train into Central (downtown) where I hopped on a ferry straight-away for Macau. By this time it was already about 4:30, and I really wanted to get some picture taking in before it got dark, so I was rushing to find a guesthouse. Because I was in such a hurry, I ended up in a really really crappy guesthouse with cardboard-thin walls and a pretty icky room. Oh well, only one night, right? It's definitely better than the floor of a convention centre in Pai, Thailand . . . I dropped my bags off, and I was off to explore Macau. Macau is really interesting, because it was a Portugese peninsula until it was returned to China earlier this century I think? Or maybe the late '90s? I'm not sure. Anyway, the result is this crazy blend of Portugese and Chinese culture and architecture. It's absolutely fascinating. I started my walk on the back streets of my hostel, where there's a bunch of
traditional Chinese bakeries. All of the things on display looked very mysterious, and since English is not widely spoken in Macau, it was a "look but don't touch" kind of thing for me! From the back streets, I headed to Largo de Senado, which is the main square in Macau. It's surrounded by the Senate House, the old Post Office, a beautiful old museum, and farther up, the Church of St. Dominic, a really pretty church that hosts a religious arts museum. From here I walked down Rua Central (all the streets have Portugese and Chinese names) to see all these gorgeous apartments and buildings with lovely balconies and interesting details. A lot of them are a little dilapidated, which made me love the buildings even more. I would love to live somewhere like this, where there's so much character in every building. Along this street, I stopped at the Dom Pedro V Theatre and the Church of St. Augustine, another beautiful church. A lot of the churches and
important buildings here are done in pastel colours, particularly soft shades of yellow for churches. I continued all the way down Rua Central to the end of the peninsula, passing more town squares, Moorish barracks and old historical houses. At the end of the peninsula, there's a really famous and well-loved temple dedicated to A-Ma, who I think is the goddess of the sea? Here I found a very Chinese temple built on Buddhist, Confucianist and Taoist ideas, in the middle of all this "European-ness". I love the bizarre and always unexpected mish-mash of cultures here. From here I walked around Nam Van Lake on Avenida da Republica. This is one of the prettiest streets in all of Macau. Here was where the Portugese officials built their beautiful homes just as they would have in Europe. All of these stunning mansions overlook the ocean. By this time, it was already dark outside, and I had been walking for about 4 hours (Macau is really tiny, but I
wanted to see everything so I was taking my time!) Macau is kind of funny, because one half of it is all old historical buildings, but the other half is all lights and neon and big fancy casinos! It's not legal to gamble in China, so most people actually come to Macau to hit the casinos. It makes a really weird juxtaposition with those beautiful sloping backstreets of Macau; a juxtaposition that I'm not terribly thrilled about, but it's still kind of funny and quirky!
I ended up in a little Portugese restaurant up by Largo de Senado for dinner, where I had a great big piece of cod with potatoes and carrots. Yum. After dinner, I was already pretty tired from having gotten up at 5am for the flight, plus walking so much, so I called it an early night!
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Monday:
I got up extra early to see as much as I could on my last day in Macau. My first stop was Monte Fort, an old fort that was built by the Jesuits. From here, you can see a lot of Macau and across the river to mainland China. From the fort, I walked to the Ruins of St. Paul, which were extraordinary. The original church was destroyed by fire in 1835, and now only the facade of the church remains. It's a beautiful facade, but what makes it even more amaazing is the light peaking through where the windows would have been. I spent a long time just taking in all the details of the ruins. Amazing. After this, I got some Portugese egg tarts for breakfast (Macau is famous for its egg tarts, and rightfully so-- they were delicious!) and walked along some back streets until I got to the Church of St. Lawrence, which is one of the oldest churches in Macau. It's really pretty and it wears its age very well. The inside was beautiful, but out of respect for the
nun who was praying, I didn't take any pictures!
After this I walked all the way back to A-Ma Temple to finish taking pictures there (it closed at 6pm yesterday, so I only got to see about half of the temple then). And from there I trekked (ha, not really!) up to Penha Hill to check out the great view out over the ocean and all of Macau and to check out Penha Church. By this time it was actually raining pretty hard, so I couldn't see too far, but I could definitely see a lot of tiny Macau! As I was about to walk down the hill, a little old man waved me over to the side. Turned out that he and another guy had a little souvenir stand up there, and they hadn't had any business all day! And in fact, business has been horribly slow ever since China made its borders more accessible. Apparently Macau has lost a lot of its tourists since then . . . however they've been replaced by gamblers, who are not coming to check out old Baroque churches! The little old men were so nice and seemed so lonely, so I
ended up buying some stuff, and paying a little more than I should have (you've got to bargain HARD in China!!!), but I didn't mind too much, since I'm probably the only sale they made all day.
