Hong Kong impressions

It's crowded. We took some pics last night of the markets and some shopping areas that were curb to curb people. It was a Wednesday.

The street are packed with people, double-decker buses, and signs. The crosswalks, instead of making chirping noises like in toronto, sound like mini-jackhammers.

They pave mountains here. And there are a lot of mountains! On the Peak, behind our hotel... pretty much anywhere bordering the city area... they throw concrete all over the hills, leaving holes for the trees and gutters to drain rainwater. They even paved the entire slope of Victoria Peak, this huge mountain in the middle of the city. Seriously though, how do they do it?


And it's fast. Even the escalators move quicker than in Canada! The subways are well organized, clean, well-signed, and they have anti-suicide glass in front of the tracks (at least that's what we call them). At the airport they also have announcements saying how long the next train will be, and signs saying "relax. the next train will arrive in 3 minutes." It's pretty cute.

The rip-off labels are a hoot. We've seen a bazillion Tshirts with things like "Dolce and Grbbrnr." So far we've resisted the call of these hot items and only window shopped.

As for what we actually did...Day 1 highlights included managing to stay awake to sightsee Victoria Peak, a huge (paved) mountain right in the middle of Hong Kong with great views of the harbour and expected, yet still breathtaking, tall buildings.

Day 2 involved much walking, from the flower and (avian-flu-free) songbird gardens to the crazy aquarium shops to strolling along the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade (where alyssa promptly fell asleep) to a nighttime ride on the Star Ferry for amazing views of the Hong Kong Harbour. Finally, we crashed back at our room and somehow managed to wake up at 5am for our flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Wow.

-- alyss & em

PS. There's more Hong Kong pics on our Flickr website (follow the link on the right)