Today, February 24, we arrived in Hong Kong, our first country in Asia! First, we flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and then on to Hong Kong. When we got here, we decided to look around. My first impression about Hong Kong was that it is extremely busy, and they eat a lot of unusual things. We were just walking down the street and there are tons of cars and people all over! We walked through a little food market, and we saw a lot of fish, squid, shrimp, little crawly ocean creatures, bird nests, caterpillars, sea slugs, and other things you don’t see in western grocery stores.
On our first full day in Hong Kong we went to Nan Lian Garden, the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin temple, the goldfish market, the bird market, the jade market, the flower market and the Temple Street night market. The Nan Lian Garden was really nice because it was like a little peaceful oasis away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It had a lot of plants and trees, (some of them poisonous) and in the middle of the garden there was a golden temple. They also had a little bonsai tree museum, that included some beautiful rocks that were made by the ocean, and they have a lot of browns stripes and swirls through them.
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| Savannah & Jackson at Nan Lian Gardens, Hong Kong |
The next stop was the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin temple. The temple is one of the most popular temples in Hong Kong, where all three of the main religions in China – Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism – go to pray. It was painted in bright colours, and it had a lot of dragon carvings. Outside the temple there were many fortune tellers and people selling decorations. We bought two we thought would look good on our Christmas tree.
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| Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple, Hong Kong |
The goldfish market was a long line of stalls only selling live fish, but there were also a few pet stores. The fish selling stores were full of fish in every colour you can imagine. In the stores they also had eels, little crabs, and little frogs. In the pet stores, they had the usual – cats and dogs.
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| Goldfish market, Hong Kong |
The flower market - so many beautiful flowers! Purple flowers were my favorite, of course.
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| Purple orchids at flower market, Hong Kong |
he bird market was very interesting, but I found it extremely sad. It was full of either one bird in a teeny tiny cage, or about twenty birds in a regular sized cage. The birds were beautiful, and they had amazing bird songs. You could buy big bags full of grasshoppers for your bird.
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| Beautiful, but unhappy birds in the bird market |
The jade market was all inside, and there were a lot of stalls selling jade and some other jewelry. We learned that there is such a thing as purple jade!
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| Jade Market, Hong Kong |
We went to the Temple Street night market in the early evening, so they were just getting set up. From what we saw, they only sell (from dad and moms point of view) cheap rubbish.
Our second day in Hong Kong, we went to The Peak. The Peak is an observatory on a hill right outside the city. To get up there, you take a tram. The cool thing is, it’s the steepest tram in the world! It’s so steep that when you go down, you have to go backwards so you don’t fall out of your seat. Up at the top, we went to the lookout deck, and it was a great view of the harbor and the city with all of the skyscrapers.
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| Waiting to board the Peak Tram |
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| Savannah at the Peak, looking over Hong Kong |
Next we headed over to the Stanley market. The first thing we saw was one of those Chinese dragons with people under it dancing it around. It was really cool! Next we explored the market. After walking down a few narrow, crowded streets, we came out at a boardwalk of restaurants. Inside the market, they sell paintings, toys, Chinese silk, (bags, glasses cases, jewelry bags, etc.) watches, clothes, and more. The coolest thing (to me) sold there were full size replica terracotta warriors. After lunch, we went back into the market, where Jackson got an electric helicopter.
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| Dragon in Stanley Market |
The last place we went was Aberdeen, which is next to the water. We took a boat ride around the harbor, which is also a typhoon shelter, in a boat called a sam pan. The harbour had all different shapes and sizes of boats, from world traveling yachts to small fishing boats. A lot of people live on their fishing boats.
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| Sam Pan boat we took around Aberdeen Harbour to Jumbo |
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| Jackson, Paul & Savannah in front of Jumbo |
The boat then dropped us off at a big floating restaurant called Jumbo. You might have heard of it, because it’s in many of the movies set in Hong Kong. My dad saw it when he was young, and he’s wanted to go there ever since. Although it’s called a floating restaurant, it actually has a few different restaurants. The inside is very fancy. We had a drink outside on the top floor. Since it was dark when we left, we could see it lit up from the shore.
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| Jumbo Floating Restaurant at night |
The next day we went to the Kat Street area to look for something for our house to remember Hong Kong. After walking around for awhile, we decided on some furniture and two embroidered pictures. Then we took a taxi under the water to the mainland. On the mainland we went to Kowloon Park, where we saw a martial arts show. They demonstrated kung fu and tai chi, which was really cool to see! The park itself was really pretty.
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| Tai Chi demonstration in Kolwoon Park |
The last thing we did today was the lightshow. Since we were on the mainland, we had a great view of Hong Kong Island. Since there are so many lit up skyscrapers at night, it has an amazing nighttime skyline. Most of the buildings next to the water participated, and it was really cool!
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| Hong Kong light show |
On our last day in Hong Kong L, we went to Ocean Park, which is like an amusement park and a zoo in one. Half of it is on the base of a mountain, and to get to the other half, (which has the rides) you half to take a cable car up the mountain. At the base of the mountain, we went first to one of the panda exhibits. It was soooooo cool! I have always wanted to see a panda. There were two giant pandas, and two red pandas. The red pandas were sleeping, but the giant pandas weren’t, they were eating bamboo. They are sooo cute!
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| The cutest panda EVER! |
Near the pandas there was a Chinese goldfish display. It sounds boring, but the goldfish are actually really cool! They have really long, graceful tails, and the two coolest ones had big brain-like lumps on top of their heads, and the ones that had two little bulgy things sticking out of their head right behind their eyes.
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| Weird looking fish! |
We then went to the aquarium. At the aquarium, the two most interesting things were the exhibit which where you look up and see the sharks and the fish swimming above you and the giant crabs who look like spiders but they are longer than my arm! After the aquarium, we went to the other giant panda exhibit, were we saw them being fed. They were sooooo cute like the other ones! When the panda went into his cage, they shut the door and the feeders came out and scattered a few pellets, vegetables and a lot of bamboo around his cage. They like the pellets best.
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| Panda eating |
After lunch, we took the cable car over to the other half. The view of the harbor was amazing! We went on all of the rides, and Jack and I went on our first ever real rollercoaster with loops and everything! I thought the rollercoaster was fun, but Jack loved it!
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| View from cable car |
We saw a fried squid stand, it is what they consider fast food. They also had green tea flavored ice cream, along with the usual flavors. We bought something called a “snack n’ cooler”, which is a drink with a container attached on top. You put soda in the bottom, and a snack (we had popcorn) in the top. The straw goes through a hole next to the container – it was a very good idea. After the roller coasters, we came back on the cable car and went to see the pandas one more time.
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| Cooking Grilled Squid at Ocean Park |
Hong Kong was awesome and it was great to see the different people and culture in Asia!
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| Good-bye Hong Kong |
