Days 1-2 (June 20 – June 21, 2014): Hong Kong

The Quick Facts

* Bigda and Donaldson are back on the road!  This time for a much much shorter trip.
* Trip will include a couple days in Hong Kong and a week in rural western China
* First stop: Hong Kong for the wedding of one of my good friends from college
* Stayed at KG Garden Guest House in Mirador Mansion in Kowloon -- very clean and good wifi, interesting setting (see below), BUT it was cheap and did the job

 

The Good:

* Our first Hong Kong wedding – so great to catch up with old friends and to see one of them get hitched to a wonderful lady.
* Hong Kong itself – we didn’t spend much time in the city, but it’s surprisingly walkable and the people are very nice for such a big city
* The skyline is beautiful

The Bad:

* Well, it’s typhoon season here so we had to deal with a decent amount of rain.  Didn’t stop us though.

Our first trip in about a year inspired by the wedding of a friend of mine from college.  After enduring a ~24 hour trip, we managed to find our way to the guesthouse we booked (hotels are really expensive and, well, we’re cheap) only to be greeted by a 20 minute long line of people waiting to use the elevator.  They were all Asian travelers…we were the only white people we saw in this building.  Which means we got an authentic Asian travel experience!  The room we had was very clean and the wifi worked great…but the outside of the building left a little to be desired:

 

 

We had one day to explore Hong Kong before the wedding.  Our hotel was in Kowloon, so we took the ferry across the Harbour to the Hong Kong side, which provided for some great views of the skyline:

 

 

We then found what apparently is a popular spot for dim sum: Tim Ho Wan.  We couldn’t make it to the original location in Kowloon so had to settle for a newer outpost near the train station, but it was still very good and, more importantly, very cheap.  Also, very popular with the Asian tourists – amongst this crowd we only saw one other western person!

 

Full from lunch, we spent $0.64 (total) for a ride on the tram that traverses Des Voeux Road.

 

Finally, we walked around Kowloon Park which was near our hotel.  It’s nice to see they preserved so much green space!  And they had an AWESOME public pool, we wished we had brought our bathing suits!

With the day’s activities done, we headed over to my buddy Travis’s wedding, where we got to witness a traditional tea ceremony before a more western-style wedding reception.  Congrats Travis and Bonnie!

 

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