Greg and I have a confession, we both have fallen in love. We love Hong Kong! We have just returned from our trip there and already can't wait to go back. We loved everything the city had to offer... easy/cheap/an abundance of public transportation, easy to navigate streets complete with signs pointing you in the right direction, beautiful landscape, opportunities for hiking just outside of the city, cleaner than Bangkok streets, and I know Greg will want me to mention the local bars have a good selection of beer including pale ales and IPAs. While HK was not easy on our pocketbook, it was a city we know we will return to soon.
We went with a list of things we wanted to do, but no real schedule. Here's a day by day look on what we ended up doing.
Tuesday: Using the Octopus Cards (a card with money on it that you can use on every kind of public transport) we took the airport express train to Kowloon where we'd be staying for the week. We found our hotel relatively easily and realized we could see the harbor, a nice surprise thinking we'd booked a room with a city view.
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| Night view from our room |
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| Rose Garden in Kowloon Park (the park right by our hotel) |
Wednesday: We explored Hong Kong Island by foot including the botanical gardens, ate our first bowl of Chinese Noodles, took the historic
peak tram up to the highest point on the island to enjoy the sunset, and ate dinner at the East End Brewery where Greg enjoyed his first IPA in about 5 months.
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| Central Pier |
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| Enjoying a big bowl of noodles! |
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| Walking up a pedestrian only street. |
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| Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Gardens |
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| St. John's Cathedral |
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| The Peak Tram picking people up at the bottom |
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| Night view from The Peak! |
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| Greg enjoying his dinner at East End Brewery |
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| A list of the beers on the wall to make our friends Eric and Melanie drool |
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| Kowloon and Canton Railway Logo, not in use anymore but the old railway that connected Hong Kong to Guangzhou |
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| Greg by the old engine "Sir Alexander" |
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| The river in Tai Po |
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| We stopped for some train pictures of course! |
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| Taking the Star Ferry across the harbor |
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| A night out |
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| Enjoying a bottle of Italian Wine |
Friday: We toured the
Hong Kong History Museum (a quite through museum starting when the earth was formed through present day) and enjoyed the evening at a harbor side bar to enjoy the fireworks. Unfortunately we did not see the majority of the show, but the
YouTube video we found of it looked amazing. We ended up meeting some British Expats, now living in Vietnam but have lived in the US too. You never know when you will make connections.
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| History Museum |
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| Beautiful City |
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| Happy New Year!!! |
Saturday: We took a ferry out to one of Hong Kong's many outlying islands, Lamma Island. The island has a nice set of trails leading from one side to the other. The main trail was quite crowded in parts, but we did some side loops and then only saw a few people. We enjoyed a fresh seafood dinner before catching the ferry back to the main island.
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| Yung Shue Wan, Lamma Island |
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| Taking a break from hiking |
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| Bananas growing right over the trail |
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| Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma Island |
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| I'm tired! We'd just hiked down then back up this side of the island |
Sunday: After checking out of our hotel room and leaving our luggage with the bellmen for the day we headed to a traditional Chinese tea house from some
Dim Sum and of course tea! Next we took a double decker (most of the public buses are double decker) from central HK to Stanley a cute touristy village to the south. We explored the shores and toured the
Hong Kong Correctional System Museum . After taking the bus back to central we boarded a
wooden double decker tram to make our way east to visit another location of the East End Brewery to enjoy our last meal of the trip. We arrived back to Bangkok early Monday morning and thus brought an end to a great vacation. Next time you should come with us!
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| Dim Sum and Tea |
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| Stanley Beach |
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| Trams! |
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| Our last meal, enjoying eating outside and not sweating to death. Actually we were a little cold and were thankful for the portable heaters :-) |
I really like your pictures, and am jealous that you had the chance to wrap up warm - I miss the cold.
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you today :)