Hong Kong and Kowloon!

On my first day in Hong Kong I decided to walk around the city.  The ship had docked in Kowloon instead of Hong Kong, but it was pretty close so there was a ferry to take us across the water to Hong Kong if we wanted to go there.  We started off by walking towards the Jade market from Canton Street.  We had not walk around for long when we saw a building across the city to our right and decided we wanted to try to get to the top.  The building was a lot farther away than we had thought at first so it took us a little bit of a walk to get there.

When we arrived at the cool looking building that we wanted to climb we found out that you had to pay to get to the top.  The guy at the desk said there were shops and restaurants at the top, but we decided to skip it and kept walking.  The next building we came to was an underground mall.  I stopped in the music shop to buy a Chinese CD and a speaker for my computer.  Then we went further into the mall.

The mall was huge and menacing.  We were trapped within its underground walls for days (or maybe it was about 2 hours) without being able to escape.  Every time we thought we found an exit, there was no sidewalk where we could walk and we had to go back inside.  It was slightly frustrating, but mostly just really funny. 

When we finally found the way out we decided to take a taxi the rest of the way to the Jade Market.  The taxi had a TV screen on the back of the driver’s seat where the passenger could play games, look up restaurants or see what other things were happening in the city.  I spent the entire taxi ride playing a matching game.  It only took about 10 minutes before we arrived at the Jade Market.  When we got there, we realized that it was literally a Jade market instead of just being a nice name.  We bought a few things before walking back out and back onto the sidewalk.

We walked around for a bit looking in shops and though street markets before deciding to get something for lunch.  As amazing as it seems, we could not find a traditional Chinese restaurant in the city.  Eventually we just gave up and went to KFC, although I would prefer not to have to admit to that.

After lunch we headed back towards the ship to drop some of our purchases off in our cabins.  It was a short stop before we decided to take the ferry to the other side of the water to visit Hong Kong.  The ferry was pretty cheap and took about 10 minutes to take us across the water.

Once we were in Hong Kong we still didn’t know what we wanted to do, so we walked around some more.  There was a lot of walking happening this day.  We watched a political rally from a bridge above the street.  We spent most of our time watching the political rally or just people watching before heading back to the ship to meet Liz and go to dinner.  We planned to go to dinner and then go back to Hong Kong to watch the city light show.

Back on the ship Matt and I tried to tune my guitar with the piano while we waited for Liz.  It was impossible and the instrument refused to stay in tune.  Anyway, eventually Liz and Caitlynn found us playing in the union and we headed out to dinner at Pizza Express.  Caitlynn really wanted pizza and it was right next to the ship, so we stopped in.  After dinner we found out that the light show was starting soon and we would not be able to make it in time.  Instead we decided to watch it from deck 5 aft on the ship.

The light show was very interesting.  The lights of the city were programed to change and were set to music.  It lasted for about 15 minutes and was beautiful.
            I was able to sign into the pizza place’s wifi from my room so I spent the rest of the day packing for my flight the next day, Skyping, and watching YouTube videos.