Hong Kong:Fourteen

Our first day in Hong Kong was filled with many places, Victoria Peak, Kowloon, and many markets. To get to Victoria Peak, you have to take a trolleyish tram up. I thought that it would be like a gondola, but it was more like a small trolley. Victoria Peak has beautiful landscapes. There are some places where you can just walk on a path though the trees. The best landscapes are seen from high above on balconys that look over the city and water. The rest of Victoria Peak was shopping malls. A little background about Hong Kong, there is no place without shopping malls. When you go to a subway station you walk in to a Flatirons Crossing type mall. When you walk anywhere, you never touch the street level. This is the city of pedestrian overpasses. It is so confusing to try and get down. We have spent about thirty minutes trying to get down. I am not a fan of shopping, and so I didn’t enjoy the Victoria Peak. I just liked the landscapes. We took the tram back and went to Kowloon. Hong Kong is made up of many different pieces of land in China and islands. Right now, our hotel is on Hong Kong Island. We took a ferry to Kowloon which is land connected to china. It is about two minutes across the water by ferry. In Kowloon, we went to a fun little market and walked around there. We had more fun shopping here than in Guilin because it was much more relaxed. We wanted to find the Bird Market, the Goldfish Market, and the Flower Market. We luckily just walked into the Flower Market. It was amazing; they had so many different kinds and colors of flowers. Some I had never seen before. The most popular were the orchids. The stores had shelves and shelves of them in different colors, shapes, and pots. The next market we went to was the Goldfish Market. Again, it was like the Flower Market with things displayed. This time, it was all kinds of fish in tanks. I felt like I was in a mini aquarium. Most of the fish were goldfish, but there were also coy, parrot fish, and other fish with patterns and colors. The last market was the Bird Market. In stacks of about 10 cages high, were birds. There were so many different types of birds, including macaws, parakeets, and many others I don’t know the name of. It was just amazing how many birds, fish, and flowers were packed into a few blocks.

Lianne