Hong Kong!!

Today we arrived in Hong Kong! I knew it was urban, but I wasn’t expecting the mass of skyscrapers that greeted me. Turns out, it has the most high rise buildings in the world – 1000 more than NYC – kind of mind-boggling! I went on a trip to the botanical gardens and zoo in the city. Hong Kong is a mountainous island and the city is quite hilly. Our guide told us that the layout of the city was done according to feng shui, and that most of the buildings were built according to that as well. We saw one that was called the triangle building, with a triangular top and lots of sharp angles. Apparently, many of the locals don’t like this building because it messes up the feng shui. There was another building that had odd projections meant to look like koala bears hugging it because it was built by some super rich Aussie. There are few historic buildings because Hong Kongers aren’t that nostalgic.

The botanical garden wasn’t that large but had some interesting plants. Next to it was a small zoo. It had some animals that I’d never actually seen in person before, like lemurs, orangutans and sloths (I think I may have seen a sloth before but it would have only been one). Since it was so small, we had extra time so we went to the park. There used to be a UK base in the middle of the city and when the Brits pulled out, that large plot of land went up for sale. Some rich company bought it and decided to make it a park, which is a big deal because real estate is crazy expensive in Hong Kong and for all of that to be open space and not skyscraper is technically a large financial loss. Anyways, it was a beautiful park and had many different aspects to it, such as a tropical bird sanctuary. There were some amazing birds within this enclosed dome and it was constructed in a way so as to mimic many of their natural habitats. It was pretty cool. Afterwards, we went by a waterfall towards the middle of the park on our way to the rock walk. This is a small rectangle that has different sections of rocks of various sizes embedded into concrete that you walk on. The idea is that it will massage your feet as you circumambulate the rectangle and will identify spots that hurt. Once you know where you have pain in your feet, you can reference the diagram of the feet that has the corresponding part of your body to find out where you have health problems. Surprisingly, the part of my feet that hurt actually coincided with my guts, so I don’t know if that’s coincidence or what but it was certainly interesting. After this, we only had time to go to one more place in the park so we went to the teahouse museum to see the odd teacups. The ground floor was mostly museum, with descriptions and pictures on the walls detailing the history of tea. It was a bit weird because there were very few exhibits, mostly writing. Then we went to the second floor where they had had a competition of most weird/creative tea sets and the best ones were on display. They were pretty cool: one was spilled milk holding the cups, some were cats, some were flowers. They ranged from very decorative ones to those that it took a minute to figure out what it was. The weirdest was a skull with a man climbing out of it. That one was actually really creepy - artistic but creepy. Finally, we went back to the ship.

I found some friends who wanted to go out and see what we could find in Hong Kong at night as I would be leaving in the morning. We took a cable car up the mountain to the very top and then ascended about 8 flights to get to the top of a building. Once atop, we could see all of Hong Kong, which glittered multicolors in the night (btw the tallest skyscraper was the one featured in Dark Knight – super cool!!!). The group split as some people wanted to look for a night market and some others had missed dinner and were starving. I stayed with my friends who wanted to eat and we went to a Bubba Gump restaurant. Ok, so I’ve never been to one and only know it from Forrest Gump, so I was flipping out, but my other friends have them back in Colorado so they weren’t impressed at all. It was a good restaurant and ironically I have now been in a very American restaurant in Hong Kong. Getting back to the ship was a bit difficult as we had taken a ferry across the water and we missed the last ferry by the time we got back to the river. Then we had to figure out the subway and got on one of the last trains, even though it wasn’t that late at all. Fortunately, we made it back alright.