Hong Kong - Road Trip on Steroids

So much to say. So little rest.

Today I arrived in the town of Ubud, on the island state of Bali, in the country of Indonesia. I've been here 6 hours, and I could probably write a half dozen posts on Bali already. But I need to catch up with the first part of this grand adventure, so I am self-imposing a limit of this post to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong! China. One of the only 4 remaining communist countries in the world (5 if you count Laos - thx for the info buz). To get to Hong Kong from JFK in New York, the shortest distance was right over the North Pole on a 15 hour flight. I left on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday. Out of my plane window I saw a sunset, a sunrise, a sunset and another sunrise before landing just before sunset. Wednesday evaporated without notice. I dreaded the thought of a 15 hour flight, and was really quite surprised that it didn't suck. I watched 3 movies, had two good meals, read a couple hundred pages of a very good book, and caught about 4 hours of sleep. I arrived half way around the world feeling pretty good.

After connecting with meme and buz (mom and dad), we took a half hour cab from the airport to our hotel in Hong Kong and as a group we customized ourselves to frenetic pace of the city by pointing out all the differences we initially saw from our everyday American lives, and there were many. But the differences were fewer than I expected.

To me, Hong Kong seemed a lot like New York City. Towering sky scrapers dwarfing a multitude of the masses of people scuttling block to block shopping and doing business. And there's great Chinese food!

On our first day we went to see the Big Budda on one of the neighboring islands. This entailed taking the subway to the ferry to a bus ride that was so wild that half my entourage nearly became motion sick. Unfortunately fog rolled in that was so dense that after walking up 243 steps to the base of lotus leaves, looking up we could not even see Budda's head. Even so, it was all still an exhilarating trip. But the highlight was how we got back to Hong Kong.

From the top of the Budda mountain, engulfed in fog, we opted to take to the sky for a half hour plunge back to the city. We all (by we all I mean mom, dad, sis, Dix, ReMax and me) boarded a ski gondola like contraption and floated down the hills. Had it been a clear day, I am sure that this would have provided the most wonderful panarama of views that could not be matched. Even with the fog (or was it smog), it was a mesmerizing ride. I would recommend this as a must do trip to anyone coming to Hong Kong, and if the next few days were clearer, I might have been tempted to do it again.

Day 2 centered around the trip to Victoria Peak. After a half mile stroll, meme, buz, ReMax and I boarded the cable car up to the Peak. The ride up had us all facing forward on what felt like a near vertical escalation straight up to the highest points above Hong Kong. Even at this extreme altitude, the massive city below was still impressive. A mile and a half hike around the peak nearly sapped the strength of our contingent, but it enthused me to no end and was more similar to my road tripping hikes than anything else HK had to offer.

On our final full day in HK, most of the morning was spent in Hong Kong Park, a compact and multi-leveled park featuring picturesque little lakes, an aviary, a playground, a tea museum, a sky tower, and one of those places where people move slowly around striking poses, waving their arms and looking funny if it were not for the fact that they took it so seriously. The afternoon consisted of a trip to a classic marketplace where haggling with the dealers helped cut down on the already cheap prices for their wares. Heady stuff all around.

As entertaining as all the above was, perhaps the food was the best part of Hong Kong. We had meals of dim sum, hot pot, and noodles that I would go on at length about had I not already exhausted my writing skills. Each was authentic and excellent. However, I must say that authentic Chinese food is an adventure not to be missed, but the version we get in the states is Americanized for a reason...it tastes better to us.

Hong Kong wow! It was great. But I am newly arrived in Bali, and I can tell that my adventure here will be much more to my style of wonderment. I'm not really a city kind of guy, and I am so not in the city now.