From there, I walked up to Largo de Senado again, where I ate a lovely omelette (with real cheese) at a wonderful little cafe. Why can't Seoul have great little cafes like this? I wished I lived in a place with more character . . . after this I picked up my backpack from the guesthouse and was trying to head to the ferry to go back to Hong Kong, but I couldn't get a taxi in the pouring rain! This resulted in me trying to figure out what bus to take and how much it was, but somehow I managed to find some info about it in my Lonely Planet and I managed to get myself to the ferry pier. And then back to Hong Kong!
Of course, my first task was to find somewhere to stay. I headed to Chungking Mansions on the Kowloon side (Hong Kong consists of Hong Kong Island, a few other outlying islands and a large chunk of reclaimed land off the mainland of China. Kowloon is on the mainland side, and is a lot cheaper than the island. Chungking Mansions is kind of an infamous ramshackle building filled with cheap guesthouses, Indian restaurants and junk for sale. There's even a cult classic movie about it called "Chungking Express". I had heard very very mixed reviews about Chungking Mansions, but since there's a different hostel on pretty much every floor, I figured I'd definitely find somewhere to stay here! Fortunately I lucked out. I first headed to Lucky Guesthouse, but they were full. However, the woman owns about 5 more guesthouses in the building, and she had her very attractive young African employee take me down to the 6th floor for the New Hong Kong Guesthouse.
I ended up in a small but absolutely spotless and brand new room with air-con, a mini-fridge and a tv! Almost like luxury for Asia! I was pretty impressed.
Now half the point of me coming to Hong Kong was to meet up with my friend Steph. She had thought she would have her cousin's cell phone, but as it turned out she didn't, so we were stuck communicating by email, which made it difficult to touch base tonight. So finally she just said where to meet her for tomorrow, and that was that. So tonight . . . I walked up Nathan Road, which is kind of infamous in itself for being a crazy mishmash of neon and shopping. It's a really interesting street to walk up: you can find ramshackle old apartment blocks (like Chungking Mansions!) right beside fancy hotels and shopping malls. It's bizarre, gritty, overwhelming and kind of awesome! I walked all the way up to the Temple Street Night Market, where I had a good look around and ended up buying a few little souvenirs. It was kind of nice, because the rain made it a lot less busy than it usually is. That said, I still had to bargain really really hard to get
anything at a fair price-- the second vendors see a white girl, they think "easy prey"!
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Tuesday:
Another early morning, as I wanted to jam as much sightseeing as I can into a short week! What I learned today though is that Hong Kong is a city that likes to sleep in . . . nothing really happens before 10am here, which means that I might as well sleep in for an extra hour tomorrow morning!
Since I wasn't meeting Steph until noon, I spent the morning walking along the East Promenade and the Avenue of the Stars. This promenade follows the shore of the Kowloon side and offers an amazing view of Hong Kong Island and all of its gigantic buildings. There's some really interesting architecture, in particular the Bank of China, which is comprised of a lot of triangles. Everything on the Island side is very tall and very shiny. This makes for a really dramatic view, as there are steep mountains/hills right behind Central (the main downtown area), so the contrast is pretty cool. Hong Kong is really compact for this reason. The Avenue of the Stars features the handprints of famous Hong Kong actors. In the gift shops you can get quirky gifts like Bruce Lee candles or Jackie Chan action figures! Also along the Promenade is the Hong Kong Cultural Centre which is a really unusual looking wave-like building and the old KCR clock tower. From the
promenade I walked over to the Star Ferry terminal to meet Steph. The Star Ferry is somewhat of a Hong Kong institution: it used to be the only way to cross from the mainland to the island, and they still use the same vintage-y boats to get people across for about 10cents. You haven't been to Hong Kong unless you've been on the Star Ferry. So when Steph arrived, we took the ferry over to Central, where we caffeineited and caught up and planned our day. Our day started with a walk through Central, which ended up being more difficult than I had thought-- Hong Kong is a maze of pedestrian overpasses and underpasses, and sometimes just trying to get to the other side of the street is like a mathematical equasion! We ended up taking a cab instead . . . Our plan for the day was to take the tram car up to Victoria Peak, the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island, to take in the view of all of Hong Kong. The tram in itself was pretty cool-- a long and
very steep ride up made it entertaining. The tram dropped us off into the Peak Tower, where we rode the escalator up to the top viewing deck. The view was pretty awesome! Seeing not only the island side, but all of the Kowloon side really showed me what a huge bustling city this really is. And then on the other side of the island, almost nothing! Just jungle and some fishing villages. I love the crazy dramatic contrasts here: really rich versus really ramshackle, really traditionally Chinese versus really Westernized; really busy crazy packed streets versus a solitary fishing village on the other side of the island; sanitized fancy shopping malls versus junky street markets-- Hong Kong is always a surprise!
