Turkey Day in HK

Thursday November 29th 2008

[I don't have an actual journal entry... just memory]

11am is a lot earlier than it seems, but we had all rested fairly well. Our hostel was... something else, but it was close to what we wanted to see. The room Sun and I shared smelled oddly and there was no window. Well, there was one, but it was drawn onto the wall with a pen.

We had decided to take the boat tour and to go up to Victoria Peak (hopefully catching a glimpse of the nightly light show). First on our order of business, however, was breakfast. We stopped at Yoshinoya, a japanese "fast food" type thing.Japanese food for breakfast in Hong Kong... hmmm...

This became one our fall back places to eat. Though we did manage to eat Mexican food, drink in a German pub, visit an underground McDonald's, buy a potato concoction at an Irish Potato stand, and yes, we did eventually find a place to eat Chinese food.

After breakfast, we went back to the hostel and just sat around in one of the rooms. We ended up sitting around for a couple hours. Until we finally caved (after getting yelled at by Ben ;) ) and went looking for the tour ticket office.

Finding where to buy tickets and waiting and doing nothing for the tour wasn't particularly exciting, but once we got out there, it was beautiful weather. I don't honestly remember learning anything from the tour, but it was a good relaxing thing to do on Thanksgiving. Hong Kong is a busy and crowded city, so it was really good to get a different perspective on the city.

Well, after 5 on Thanksgiving, there is only one thing to do... eat your turkey dinner!! The closest thing we found that didnt require us walking all over the city was a KFC. So we ordered lots of chicken and other random things (it was actually a really annoying process trying to figure out what everyone wanted and then ordering it...). They even gave us gloves to go with the meal so we wouldn't have to get our hands greasy. ... note how no one is wearing them...

Hong Kong has a building light show every night at around 8. So, we decided that we would go to Victoria Peak, ride the tram up and hopefully get there in time for the light show. It was a nice plan. There was a line that snaked about inside came out the front door and around the building, and we were at the end of it.


I was honestly shocked at how fast the line moved once we got our tickets. Tram was a trip! It goes up the hill at some crazy angle... the floor looks like its corrugated so that when the tram reaches those crazy angles, you can be standing upright but almost be laying on the floor. Fun stuff! We got to the top in time for the light show.... but maybe we had our times wrong because we saw nothing.

Hong Kong at night is absolutely gorgeous. Let me show you, though pictures don't do it justice:

Afterwards, while we were still on the island, we went looking for a bar. We found a place that served Mexican food, and was smack dab in the middle of nothing. Everything that was around it was closed and empty, then we get to this bar/restaurant thing in the middle of it all and it is just packed with people! Not only that, but they serverd Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale! We ate chimichanga, drank beer, and wandered around afterward, barely catching the last ferry back to our hostel. Quite possibly one of the most relaxing Thanksgivings I've ever had!