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| I hopped off the plane at HKG... |
I think my title is a bit deceiving. I DID travel in Southeast Asia, but how extensively, I am not so sure. Southeast Asia is such a vast and varied area, so I want to take my time with discovering all its beauty. For the next couple entries or so, I will be taking the time to talk about my journey through Hong Kong, Thailand, and Cambodia. I don't want to cram all of them into one entry, or else it would be entirely too long. So, for just little more than two weeks, my friend Emily and I shoved some stuff into our backpacks and were on our way to our first destination: Hong Kong (well... we did quite a bit of planning beforehand, too)!
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| Our tiny hostel room |
At first glance, Hong Kong is a dirty, polluted, and crowded city. After four days, my opinion changed. I had little knowledge of Hong Kong before Emily and I decided to travel there, but there is no better way to learn than to immerse yourself in the culture, language, and the people, right? Unfortunately, we had a bit of a scary experience upon our arrival to the hostel. I will leave out some details, but Emily and I can say that we had never before ridden an elevator more likely to break down at any moment. Our hostel might have been the worst hostel I have ever stayed at. Our room was absolutely tiny (although not surprising for China), we had one tiny, minuscule blanket to share, and the bed harder than a rock. I'll try not to complain because I got what I paid for (super cheap).
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| View of Hong Kong from Victoria's Peak |
Besides the accommodation, Hong Kong surprised me in many ways - luckily, these surprises were more positive experiences. On our first full day, Emily and I decided to walk around the city and see where we ended up. Hong Kong is separated in multiple islands, so transportation can get a bit confusing. Luckily, transportation was fairly cheap, so we ended up not having to spend a fortune on that. Anyway, Emily and I traveled to the main island, where we went to Victoria's Peak, a tower where you can see a panoramic view of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the pollution causes fogginess, so it wasn't the best sight to see (but that's reality). I often take for granted the fresh, crisp, cool air that I breathe everyday in Gwangyang as well as the beautiful sights I wake up to. Being at the top of Victoria's Peak just reinforced my decision to never permanently live in a large city if I can help it.
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| Jumbo Floating Restaurant |
For lunch, we decided to check out a "Jumbo Floating Restaurant" on the water. We took a ferry to the floating restaurant, which was extravagantly decorated and famous for seafood. Unfortunately, the menu was extremely expensive for backpackers on a budget, so we only bought some appetizers and a yummy dessert and left. The inside was quite intricate, though, and very interesting to see Chinese architecture at its finest.
After lunch, we wandered around and stumbled upon a beautiful park. We relaxed there for awhile and as it was getting dark, many street markets were coming alive. We had dinner at a restaurant nearby. I ate rice and beef wrapped in a leaf-like structure, which was absolutely delicious. For dessert, we ate "Blueberry Bubbies", which Emily and I will never actually know what it consisted of. We walked around a street market near our hostel before calling it a night.
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| Cable Car adventures |
Day two was my favorite day in Hong Kong. After a sleepless night, I was feeling a bit groggy, but not enough to contain my excitement for exploring another day. We hit the road to head out to the "countryside" of Hong Kong for the day. First, we took a cable car into the mountains as we traveled to see the Tian Tan Buddha, also known as Big Buddha. Big Buddha is made of bronze and was constructed in 1993 to symbolize the harmonious relationship between man and nature, people and religion. I had never seen a Buddha so big. But my, I was in for a surprise during this vacation about the various Buddhas that exist in Southeast Asia! We trekked all the way up numerous flights of stairs to see Big Buddha up close. Luckily, my home stay father equipped me with a "selfie stick" for my vacation, which certainly came in handy. I decided that taking a selfie with Big Buddha would be a perfect moment to use it (although you aren't supposed to turn your back to Buddha... forgive me!!).
After seeing Big Buddha, we stayed in the mountains and went to a Chinese Monastery named Po Lin, also known as "The Big Hut". Chinese temples seem subtly different than temples in Korea. The colors and designs are fairly similar, but different in shapes and shades. I noticed that Chinese temples seem to have more dragon representations as well. Either way, they are intricate and beautiful. We walked around and saw the temple of 50,000 Buddhas (unfortunately I didn't have time to count them all... -sigh-). After our sight-seeing was done, we took the cable car back down, ate some pizza, then took a bus to the countryside of Hong Kong.
When we arrived one hour later, it was as if we stepped onto a deserted island (in a good way, not Castaway). This area is known for having a waterfall and a cave, so we trekked our way in search. We walked around for 40 minutes before we stumbled upon the waterfall and the cave. Unfortunately, the waterfall had very little water flowing, and you couldn't step past 300 meters inside of the cave. BUMMER. But still awesome to see the less-populated area of Hong Kong. Being in that part of Hong Kong reminded me a lot of Central America because of the scenery surrounding me. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
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| Rural Hong Kong |
After another sleepless night, and on our last full day in Hong Kong, Emily and I had already gotten almost everything checked off our "to-do" list, so we used this day for adventure and food exploration. We stumbled upon some famous cartoon characters that are based from Hong Kong, so naturally we had to stop and take silly pictures with the statues. We also made it our mission to eat at a restaurant where you order cheap dishes a-la-carte - aka the fastest way to become obese. It was entirely too delicious, and the best food we had eaten in Hong Kong thus far. My favorite was a red-bean soup-like thing with rice balls in it. I think Korea has molded my taste preferences.
We also took a ferry to the beach/touristy area of Hong Kong called Stanley. When we stepped off the ferry, we were surrounded by tourist shops, bar strips along the shore, and delicious pub food. We bought some souvenirs then sat down for a beer while gazing at what I believed to be the South China Sea. After hanging out for awhile, we traveled back to the mainland and saw the lights show along the city skyline before heading back to our hostel, packing up, and getting ready for an early flight to Thailand in the morning!
Overall, Hong Kong was an interesting city, but to be honest, I probably won't make an effort to go back in the future (there's plenty of other unexplored places to see in the world!). However, I had never been to China before and I certainly had a curiosity to see it. I think I would like to see Beijing if I do return to China! The food was delicious, that is for certain.
Stay tuned for my adventures in Chiang Mai - my favorite stop during my 17-day trip!
On day one in Bangkok, we settled into our hostel, and had a difficult time finding some food (surprisingly in such a big city!). We ended up going to a local restaurant where the manager spoke no English and the menu wasn't much help either. Luckily the guy just gave us whatever he recommended, which was absolutely delicious! After lunch, we wandered around and we discovered this magical dessert restaurant called Milk Plus. In Milk Plus, everything is dairy-related (as you can imagine). There are machines mixing all different flavors of milk, such as Kiwi, Cantaloupe, Blueberry, Pomegranate, and more flavored types of milk. OH MY GOD. I have never tasted dairy products that were as delicious as Milk Plus. They also sell amazing buttery goodness toast and different consistencies of milkshakes and regular milk. We made the trip to Milk Plus every single day that we were in Bangkok. I've checked online, and Milk Plus only seems to exist in Thailand.
