Hong Kong

Hong Kong on a winter weekend was a great quick escape from Beijing. We went with four other travelers from work. The flight took close to 4 hours (doesn't seem like there is any place close to Beijing). We decided to stay at the Disneyland Hotel as our base for the weekend. Overall we found Hong Kong to be a great cosmopolitan city where everyone seems to speak English. It was so hard not to sprinkle in some of our Mandarin words we have recently learned like hello, thank you, and goodbye.
Disneyland Hong Kong
Disneyland is a very nice facility and not too far from the airport. Disneyland Hotel is very nice and reminds me of the Grand Floridian in Disney World. The package we got included two days in the park and character breakfast each day. We spent most of our first day on in the park. It is a very small park that opened in September 2005. The park consists of Main Street, U.S.A., Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. We hit Space Mountain at least 10 times and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters a number of times. There were some shows like Lion King, Mickey’s PhilharMagic, and the “Disney on Parade”. We snacked on the caramel corn and baby smoked turkey legs (much smaller and not as juicy as the one’s in the US, maybe due to the available resources). SC and CC left around 4 to go to Kowloon where his bother lives to spend the night. The rest of us stayed in the park until 6. Hong Kong City
We decided to finish off the long day by heading into the city to experience some of the nightlife. We went back to the hotel to drop off our backpacks and took a taxi to Kowloon to save time. We squeezed into a large 5-seater Toyota sedan. There were four of us squeezed in the back seat. We then took the Star Ferry from Kowloon into Hong Kong city just for the touristy view. While it was an overcast night, it was still a great view of the city building and nightlights.

Once we got into the city we walked until we got to the hopping nightlife in Lan Kwai Fong. We found a nice table at a bar opened right onto the street to view the interesting night scene. It was amazing how many older western guys accompanied young Asian women. We saw some very wild clothing and people. We had a few rowdies in the back of the bar watching Liverpool beat Chelsea. Eight minutes into the game and there was loud hooting and cursing for joy.

We also noticed there were some very interesting young people who kept going back into a narrow entryway next to our bar. CB and AF decided to check it out and see what we were missing. They went up a stairway to the second story to be met by a big bouncer who said it was a private birthday party (interesting).

We also were admiring a banner hung over the entrance of bar across the street advertising two drinks - Mojitos and Caipirinah. CB Was curious and wandered across the street to learn more about the drink. He disappeared back into the bar. We waited and kept looking for him to come back out. When he finally came out he wanted us all to come over and try the Caipirinah, his treat. The drink is a Brazilian concoction of rum, limes, and sugar. Traditionally the Brazilians use cachaça which is distilled alcohol made from sugar cane juice as opposed to molasses (rum). The bartender used a long pestle to grind the limes for the drink. It was very tasty drink and had a punch.

Next we walked around the block for some sightseeing and then back to the ferry to catch a taxi in Kowloon to go back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel after midnight and were dead tired. CB decided to stay up at the bar for a little longer. We had no problems sleeping until 8:30 the next morning.

Sunday Shopping
On Sunday we had another character breakfast to start the day. CB decided to head back into the park as his foot was acting up and he had some more Disney shopping still to do (he is a true Disneyphile). The three of us went into the city with SL to do some sightseeing and shopping at Shanghai Tang and Stanley Market. We decided to take a taxi directly to Victoria Peak first from the Hotel. It was a scenic drive on a very misty and foggy day. It felt like San Francisco. SL felt at home since he lived there for a couple of years. We could not see anything from this famous Peak Tower. We took the scenic Peak Tram back down into the city where we picked up a taxi to start our shopping experience. We started with Stanley Market, which we thought was close by in the Central District but turned out to be a half hour taxi ride. Stanley Market is an open-air market, selling many traditional handicrafts and clothes at reasonable prices that we can get plenty of in Beijing. Kind of a waste for us but I’m sure tourists who have not been to other parts of China would find it interesting.

We took another taxi back to the city for some serious Shanghai Tang shopping. SL is a Shanghai Tang frequent shopper. I assumed there could not be that many stores worldwide (in Beijing there is one in the Oriental Plaza where SL lives and at the Beijing airport). The city central store is their large 2-story flagship store. It must have taken well over an hour of looking at every clothing and accessory item. I sat on a comfortable ottoman while the 3 of them shopped.

I have to say I have had enough of the lime and pink Chinese stuff in the shop. To my surprise we SL and BF found another store at the Hong Kong airport. They shopped or another 30 minutes in the HK airport store. To even my bigger surprise there was another store in the airport at the other end of the terminal where our flight to Beijing was departing from. I sat at a bar with CB while SL and BF amazingly shopped some more...........crazy. When we caught up with SC and CC at the airport gate SC made a great comment, "Shanghai Tang is the Polo of China".

Small World
Since we have moved half away around the world we have come to realize how small the world is actually becoming to us. Twice, count it twice, I ran into people that I knew from Beijing. I ran into a non-JPM employee that I had worked with back in February and May of 2006 in Beijing. He was in line with his family entering Disneyland. His English was good enough to stop and say hi and we introduce everyone in our groups to each other. We had to take a picture. On Hong Kong Island after a night of partying we ran into a couple that live in our apartment building in Beijing. Both of us just happened to be visiting the city the same non-holiday weekend.

The City
My impression of the city in our short time is that it is very multi-cultural and cosmopolitan like NYC. The terrain was spectacular with the sea, the mountains, tropical vegetation, mixed with and large, modern, colorful sky scrapers. The weather was a comfortable 60 degrees with off and on rain and mist and some wind. It is definitely worth going back some day. We certainly did not have time to take it all in.