Alright everyone, prepare to put your lives on hold momentarily while I let you experience mine. I think it's only fair that every city deserves a second chance-especially when the first chance proved to be quite delightful. That's how the 8 of us girls ended up going back to Hong Kong for the weekend. (That and the fact that we had to leave the country as our 60 days were up.) So around lunch time on Friday we all got out of school early (highly recommended) and hopped on the ferry to Hong Kong. Although I may make it sound a little simpler than it actually was-they're insignificant details. Here you can see my roommate and I being so excited to go back to Hong Kong and acting like good little travelers while filling out our departure/arrival cards. Once we had taken a bus to the bus depot, another bus to the ferry station, and walked from the station to the closest metro, we were able to call the random lady who was renting us her house for the weekend. The house was literally across the street from the metro and I don't think we could have been much luckier with our placement. Here is the view from one of our windows. You can see a 7/11 is right there so really, what else could we need?
(If you follow that little yellow line on the sidewalk to the right then it would lead you right down to the metro. I don't think we could have been any closer had we tried.) Here's some of my roommates adjusting to our temporary abode. 8 girls, 2 single bedrooms, a bunk bed in another room, and 4 of us sleeping on random mattresses in this room here.
Talk about sleepover (except I would rather read than talk to people generally. Has anyone ever considered how fun a sleepover would be if you just sat next to each other and all read books?)
As I mentioned before, there was a 7/11 conveniently located down the street and inside I located Hong Kong's hidden treasure. The elusive glass bottled CHOCOLATE milk! (It's decided. I'm never leaving.) This greatness even balanced out the fact that I was using a bath towel as a blanket. (Although in its defense, at least it was a dry bath towel as we had extras laying around.) There was also the fact that the chandelier light things looked like Metapods hanging from the ceiling. All in all I don't really see how anyone could resist this place?
So anyway, besides eating a delicious dinner of Japanese food the night wasn't terribly exciting. Although I am generally opposed to be up bright and early on a Saturday this one happened to be an exception. (Say hello to miso soup, omurice, and katsu...mmmm.)
Manisha, Hattie, and I had to make it to the temple by 7 am because we needed an early start for all of the things that had to get done today. While we waited for our roommate to finish her session we took a picture next to this really cool Asian art piece. Not long after this wonderful selfie (doublie?) happened some of the temple workers invited us to do baptisms early so they didn't keep us waiting. (Technically baptisms didn't start until 8:30 a.m.) Anyway, we got a special deal and were able to enjoy some special experiences in the temple with just the two of us and the workers there. We felt bad telling them that we would have to wait anyway as one of our roommates was still inside, but at least we were able to wait outside and enjoy the beauty around the temple. On our walk back to the metro we ran into our professor's wife (whom we had just met yesterday!) What are the odds?
We hurried home, restocked our bags, and once again hit the road. Today we had a mission that was given to me by none other than my cousin, Christian Richter, whom Aunt Jan had previously dubbed "the Hong Kong expert." (Side note: with Christian being the king of Hong Kong would that truly make him King Kong then?) Anyway, adventuring we went, and now that I'm safely home again I can write to the world all about it with my mother not having to worry one bit.
Here are the 7 steps to happiness: (aka Sai Kung beaches) 1) Take the metro to Mong Kok station. Or, in our case, live conveniently close to this station by chance, practice reading a map, and walk there on your own. Done? Done. 2) Hop on the red minibus that says "Mong Kok-Sai Kung" and pray that there's no mistake because you don't have any way to fix it if there is.
3) Try to play your gameboy on the bus (because public transportation is a good excuse to not be productive) but then feel guilty that you're missing out on all the beautiful sights out the windows. 4) Make it to Sai Kung and confidently find yourself a taxi to take you the next leg of the trip. I say confidently because when you have no idea what you're doing, no grasp of the language, and no practicing finding or riding in taxis then confidence is just about all you have left at that point. Also you can see little girls posing with fake newspaper boats and fake water fowls.
