Gardens and the Peak

Gardens and the Peak

Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Asia

I got up this morning and felt much better. Glad to see I haven’t started getting two day hangovers yet! I did a bit more planning on what I’ll see when I go to China, and then headed out. I grabbed the ferry over to Hong Kong Island, and I’m still amazed that it only costs $2HK ($0.25US). I had a walk through the botanical gardens, which were nice, and then went to my favorite restaurant in the world for lunch, Hard Rock Cafe!

Of all the HRC’s I’ve been to, this is one of the worst locations I’ve seen. It is halfway up to the midlevels, tucked between some huge buildings, and it’s really small. They are usually in very cool places with amazing views or something, but there was really nothing special about this one at all. The food was still excellent though, and I spent the whole time enjoying what could have been my last western meal for a long time. The bill came for my chicken fajitas with a side caeser salad and a coke for $220HK. I had a mini heart attack and then realized that was about $30US and I felt better.

I paid my bill and went back out exploring the zoological garden. Because today is Hong Kong Day, whatever that means, it was packed with kids. Everyone knows how much I love kids, so that made for a lot of fun. They had some pretty cool animals in there, lots of monkeys, lots of birds and a few reptiles. There are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon. I came back to the hostel to meet Tom at about 5pm so we could go check out the Peak.

We wanted to get up to the top so we could see the city in daylight, so the fastest way to ascend was by taxi. It was a little expensive ($66HK, $8US), but at least we got there quickly. We got to the top and I was very surprised though. We weren’t at the top. You would think something called the Peak, would be at the peak, but it isn’t. There is a huge mall up there though. It was very strange just because it’s not at all what either one of us was expecting. We walked around outside, where it was much cooler and windier than down below, and found a great lookout for the city. They have an observation deck that you can pay about $15US to go up, but I can’t imagine the view would be much better than it was from where we were.

We hung around there for a while, then grabbed a bite to eat in the mall, and then came back out to see the city lights at night. It was a pretty impressive sight. Unfortunately, the weather here always seems to be hazy. I don’t think it’s smog, because there don’t seem to be an outrageous number of vehicles, just a lot of tall buildings all scrunched together. I think the sun just must not shine on Hong Kong very often. We saw a few minutes of the light show from up top, which is not nearly as impressive as from the Kowloon side, and then headed down the mountain by bus. It was much cheaper this way and didn’t even take much longer, so I guess we should have done that in the first place.

I said bye to Tom and he headed off to the airport to catch his flight home. I came back to the hostel and met a couple new roommates, Tom from Israel and Matius from Germany. A little bit later Stewart from Scotland joined us and the room was full again. We had a good chat in the room exchanging travel stories and now I’m just going to watch a movie and hit the hay. Tomorrow I might try to see Macau, so it could be a busy day!

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