Steph and I left the Peak Tower building to get to the great outdoors, and we did a short walking loop around the Peak to convene with nature a little bit. This was kind of amusing since Steph is insanely scared of snakes, and apparently you do have to watch out for snakes up here, so she was really paranoid the whole time.
After we left the Peak, Steph took me to Causeway Bay, which is a busy shopping and dining area. We ate noodle and wonton soup in a little hole in the wall diner, which is cool, because apparently these are usually the best restaurants! Hong Kong restaurants are usually tiny and really crowded, so it's pretty common for the staff to seat you at a table with other diners. After lunch/dinner, which left us both stuffed, we took the metro to Mong Kok on the Kowloon side, which is a busy shopping area that's a little more raw and a lot more Chinese than the Island side. We explored some outlet stores (wow! So many cheap brand names!), and we headed over to the Ladies' Market. The Temple Street Night Market used to be geared towards men, so this street market was the women's equivalent. It still sells mostly women's clothing and children's toys. I bought a really cute sundress and some stuff for Caleb. It was great having Steph there, because
suddenly the initial prices became so much cheaper! I love travelling with (almost) locals . . .
When we were all shopped out, Steph took me to this place ironically called "Healthy Dessert", which served really yummy mango puddings mixed with other fruits and gelatinous mystery things. Another good thing about having Steph around: her Cantonese is good enough to make sure that no peanuts are going to find their way into my meal.
And finally after a long walk back down Nathan Road, I returned to the East Promenade to check out the view of Central all lit up at night. It was pretty amazing but part of me couldn't help but wonder how much electricity gets wasted here every night . . .
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Wednesday:
Today Steph and I planned to go to Lantau Island, a large and mountainous island belonging to Hong Kong. It has the largest seated bronze Buddha statue in the world. Since it was more convenient from our different locations, we decided to meet at the subway station on Lantau Island (yes you can even take the subway to other islands!) However, Steph was about 40 minutes late, and I was about to leave without her when she finally showed up. Man, I wish at least one of us had a cell phone! There was another minor snafu once we left the subway station-- there's a long cable car that crosses over a few peaks and goes to the Big Buddha. It's supposed to be a 20 minute ride that is really beautiful, and I really wanted to ride it. Unfortunately, it was closed today for maintenance. So we had to wait in line for the bus. The bus ride ended up being really beautiful in its own right though. Because the island is mountainous, the roads zigzag a lot, and
we got to take in not only the beautiful almost untouched mountains, but also the coastline and some nice beaches. Lantau is a really peaceful island of a few isolated fishing villages, and some of the best hiking in Hong Kong. When we finally got to the Big Buddha, it was pretty awesome (and really big!) It was a really clear day with bright blue skies, so the contrast between the bronze Buddha with the blue sky behind him was great. After that, we explored the Po Lin Monastery for a little bit, and then hopped a bus to Tai O fishing village on the other side of the island. Tai O is a little village that was known for smuggling Chinese refugees into Hong Kong. Now it's kind of in decline, as a lot of the town was destroyed by fire I think in 2000. There's still some traditional stilt houses, a cool little market, and house boats; and it was interesting to walk through a real Chinese village that isn't just there for the tourists, but there
really wasn't much to see, so Steph took a bus back to the subway, and headed back to our respective homes for a little bit of rest before a night out.
Later that night, we met again at the Star Ferry and headed to Lan Kwai Fong, which is the big nightspot on the island side. It's kind of comparable to Yorkville in Toronto-- very trendy, a lot of young wealth, a lot of expats. Steph and I had dinner at a little Chinese restaurant, which Steph said was only okay. I've decided that I don't really like Chinese food all that much-- it can be oily and too salty/saucy. After dinner we went to a lounge called Fong (which apparently means "room" in Cantonese) to meet up with Steph's cousin Vicky. Vicky is a Hong Kong native who was educated at Yale, and therefore speaks perfect English with no discernible accent. If I didn't know, I would have assumed that she grew up in North America. Vicky is studying to be a lawyer now. She is very energetic and very social, so it was kind of fun to go out with her, because she knew exactly where to take us and what to order! However, drinking is really really
expensive in Hong Kong! I was shocked at the prices for even just a beer. Maybe I couldn't live here after all . . .