5) Survive the slightly terrifying taxi (apparently those are our terrified faces..?) ride where your only thoughts are wondering why in the world they don't simply make the road wide enough for two cars to pass one another without having to climb the side of the mountain (or the curb. Whatever.) and if your kiwi juice is still going to taste good once it's no longer cold. Give yourself a pat on the back once you can exit the taxi at your destination and give your driver some money (and possibly some driving tips if you can speak the language. Then again, I wouldn't have been so chill if I had been the driver.) 6) Hike up and down the stone pathway until you feel like you're wet enough that you feel as if you have already been swimming but you're clearly not satisfied yet so you know you really haven't yet. Hold onto hope though because during your hike you will see things like this.
Note the cool, leafy staircase that winds up into who knows where.
The excellent wooden sign posts that are a definite highlight.
Oh and then these views.
And this one too. 
Here we are looking nice and chipper and surprisingly not sweaty. Maybe this was early on in the hike.Eventually though the hiking does end but the instructions are not over yet.
7) Immediately upon arriving find someone offering to take you back to Sai Kung in their boat because HECK NO are you going to be wanting to do that climb again after playing in the sun all day. (Note: at least the last 1/3 of the hike was downhill...now imagine returning home.)
Step 7A) Give you and your companions a pat on the back for making it here without getting lost and do it soon before you get sunburned from being out all day. Now that you're here though all you have to do is enjoy the view (and the food.) Even though it was expensive and I don't even love coconut, Hattie and I felt like we would be full of regret if we walked away from this experience without ordering this coconut drink that everyone had. So how we are drinking out of one (stinking huge) coconut and eating the milky meat.
After satisfying our immediate hunger we went to go play on the beach! I collected some skeleton shells. Sadly, the clam couldn't join my skeleton shell army (which, as you can see, was clearly in need or recruits) because the clam was still living inside. I was extremely curious as to what it would look like or if there would be a pearl inside, but when your friend tells you that you will be murdering the clam if you open it it really makes you feel a little guilty. Especially since I knew I wasn't even going to eat it. So I buried it back in the sand. (Actually, I found quite a few animals buried in the sand. Seeing as I have the habit of burying my hands in the sand, grabbing a fistful, and then letting it float away in the water I picked up a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) amount of animals. They would then move inside my fist, cause me to make a startled noise and a splash, startle my roommates, and quickly escape back into the ocean.After about 5 hours playing in the ocean we were all pretty exhausted and ready to go back home and clean up. Of course, no amount of tiredness was going to keep me from going to eat some takoyaki that I saw being sold from a stand on our way home. (Sadly, I ate most of it before I remembered to take a picture.)
Oh and I can't move on past our ocean adventures without leaving everyone with another embarrassing video of me to enjoy. (Apparently I have no pride or no shame. Either way, enjoy!)
This is me trying to do the leap frog at 23. I do Not still have it.
Ok, true to my usual luck with technology I cannot get the video to work on here. So here is a link to my facebook in case you haven't seen it yet.
Sunday went by pretty quickly. We went to church at the Victoria Branch (which looked large enough to be its own ward really) and then our goal was to locate the Flying Pan. This is a slightly Americanized restaurant that Hattie's teacher told her to go to. It's like Dennys but in Hong Kong. (Also it is my sincerest wish that it was an Asian who doesn't grasp the differences between 'l' and 'r' who named this restaurant.)
Once we finally motivated ourselves to get out of our chair we went to the midlevels and road the world's largest outdoor escalators again. This time though we weren't overwhelmed, exhausted, and in a hurry. We took our time and stopped to admire things. When we made it to the top we saw this sign for the Sun Yat-Sen museum (which our professor tried to take us to our first week but it was closed) so we couldn't resist.
We spent way more time there than we originally had expected to but it was a pretty cool place. Here's a picture of us with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen himself and then a picture of one of the rooms. Honestly, except for the fact that no matter how early we try and leave for the ferry we still find ourselves running down the street in an attempt to not get left behind, nothing too exciting happened the rest of the night. We safely returned from Hong Kong back to our lives as teachers. And we all lived happily ever after. (Until we had to go back to school and everyone had to face the fact that we did absolutely ZERO preparation for this week because we played too hard.)
No comments:
Post a Comment