Hongkong, the place to be

APPENDIX 3/3 (sept 19-24)
Gosh, I arrived and fell in love with this city the same time. I know I tend to say that with every new city or country I visit, but this time I'm totally honest!

Let's start from the very beginning:
After far too less sleep, thanks to an upcoming cold and needing to get up at 5 to make it on time to catch our flight, we arrived at Hongkong, after a stopover in Bejing, in the afternoon.
As we wanted to experience Hongkong in a different way we decided to stay at a Couchsurfers place. Sid, an indian offered us home and heart at the same time.
So we took the bus he'd told us to reach New Territory, an area just a few tourists would visit. In front of the busstop were planty of shops and places to eat and just around the corner we found a nice park were children played while their parents had a little chat. Before we (easily) found the appartment we were going to life in the next days, we passed an indoor food marekt. First floor: fresh fish & meat, secound floor: fruits & vegtables, third floor: cooked food.
That was totally the place to live near!

Unfortunately we've never spend that much time in this area or with our host Sid. While he was working a lot and busy all the time we spend the whole days to explore the city. So it was not a real couchsurfing experience, but at least we stayed at a non touristy place and had a whole appartment just for us (most of the time).

The following 4 days were awesome, although it rained nearly the whole time so my sneakers got soaked.

day no. 1

We started our Hongkong shightseeing in Hongkong island. Subway takes you there but it's much more fun using the ferry for about 30 Cents.
Hongkong island is hilly, over and over with skyscrapers but very green at the same time.
We took the cable car up the mountain to get an overview of the city on the peak. Unfortunatley at this very moment it started raining and clouds blocked the view. But the coffee was totally worth it and we found postcards and stamps (not as we've been told before that Hongkong doesn't have such things).
We headed down the mountain to have a long walk in Hongkong Park, which is really cool because they have a huge birdscage open to public with over 90 different bird species in there.
After one or two hours with the birds (just joking) we strolled down Hollywood road (many antique shops), visited Man Mo temple and took a ride with the largest escalator of the world (800m), of course seperated in sections so people can enter and exit, but totally worth a ride!
It brought us to Soho, thank god there was this escalator, otherwise it would have been an exhausting walk. Lot's of bars, restaurants and cafes...of course an in-quater but rightly.

 

day no.2
Kowloon. This district has not many sights, but a lot of markets. So after having seen the Tai Sin temple, we had a long shopping day. Yep, it was fun. Yep, I spend too much money I don't have. Yep, I enjoyed it. Nope, most of the stuff I bought was not for me.

 

 

day no.3

We wanted to know if Macau is the Asian Las Vegas. So that's why we got on a ferry to Macau. We ate lots of strange but not bad sweet thin sliced meat, honey sweets, saw the ruin of St.Paul cathedral, the Portuguese city center, the Monte Fort, stralled down roads where foreigners wouldn't go (no we didn't get lost that was totally planned), had a rest in A-Ma temple and a wonderful view over the peninsula from Macau tower.
In Taipa we saw a Portuguese village and had a good dinner in a little Portuguese restaurant.
It was a fun day, excapt the rain, Bettinas frog experience (unfortunately she saw people selling frogs on a market to eat them, that's why she wanted to buy one to rescue it...but then realized that she wouldn't be able to take it home) and the disappointing Vegas-story. It's not at all like Vegas. Hotels and Casinos are spread all over the city and the Casino announced to be the biggest one was nearly empty.

 

 

day no.4

That day we wanted to see big Buddha in Lantau. We took a crystal cabin cable car (floor is glas so one can see what's going on below oneself) to get to Tian Tan, a large bronze statue of Buddha. Man, that was a large statue!!! Nothing compared to every statue I've ever seen before!
Although it's very touristy up there it is impressive and worth to see!

I love this city! This is definately a place where I could live longer.
Everybody should go to Hongkong some time.

So here is my list of respect:

•  footbridges & hill escalator: to alleviate pedestrians their lifes and to accelerate the traffic Hongkong build footbridges for pedestrians to arrive at their destination as quick and easy as possible

•  light show: the laser and light show on the skyscrapers every night is something you can never get fed up
• cityscape: hills, parks, sea, ferrys, skyscrapers it's just fun to walk through the city and enjoy life
• food: they got oatmeal!!!
• money: the currency rate for EUR is easy to remember and calculate and everything is sooooooo cheap!!!! Even foreign food is sooooo cheap (I mean 2€ for a Mc menu...seriously?).
• people: it's multicultural, people are helpful and friendly and they even speak English. That's why most of the times you really get what you wanted.
• churches: never saw a church with fans before
• transport: very easy, very cheap. Shuttle busses from the airport to nearly every place in the city are around 1,50€. They got double-decker busses, trams and ferries. Everywhere in the city are signs for your orientation to show you where the next signts or important spots are. You can never get lost. So you don't need to walk around with maps or guidebooks.