Steve's Day 1 - HK Arrival

(Steve)

For anyone who doesn't already know, our flight left Logan at 6:00 Friday morning. From there it was 27 hours of airports and airplanes before we got to China. We had to go through Toronto to Chicago, then finally up north over the pole to Hong Kong. The detour through Canada meant that we had to recheck our bags and go through customs to get back to the States, even though we never even left the terminal. It was irritating and a little stressful what with our time constraints. We got here with all of our stuff, though, so it all worked out in the end.

We got to Hong Kong at 7:00 at night (6:00 AM back home) and decided to go out. We took the Star Ferry across to where Jamie, Molly's youth group counselor, works. The ferry was fun, and the decorations for the New Year were amazing: everywhere we looked there were statues and displays lit up, lanterns, and flashing neon pictures on the buildings. I'm still annoyed that I forgot my camera. Anyways, Jamie treated us to a Thai dinner in SoHo before giving us a brief tour of Hong Kong. He pointed out how much Asians love escalators and moving walkways, but in Hong Kong they're somewhat necessary: the city's steeper than San Francisco! That's exactly what made the club district so entertaining in terms of people watching, as Molly said in the blog. Even so, it was hard not to be impressed by the neighborhood. After that, we went to the Flower Market, which we expected to be a rather traditional festival-type gathering. It was more carnival-esque: we didn't see any flowers but we did see plenty of cheap plastic toys (even an inflatable rake). The place was packed, so we didn't stay long. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 2:00 AM. All in all, it was a great welcome to Hong Kong and I can't thank Jamie enough for it, but I regretted staying out that late for the next few days.

I still didn't sleep much that night - a 13 hour time difference really throws you off - so I was up and about pretty early Sunday morning. I wandered around until I finally ran into the girls, and we decided to go see the Big Buddha. When we got to the cablecar station, we found out that the line was 2 hours long. That was not easy on our feet. Finally we got up to the top of the mountain though, and yes, it is one BIG Buddha. It was very cool, and it was also kinda funny to see all the people trying to toss coins into the things the statues were holding. By the time we got back from the Buddha the streets were starting to fill up for the New Year's parade, but I was too tired even to eat, much less to stay up for that. So I went to bed. *End day 1* (and for those who are wondering, I'm not counting Saturday. Sunday was day 1.)
First impressions: Hong Kong is a very western city. Everyone seemed to be expecting us to suffer massive culture shock, but it didn't feel all that different. It was a little disconcerting to see Chinese characters everywhere, but they were always accompanied by English. Driving, which we heard so many horror stories about, wasn't all that bad. Even so, though, my hotel room felt very lonely for the first few nights, so I'm definitely glad we went to Hong Kong first to ease into the trip.