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Thursday:
My last full day in Hong Kong. In the morning I looked around the Harbour Centre shopping mall for a little, but didn't really find anything that I liked-- too fancy, too "money" for me. I met up with Steph for a quick lunch in the afternoon, and she took me to another great little hole in the wall diner, where she ordered me a very typical Hong Kong dish: stir fried beef with thick egg noodles. It was good, but again too salty and oily for me. After that we had to say goodbye, possibly for the next 3 years! Steph is moving to Paris in a month to do her masters, and if I don't end up in Amsterdam next year, it's going to be a long time before we see eachother again!
After saying goodbye, I took the subway to Sheung Wan on the island side, where I did a 3 hour walking tour of the island. I started in Sheung Wan, which is an older more traditional neighbourhood. There's a lot of Chinese medicinal shops, as well as dried seafood shops, and even stranger ginseng and bird's nest shops (Yes bird's nests are actually a delicacy here, along with shark, pigeon and frog. Sarcastically: yum) The sights and smells in this neighbourhood were alternately fascinating and disgusting. From here I walked to the Cat Street Market, which has a lot of antiques (real and fake) and little religious curios on offer. I bought some jade carvings for almost nothing. From here I walked to Man Mo Temple, which is one of the most popular temples in Hong Kong. Man is the Taoist god of literature, while Mo is the god of war. The coolest part of the temple was seeing the huge incense coils suspended from the ceiling under the natural light
pouring in from the sunroof. It was quite a sight. After the temple, I left the Sheung Wan area for Central where I came across the Central-Mid-Levels escalator. No joke, this is the longest escalator in the world; and because Hong Kong is so steep, it's quite literally a commuter escalator intended to get people from Central up to their homes halfway up the Peak (called the Mid-Levels). It's weird and kooky, but it works! Apparently the escalator has helped to ease traffic quite a bit. Only in Hong Kong . . . I rode the escalator up to the SoHo area, which is a trendy little dining neighbourhood. I found a lot of really quaint little foreign restaurants serving everything from Thai to Dutch food. Leaving SoHo, I passed some old colonial buildings and walked around Lan Kwai Fong, as I wanted to check out the party area under daylight. It was early but it was already hopping-- Hong Kong bars usually have good happy hour specials. I descended
from Lan Kwai Fong into Central again to check out some more old colonial buildings mixed in with impressive and interestingly-designed skyscrapers before practically collapsing into a coffee shop! Hong Kong is an awesome city!
When I was sufficiently fueled up, I took the subway back up to Mong Kok to do a just a little more shopping. Again, I didn't find anything that I really liked. Everyone always says that Hong Kong is supposed to be really good for shopping, but I think maybe it's a little overrated. Or maybe I just haven't found the right places . . .
From Mong Kok I walked back down Nathan Road, stopping in some shopping malls along the way, and finally after a long day on foot, I stopped for dinner at a Macanese restaurant. I thought the food was so great in Macau that I wanted to try it again! After dinner, I made one purchase of a great pair of suede sandals, and then I pretty much collapsed into bed.
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Friday:
Sigh. And now I have to leave Hong Kong. I got up early for coffee and then I grabbed my backpack and I was off. Hong Kong has a special subway line for the airport that's really fast, and my plan was to take a taxi to that subway station. However, the taxi driver claimed that there was some kind of delay on the airport express and that it wasn't in service (Looking back, he was probably scamming to take me all the way to the airport, which would have been a lot of money for him). So I said oh well, and took the long subway route to the airport. It ended up being cheaper and only took about 20 minutes more, so I didn't mind. It's a good thing I packed light!
And that was the end of Hong Kong! What a great whirlwind trip. It was so last minute, but almost everything ended up going smoothly, and I managed to see most of the city within my 5 days of sightseeing. And sigh, back to Korea once again.
Again, it was raining when I got back, and because it was later at night, I had to wait 40 minutes to get a bus to Itaewon. But after being stuck on a plane for 3 hours, I had a lot of energy, so when I finally got home, I put on my new dress and took Fred and Adrien to the Orange Tree and then Ssen for some drinks and some pool playing. We also ran into some of my friends, which made it a fun night out!
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Saturday:
Moving slow this afternoon, even through the one private I had to teach today. However, I picked up some energy in salsa class, and we all ended up going to Caliente after class. A really fun night of dancing! I've improved a lot over this year, so a lot of things that I had to work at before just seem natural now, plus my styling is pretty good now. I think Chris and I will make a really good performance team.
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