January 30, 2012 - Hong Kong transit

Twenty four hours. That’s how long I’ve been traveling. And I still have about 10-12 more. But hey, at least I’m over half way done!

I’m sitting in the Hong Kong airport right now. (Which, actually, was voted the best international airport in the WORLD for the past six years – this was stressed during my visit and I thought I would pass along the information.) It’s been a tiring past 24 hours, but here’s a quick recap:

Left the house around 9:00 yesterday evening (well, actually it was on January 28^th, but now my days are all out-of-whack…). Stopped at In n’ Out for a chocolate milk shake on the way to the airport. Yum… After a few (ok, lots…) of tears, I boarded the plane to head to Hong Kong. Fourteen hours in the air – I thought my butt would never regain feeling.

When I arrived in Hong Kong, I signed up to go on a transit tour from the airport, where they take tourists to visit some of the sights around the city while they are awaiting for their connecting flight. I thought this was a good idea and a great way to see the city. Only one other person, apparently, agreed with me. His name was Adam, an Australian Canadian. He and I were the only passengers on an enormous tourist bus that took us around the city. Well, to be completely honest, there were four of us: me, Adam, Willie (our tour guide and emcee), and our driver (never learned his name, though he was very nice about helping out with luggage). Willie was an interesting character. While he was well-meaning, his meaning didn’t always come across clearly. He spoke English, but broken English. I understood him some of the time; the remainder of the time I found myself smiling and nodding in response to something he said that I couldn’t quite make out…

Hong Kong is an interesting city. (And yes, I can say that with authority, as I’ve been here for approximately seven hours…). This is my first time in Asia, so perhaps other Asian cities are similar – I wouldn’t know. The city was way more compact that I had every expected. Take your experience with New York City and concentrate it by about ten times. The buildings are so closely built together, with very minimal green space. And not only are the buildings so incredibly close together, but they are also tall. Very tall. As an example, Willie told us that everyone in Hong Kong lives in apartments because space is so limited. He pointed out one apartment complex that housed 18,000 residents! Yes, I wrote that correctly. I was blown away.

As for the official tour, we went to see the Tsing Ma Bridge, which is the world’s longest road and train suspension bridge. We viewed it from the top of a viewing platform. The only problem was that that there were two bridges visible from the viewpoint, and I wasn’t sure which one was supposed to impress me. Oops. The views were nice, though.

On our way back down from the viewing area, we saw small citrus plants and thought they might be mandarins. We asked Willie, who informed us they were tangerines, at which point he promptly picked one off and handed it to me, saying it was “sour, but sweet.” I got the sour, but no sweet. It was so sour that it made my eyes water (or as Grandma would say, it had SUPER "pucker power". I think he wanted to see how we would react…

From there, our enormous tour group traveled in to the city to walk along the Tsim Sha Sui Promenade and the Avenue of the Stars (Hong Kong’s version of the Hollywood walk). We paid tribute to Jackie Chan, Bruce Le, Jet Le, and lots of other “famous” actors and actresses from Hong Kong whose names I couldn’t pronounce and can’t remember.

Afterwards, we traveled across Victoria Harbor on one of the city ferries. We saw some very pretty sights of the city from this view. The boat ride was a bit bumpy at times, but fun, nonetheless.

Our last stop was at the Man Mo Temple, a traditional Buddhist temple that paid homage to the god of literature/scholarship (Man) and the god of war/martial valor (Mo). There was lots of incense burning and lots of offerings of celery and apples to the gods. Our tour guide lit some incense for us and had us place it in the temple for good spirits to watch over us and bring us luck. The view inside the temple was gorgeous, but I felt a bit strange (and a bit fake) being in the temple as a tourist while others were praying to their gods and leaving offerings.

Afterwards we took the express train back to the airport.

So here I sit on the other side of the world (literally) waiting for yet another flight which will take me even farther from home. I’m anxious to get to Kathmandu and settle in. Travel is tiring. Next time I write, I’ll be in Nepal. Not sure what the internet (or electricity, for that matter) situation will be like, but I’ll try to blog as often as I can. Love and hugs to everyone, I already miss you all.