Hong Kong

So last week was recess week, took  the first few days to finish up on some school assignments (read electrodynamics) and other things that had to be done before taking a break.

But on Wednesday it was time for a well earned break and I went to Hong Kong to spend the remaining week! So I think the picture that most people have of Hong Kong is this intense crowded, billboard filled city with illegal copies everywhere. The whole city isn't really like that but our hostel was located in the middle of the area that I believe gives Hong Kong its image; Mong Kok. Streets filled with electronics shops, a big market full (called Ladies Market) filled with trinkets, accessories and tons of things (and everything is of course knock-offs).

My travelling companion was Lingling, a Chinese girl that studies at NTU. She has lived in Hong Kong so she was kind of my local guide, I did however have to do most of the planning myself but it was good to have someone with you who spoke Cantonese. Almost everyone became a lot more happy and friendly when they could speak Cantonese instead of English. I didn't practice that much Mandarin either since it is considered just as "bad" as English.

The first day we actually went outside of the city to a monastery located on an island outside of town (Hong Kong more or less consists of a bunch of islands). There they have a huge sitting Buddha that I had heard was worth going to. So we got there and it was pretty cool place. Me and Lingling below.

The monastery is surrounded by by green mountains with clouds rolling over them creating a really beautiful scenery.

In the evening we went to Victoria Peak which is supposed to have a really amazing view over Hong Kong's skyline, when we got there was so much fog that you could barely see 30 m so we stood in line for half an hour to get on a tram to take us down again. Up there I did however find this rather peculiar sign...

Once down we took a walk in the more central city which has some really cool buildings.

 The next day we went to Ocean Park, Lingling top priority place to visit. Ocean Park is like a mix of a zoo and a theme park, I'm personally not that big of a fan when it comes to roller coasters and it's likes so it was actually a really nice experience.

View from the cable car, the park was divided into two parts on two sides of a mountain and to travel between the two you either took the cable car or a train through the mountain.

We went to see a dolphin show and found this kid who had found the most awesome use for the plastic cover of the water bottles.

They also have two pandas at the park, it was my first time seeing pandas in real life, really cool animals.

This one was all like "If I put these leaves in front of me maybe they won't see me". (Okay actually he was just sitting in a big pile of leaves eating, kind of like sitting in the middle of a plate filled with food and eating it).

But most amazing of all was probably the two firefoxes they had (aka red pandas). It was probably the cutest animal I've ever seen, it's like a cat and a bear at the same time and bears are awesome and I really love cats so these are like the perfect combination.

They also had a huge aquarium, the kind you can walk through and there was a lot of extraordinary fishes and creatures there like octopuses, sharks, stingrays, seahorses, lionfish and a lot more. It was a bit dark so it was hard to get good pictures but just to give you a taste:

In the evening Lingling ditched me at Hong Kong central to go meet her cousin and I went to Soho, where they have (except like a ton of chic bars, restaurants, shops and galleries) the worlds longest "system of outdoor covered escalators". So basically in the middle of the city you have like a one kilometer of escalators tracing its way up the mountain and kind of in the middle is Soho. It was a bit late so there wasn't that many shops open but a lot of bars and restaurants and I found a place with really nice kebab (don't worry, I had a lot of different Chinese food as well). I then walked around the area which has a really nice atmosphere.

The next day we decided to focus more on the city and we started out by going to Times Square, where we had conveyor belt sushi (it's really hard to choose what to pick when sitting there) and then from there we walked around the central city which was more or less packed with people.

I was forced into IKEA..

We took a walk along the "Avenue of Stars" which is a promenade along Victoria Harbour which is filled with the hand imprints of famous Chinese actors.

And of course, there is one who even gets a statue.

In the evening we had hot pot together with Linglings cousin, hot pot is lika a big bowl of bullion/water that you cook your food in directly at the table, like vegetables, thin slices of meat, seafood, noodles etc...

Early the next day we left for the airport and went back to Singapore to get ready for a new week in school!