March 29th, 2009

Today we arrived in Hong Kong!!  Watching us come into port was really exciting cause as we slowly came in for that hour before docking giant sky scrapper buildings were all you could see on the shoreline.  We were finally docked and I was so excited to go see the city.  At this port to get out of the port we first had to walk out of a mall that was about three times the size of South Coast Plaza and just as nice. 

 

Dylan, Abby, Courtney, Anna and I headed off into the city and were on search for the woman’s market we heard would be interesting to see.  We started walking and made our way through the city, a park and more streets, finally we decided it might be more beneficial for us to take a taxi to get to our destination quicker.  We finally made it to the market around mid day and the vendors were still setting up.  We made our way to the end of the market and decided to work our back hoping the rest of the vendors had finished setting up.  We all worked our way through at our own pace.  I stopped to look at a set of chopsticks, as well as a painting or two.  I also stopped at anything that caught my eye.  I finally thought I had everything I wanted and decided to shop around with Abby looking at purses.  At some of the places instead of actually having the purses out on display they had magazine pictures and then you would tell them you were interested.  Abby and I just wanted to see what would happen so we said we were interested and then were taken down an ally way, up a few flights of stairs, and behind a locked door to find a room full of fake purses.  We humored the woman and took a look around not really wanting to buy anything but just to see what that whole process was about.  We said thank you and headed back down the stairs and ally to the market.  About an hour later we all met at the end of the market but not before at one booth I looked up at something extremely silly and we all laughed.  These items even said please don’t take photos.  I would tell you what it was but if Rane reads this it may ruin it because when I looked up and laughed.  I looked right at Dylan and said this is so RANE! Abby and Dylan agreed and helped me pick out which ones to buy him. 

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city, which we eventually found out wasn’t really hong kong it was an island or land mass across the way I am still not exactly sure.  We were told we would need to take a ferry across the way to actually reach Hong Kong.  So I guess we spent the rest of the day exploring what we eventually nicknamed “Not Hong Kong”.  We stopped at a pizza hut for lunch because food was harder to find than we had thought and we knew that we would be spending the next six days eating Chinese food so a few Americanized meals would be just fine.  Actually Pizza Hut was quite a different experience.  Pizza Hut in many of these countries we have visited is set up like a nice sit down restaurant.  We enjoyed our nice meal and made our way back to the ship to get ready for the night.

 

We all went back to the ship ate dinner on the ship to save a little bit of money and then went out looking for a bar before watching the light show that was to take place at 8 on Hong Kong but we were told to watch from “not Hong Kong”.  It took us a while but we eventually found a place to have a drink but they were really expensive so we each had one drink and made slowly walked our way back enjoying the night time of the city before watching the light show.

 

At 8 we sat over looking the water ready to see the light show.  As we looked across the way we noticed many of the tall sky scrappers lighting up with neon lights and performing a light show.  Hong Kong and “not hong kong” were such big cities it was a different environment than I had been used to in all the other ports but it was an exciting change.  After watching a little bit of the light show we decided to take the ferry across the way for the first time and get to HONG KONG.  The last ferry back to the ship was at midnight so we headed out early as to not take a taxi back because we heard it would be 30 or so dollars compared to the 2 for the ferry.  When we got to Hong Kong we followed the street signs to a street we were told was where all the bars in town were.  As we made our way up the street we started seeing people in costume in the middle of the street.  I thought perhaps it was someone birthday or something and wasn’t quite sure.  We then got farther up the street that was called “long street” where everyone was in costume in the middle of the street singing and bar hoping.  We got really excited and this reminded me of Marti grams in a way even though I have never been.  There were people on balcony’s and tons of people in costume.  We all immediately joined in the fun making tons of friends in the street.  After talking to a few people we realized that this street is not always like this and that it was a big day because there was a huge rugby game that had just ended. 

 

We enjoyed our time on Long Street and even bought fuzzy bunny ears so we could be in costume too.  Around 11:30 we left and headed back to the ferry to catch the last one.  When we got back before getting on the ship we made a pit stop at a 24 hour McDonalds close by.  While we were all eating our McDonalds a group of maybe 10 or so very good looking guys in green rugby shirts came in.  We all immediately noticed them and then when they sat down Dylan and Courtney went over to talk them.  An hour later we were all still at McDonals talking with the South African Mens Seven team.  They weren’t the team that had played that night that everyone was celebrating as I think they are on a smaller level.  But either way they were all good looking and fun to talk to because they have traveled all over the world and we had just been to south Africa.  Before leaving them we took a few pictures and parted ways. 

 

When I got back to the ship I still had to pack my bag for my sleeping on the great wall trip and then wake up at 5:30 to be ready to go.