Hello Again from Hong Kong!

We have had a busy two days here! The first afternoon we were here, we took the Star ferry across to Hong Kong Island and walked around following a walking tour map, saw lots of skyscrapers, a temple, and antique shops. Then we walked over to the base of the "Peak" which is a tram ride up to a vista point above the city. We stayed up there for a bit, it was very touristy though. Then the jetlag hit us and we headed back down to the Kowloon side to watch the lightshow, which is at 8pm everynight where all of the skyscrapers participate in an orchestrated lightshow to music. Then we went to bed around 9! And woke up around 4am... stayed in bed until around 7am...

Yesterday we went and bought a daypass for the subway system which is called the MTR. We took the MTR to Lantau Island. Once on Lantau island we continued taking the MTR to Tung Chung, which was where the gondolas to the big Buddha began. The gondolas were called Ngong Ping 360, and were a 25 minute ride over the ocean to high up in a mountain to the area called Ngong Ping village. It was a very scenic ride but was quite cloudy. Once we were in Ngong Ping, we headed to the Buddha and climbed up the many stairs to reach it. We saw a few other sights in the village and then we took a bus to Tai O, which is a fishing village on the west side of Lantau Island. It was a very interesting village with lots of stinky dried seafood for sale, houses on stilts, and lots of cute cats! By this point our legs were getting very tired from LOTS of walking, so we took a bus to Man Wu where we caught a fast ferry back to Hong Kong Island. Then we took the metro to see the Golden Bauhinia Square, which has a few monuments to commemorate Hong Kong's return to China. Then back to the hostel, out for dinner to a place called Macau Restaurant, it was pretty good, had a lot of locals in it so we figured that was a good sign. We had rice, vegetables, and noodles with chicken. All this with a beer and coke was less than $20 Canadian. Then we walked to the goldfish market, flower market, and tried to go to the bird market but it was closed. It was a busy day!

Today we got up early and walked around in the rain a bit, had some breakfast, packed up and are now here... off to the airport soon for our flight to Bangkok. We will now attempt to post some pictures. Thanks for all the messages!!