CNY in HONG KONG, Part 2

I didn't realize how much detail I had to share about my CNY until I wrote my first part of the holiday yesterday. The second part now begins with my third day in Hong Kong (second day of CNY). That day, Claudia and I headed to the Peak of Hong Kong Island. We had taken the tram from the city and embarked on a ten minute ride through the mountainous jungles of Hong Kong Island to the top. Once, we got to the top, we noticed how extremely foggy it was. Each day that had passed that I was in Hong Kong had been cloudy and foggy and I didn't want to go to the Peak until it was nice and sunny. However, as each day passed, the clouds were still there; and I thought I better get to the Peak before I lose the chance. Nonetheless, it was still a breathtaking view from the Peak looking down on Hong Kong Island and its skyline. After spending maybe twenty minutes at the top of the Peak, we started hiking down the mountain. It was a really pleasant walk through the nature of Hong Kong Island. However, my camera's battery had died and I couldn't take any pictures. I saw areas that would make perfect snapshots; but now it's only in my memory. Well, I know I definitely want to go back to Hong Kong and I'll hopefully remember to bring a fully charged camera. We hiked down and finally reached the neighborhood of Soho and had some delicious gourmet burgers. It was in this tiny little place in which you can make your own burgers and look down the hill from Soho. Soho is midlevel on Hong Kong Island, which I thought gave to the neighborhood's uniqueness. I have decided that Soho and Lan Kwai Fong are two of my favorite areas of Hong Kong.

After our dinner, we headed down to Victoria Harbor and watched the CNY fireworks. I had brought two beers, one Sam Adams (which I had to buy because I never get GOOD American beer anywhere in China) and one weird Russian vodka drink (which tasted a lot like Mike's Hard Lemonade). I wanted to drink at the parade the night before, but I wasn't too sure if public drinking was allowed at Hong Kong because the police are one of the most strict of any Asian country. China's police don't really seem to give a shit about anything. I noticed many people drinking at the parade and many cops walking by them. So, I figured it's probably ok to publicly drink. So, I brought my Sam Adams and the Russian vodka drink and found a place along the harbor to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were actually really far, almost on the other side of the harbor. However, they were pretty good, but in terms of level of how good it was, I would rate is the same as the Fourth of July Fireworks. But the fireworks over the harbor looked amazing along with the skyline. After the fireworks were over, the boat in charge of letting them off actually caught on fire. No one was hurt. We ended our night by going back to Tsim Sha Tsui and walked around checking out what's there in the area.

The next day, we headed to another country, Macau. Macau is an hour ferry ride from Hong Kong and it is actually a Portuguese speaking country. It is really small, just two islands in which everywhere is walking distance. But the population is huge for how small the land is: 440,000 people. Macau is also inhabitied by the Cantonese speaking Chinese. Macau is famous for its casinos, being one of the only Asian countries that have legalized gambling. Once we arrived through Macau and gotten through Immigration and Customs, we arrived at Salada Square and find it to be completely PACKED by mainland Chinese. I have never seen so many people in such a small area EVER before in my life. It was almost impossible to walk the streets of Macau. Everyone was packed like sardines in the pedestrian streets. Claudia and I fought our way through to see the Portuguese architecture and take a lot of pictures. But we barely enjoyed the sights due to the large amount of people. The architecture was really cool, and it reminded me of southern Europe. There was a fort at middle of the city and we stood at the top and saw the city of Macau. The city is not very nice to look at. A lot of the buildings are actually an eyesore; I really felt that Third World feeling at Macau, depsite all of the casinos on the other side of the island. On the way to the casinos, I stopped for the infamous Portuguese/Macauese cuisine, the egg tarts. To be honest, it sounded disgusting when I first heard about it, but when I tried it, it was actually pretty good. I think any westerner will enjoy it. We arrived to Macau's main casino, Grand Lisboa and played the slot machines. I spent twenty patacas and lost it all. The Grand Lisboa looks like your ordinary casino with a lot of lights on the outside. Nothing too special that I can add. But there is one thing, Macau also has Vegas casinos and Macau is actually generating more money that Vegas itself. Cool fact, right? We headed back to Hong Kong by ferry that night.

It was my last night in Hong Kong as I was going back to Shanghai the next day. I had gotten to bed and set my alarm for my 8:05 flight the next morning. Guess what time I woke up the next morning? 7:30. So, I'm thinking in my hostel bed that it takes over an hour to get to HK Airport. It's most likely I'm not going to catch that flight. Obviously, I didn't. I ended up spending the whole day at Hong Kong International Airport, due to the lack of money and I couldn't afford to get back to the city. I actually started drinking at 2:30 that day due to relentless boredom. I bought two books and a magazine and almost read everything. It was one of the longest days of my life. But it ended really nicely (I'm being sarcastic). I had gotten an interesting tidbit from Claudia after I arrived in Shanghai. Well, I thought that I didn't get paid until the day after I arrived back in Shanghai, which is why I didn't go back to the city due to having no money. Claudia told me that night that we had gotten paid the week before. So all along, I had money in the bank and could have afforded to go back to HK for one more day. Nice, huh?

This part now concludes my CNY in HK. Stay tuned for the next entry as I compare HK Chinese to Mainland Chinese.