The Hong Kong Report!

The Hong Kong Report! 
I haven't made any posts these first few days because I've been so busy and haven't spent very much time in front of a computer.

Friday night we arrived in the Hong Kong airport around 7:30pm. Somehow, I suppose through good air stream currents... We arrived a full hour sooner than scheduled! That was probably a first. We took a short car ride across HK to Kowloon where our hotel was located. 

By the way, right now my entourage is four people. Steve, who has been in the business for close to 40 years, and watched China grow up; Lauren, who is currently on her very first trip to China; Cody, who I have travelled with many many times; and myself. Everyone is super easy going and great to travel with. Steve is awesome because of all his history and stories to tell about his 40 years of travelling to China. Lauren is fun to travel with cuz its always fun to see peoples reactions to the culture shock if china. 

That night we knew we had to stay up late to stave off jetlag. So despite not checking into the hotel til 9pm, we all went out to dinner. Cody knew of a really good Indian restaurant that had live music. It was delicious I had Chicken Madras. It was really spicy, but not too spicy. Then we walked down to the harbour to get a view of Hong Kong Island. Greater Hong Kong is a collection of islands and peninsula. Kowloon is a district within Hong Kong that is on the tip of the peninsula. Hong Kong island is the real hong kong; similar to NYC being called NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Anyways the view was good not great. It was foggy as it usually is in Hong Kong which is a tropical zone and always humid. We went back to the hotel around midnight.

Me at the top of Dragon's Back

Saturday:

This was an exciting day for me. We had purposely left a day early so we could spend a free day in HK. Today we had all day ro do whatever we wanted. I had planned in advance to take advantage of some of the very closeby nature. So Cody, Lauren and myself got up early and headed out at 7:30am. We hopped on the subway (known as the MTR) which took us under the harbour to Hong Kong Island. We took a connecting train to the last stop, Chai Wan, where we hiked through the city for about a half mile until we found a giant Cemetary. For some reason Chinese cemetaries are always on hillsides. We took the tremendously steep staircase through the cemetary and into the woods where we found the trailhead we were looking for. It was called Dragons Back, section 8 of the Hong Kong Trail, a 25mile trail that goes from one side of the island to the other, hitting many scenic points.we only had time to do Dragons Back, which goes along the tops of small mountains in Shek-o Park. It was really pretty, with 360 degviews of the eastern part of the island. 

The Cemetery we walked through. It was super steep! 

I could have stayed out there all day. it was miraculously a somewhat clear day, maybe the clearest I've ever seen in HK. 

We found our way back to the hotel in Kowloon by noon so we could meet our coworker and friend Mark Yang. Mark is our guy from Putian who gets all our shoes made. He does not live far from Hong Kong, but had never been there! We were excited that he could join us. We went out to lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was quite good. I ordered pineapple fried rice, which was served to me in a hollowed out pineapple.

Then we decided to walk Mark to his hotel so he could check in. We walked North toward his hotel through Kowloon Park, which is a beautiful newer park. The area used to be called Kowloon Walled City. The area has a very interesting history. Because of unique political conditions between the British, Japanese, and Chinese, it became a no mans land underno ones control. Soon it was overcrowded with outlaws seeking political asylum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_walled_city

Thousands of people lived there stacking their houses on top of eachother until some time in the 90s when they demolished it and turned it into a Park. 

Later that day we explored a street market and the Jade market, which were pretty interesting. 

What Kowloon looked like before it was demolished.

Finally we finished the day by trekking back over to Hong Kong island, this time we took the Ferry though. We walked through the city to find one of the most popular tourist attractions, Victoria Peak. We thought this was an important destination for first timers to HK like Mark and Lauren.  To get to the peak, you can take a train that is pulled by a unique system of cables. The train is extremely steep at a 45 deg angle or steeper.

View of Hong Kong Island from Kowloon at Night.

View of Hong Kong at night looking down from Victoria Peak.

 At the top there are very beautiful views of the mountains and a famous view of the city at night. I had done this before, but the weather had not been this good. Normally the fog would obstruct the view. Last time I had come here it was raining.

We ate dinner at one of the many restaurants on the peak and then made the long treak back to our hotel. We didn't make it back until close to midnight. We were all extremely exhausted. 

Sunday morning we had to get back to work… well a type of work… We did a bunch of shopping for research in Harbour City Mall. This mall is probably the biggest, most upscale mall in the world, Chanel, Armani, Louis Vuitton, a ton of other silly brands at exorbitant prices. There are also really good athletic shoe stores with all the cutting edge styles, which make it a good place to see what’s new and unique.

By late afternoon, Mark Yang had to return to Putian, and Lauren and Steve had moved on to DongGuan. Cody and I were originally supposed to leave on Sunday, but our plans were inadvertently changed and because of a flight schedule.  Monday morning very early we packed up and hopped  plane to Putian.