Day 23 : Hong Kong

We really liked our flight on Dragon Air from Shanghai to Hong Kong. They have a nice red dragon logo. All of the announcements were made in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The Cantonese seemed to sing more than Mandarin but now we didn't even know how to say thank you or hello. We could still count with our fingers though.

Neither of us was expecting much from Hong Kong besides another big, noisy city with too many financial analysts and a few skyscrapers. As we came over the water and the islands, we both got really excited especially when we got our first glimpse of Hong Kong. We were relieved to find that the city had an entire system to bring tourists to their hotels which made it all really easy.

We checked into our first hotel but the room wasn't ready yet. So we headed across the street to the first restaurant we could find. It turned out to be really expensive since they not only add on service charge but also tourist tax and a rate for tea per person. We had Dim Sum, which was both good and interesting.

Our room was ready so we settled in and took a nap, hoping to sit out the rain a little bit. Jerome slept while Rebecca enjoyed the many English language TV stations. It was dark by the time we got up. Our first stop was the supermarket since we had spent way too much on lunch. We walked down to the harbor and along the Avenue of the Stars, a promenade with hand prints and signatures. Turns out Jet Li has really small hands...
We picked up some essentials at the supermarket and also some strange fruit (not taking a durian in the end) and then tried to find an internet cafe again.

We took the subway from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island and walked around trying to find a cyber cafe. We found the first one but it no longer existed. We walked and walked, discovering the city at the same time, but couldn't seem to find what we were looking for. We also realized that the map in Lonely Planet was mislabeled so we were looking for stuff in the wrong place. We ended up finding a chain coffee shop that offers free internet with a coffee. We settled in for a couple minutes.

We had to get back across the harbor so opted for the famed Star Ferry. We were surprised at how cheap it was. The view from the ferry was spectacular and we really enjoyed the crossing to Kowloon. The cool sea air felt really nice. As we walked back up Nathan Road to our hotel we both agreed that Hong Kong was really cool...