We just returned from a huge, wonderful vacation. In order to make things easier for writer and reader, I will break these down by country. Let's start with our first stop....Hong Kong.
I left our last day of work feeling frustrated but happy because I had just had a middle-aged man who couldn't speak a word but was so sweet and instead of saying 'See you later!' he proudly waved goodbye saying 'Sightseeing!' I loved him though I despise the job.
As Jed and I were mailing our Amazing Race video and application we saw the ultra convenient and close to our apartment airport bus go cruising by. Somehow I had managed to mess up the time that we were supposed to catch the bus, therefore causing us to miss it. We then had to run to the subway and pray to make it to our plane on time. To end the nail biting suspense, we made it....just in time. The plane was leaving 15 minutes early. Should anyone be contemplating flying on Air India, please keep in mind it is only comfortable for leg amputees. Even MY knees touched the seat in front of me. Poor Jed contorted his way to Hong Kong. Our sleep deprived delirium proved for a fun flight but by the time we got to the hotel transfer bus at the airport we were spent.
Originally, I had intended to conquer Hong Kong in one night and leave via train en route to Beijing. Luckily, either me or the website (totally the website) screwed up and the only day we were able to take the train was not avaliable. this turned out to be good for two reasons. First, we could barely stay conscious past 9pm. Second, the horrific monsoonal rains wouldn't have given us much of a view of the countryside.
After 6+ weeks of working nearly everyday and having an average of 5 hours sleep a night on the floor, a long, undisturbed sleep in an actual bed was a vacation in and of itself. We woke up nice and early thanks to our senior citizen bedtime and were ready to hit the town. One look outside changed our plans. Hong Kong was experiencing thunder and lightening as well as the heaviest rain I had ever seen. Of course, we had left our arsenal of umbrellas in Japan because it never rains on vacation. We decided to visit the most spectacular part of the city....Victoria Peak. The top of this mountain gives the most impressive view of Hong Kong. In addition, there is a shopping center full of cool things to buy and more importantly, eat.
Due to the weather most of the shops never even opened and we had zero view. We stuck it out for a couple of hours but couldn't even walk outside because it was raining so hard. We decided to abandon the peak for something we could do until the rain passed.....a movie. Movies are so expensive in Japan and Jed was dying to see Batman. We thought it might be a good way to forget about the rain and hope that maybe it would be over by the time we were done. The movie was good though I was so mad that we had no choice but to watch a movie in Hong Kong that I couldn't enjoy it.
When the movie ended the rain had stopped but the fog remained, killing any chance of seeing the famous night view of the city from the top of the peak. We decided to walk back to our hotel through the narrow streets and markets. It was so great to hear everyone speaking English. I have travelled to Hong Kong once before and the experience was so different primarily because I had been coming from America. Coming from Japan, I treasured different things like beds, food and English.
Wandering through the streets made us pretty hungry which was good since we had a lot of local money to spend. We had a great time acting like we were rich and ordered all the expensive things on the menu in a last ditch effort to rid ourselves of our Hong Kong dollars.
The day was nice though the weather worsened again after dinner. We had a nice sleep knowing that in the morning our ferry would leave for mainland China so we could catch our flight to Beijing.......or would it??????
Stay tuned.....
Posted by karen at July 8, 2005 01:44 PM