For those of you who are confused, Shenzhen is the Chinese city which borders Hong Kong. It is in and of itself, quite large, but alas, it is no Hong Kong, and is commonly used as the stepping stone almost all Chinese must use to reach "The Pearl of the Orient." Many Chinese have never been to Hong Kong because they must first attain a Visa, and from what they've told me, it can be quite a hassle. That being said, the prices of many consumer goods are much cheaper in Hong Kong than on the mainland, and there are some things you can only get in Hong Kong. That, along with the sightseeing, is impetus enough for scores of Chinese to cross the border from Shenzhen to visit the city. The crowds were big, the lines at customs and immigration long, and the journey tiring. After arriving in Shenzhen at around 10:30 (our train was delayed two hours), we spent an hour crossing into Hong Kong. From there you must take the MTR (Hong Kong's much cleaner, much better version of the Metro) 45 minutes into the city itself.
After a little initial confusion, we found our hostel on the 16th floor of the inappropriately named, "Mirador Mansions." These "Mansions" along with the "Chungking Mansions" are famous for their many dirty, crowded, cheap, and sometimes dangerous hostels, but, you cannot beat the location. They are both in downtown Kowloon, a perfect jumping off point for any adventure. Our room was pretty simple, bunk beds for twelve, a few windows and a door:
Once we settled our account at the hostel, we ventured out to find the Star Ferry and ride over to Hong Kong island itself (no offense, Kowloon) Having arrived three hours late, and having not eaten anything but some crushed Oreos and dried fruit, Paul and I caved and did the most lame American thing we could, we went to McDonalds:
It was amazing, and cheap, and just what we needed. I have no regrets. Sated, we made our way to Ferry and took a ride:
From there we got off and found a walkway that connects a lot of the major buildings in downtown Hong Kong. We took that as far as we could and then hiked until we found the entrance to the Peak Tram. This part of Hong Kong reminded me a lot of NYC:
Once we got to the tram we realized we had to wait in line for about an hour before taking it up to the peak. Fortunately, some kind, and possibly unstable soul with a serious dislike for America's intelligence agencies provided us with some high-quality reading material:
Just goes to show, there are conspiracy theorists everywhere. I'll apologize in advance, I only took one picture of the tram, and it's not great. By that point everyone had been on their feet and in line for over an hour and it was a running of the bulls to get on the damn thing:
We got to the peak right at dusk, which meant my small little camera wasn't able to capture anything that clearly. All the same, I took the obligatory, "I was here!" picture:
Out of about 30 blurrier ones, this one came out the best:
Once you get to Victoria Peak, there's not much to do, and it was packed when we went. That, coupled with the hour wait to go up, and the subsequent hour wait to go down, put a damper on the experience, but it was still cool. Once we got back down we headed back to the harbor for the nightly light show. A few of the skyscrapers have really powerful green lasers that dance around for about 20 minutes, twice a night. It was a bit foggy on this particular Saturday, so the show wasn't all that impressive, much to Paul's chagrin (for those of you who don't know, Paul likes loves technology, and was really looking forward to it) But, I did get this cool, but entirely unrelated shot:
After arriving back in Kowloon, we grabbed some food and headed towards a famous night market. The market was huge, maybe two or three blocks long. It sold everything from the usual tchotchke to knockoff designer clothes and bags, to sex toys and more.
A precautionary note to any American-looking person travelling in Hong Kong: I'm not sure if it's because I am wearing facial hair and letting my hair grow a little or what, but at every corner of the city an Indian man offered me any combination of the following: Hashish, Rolex, Fake Bags, Suits, Marijuana, Cocaine, Fake Watches. During the day the illicit drugs were omitted, but at night they went for it all. Be warned, they will approach you at every. single. corner.
Once I politely refused these persistent solicitors, and asked Paul why they didn't approach him, since he was an American too (being racially profiled sucks), we returned to our hostel and prepared for bed. What we returned to was a room full of a family from a city up the coast about an hour. They were incredibly friendly, and one of the girls studied, spoke, and now taught English in her city. We practiced our Chinese, they practiced their English, everyone's back was scratched. They kept us up pretty late but, determined to see some more of the city, we woke up early and headed out:
We returned to Hong Kong island and headed towards a string of escalators that take you all the way up and through Hong Kong. Collectively they were over 1000m long, but it was cool just to relax and take in the sights. Oh yeah, and everyone in Hong Kong speaks English more or less, but it still didn't prevent some funny mistakes:
It was at this point where out trip took an unexpected turn for the better. We didn't have much of a formal plan, so we wandered a bit and found a few street markets, where I bought the above sunglasses for 35HKD or 7USD, 5 fake polo shirts for 2USD a piece, and a big 'ole bag of protein that I found at a fitness supply store. China has protein, but it's not really safe. This shop had the American brand I use back home, so I splurged and bought it. Once we got further into the city, it began to remind my a bit more of DC, with the stone and infrastructure surrounded by nature, and the buildings a bit more spaced out:
We walked around and found a free zoological and botanical garden. Don't worry, this time the monkeys were in cages:
Finally we had one last thing to check off our list. My teacher at CLI had asked me to buy her a very specific kind of makeup that apparently was very hard to find on the mainland. She said it could be found in any makeup store in Hong Kong. She was mistaken. Paul and I, the two manly men that we are, went in no less than 10 different makeup shops before finally finding the only one in all of Hong Kong which had the brand we needed (and it was in a giant mall). From there we made our way back to Kowloon, ate one last meal, and began our trip home. Our train left Shenzhen at around 5pm, we got back to Guilin at 6am, and Paul and I went to class at 8:40am. As I said, no regrets.
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