Jet Lag in Hong Kong (Mon/Tue)

(Alex)

After sleeping through an entire afternoon and waking up at 11:30 pm, I was wide awake all night and early morning. Out of the five of us, I by far have the worst jet lag, which is causing me to be perpetually tired! I was able to stay awake long enough for the peak tram and zoological gardens, but once the boat cruise and dinner hit, I was completely knocked out.

The weather was misty and foggy, but we could still see the Hong Kong skyline quite well. After a standard western buffet breakfast overlooking Victoria Harbor, we set out on a ferry to reach Hong Kong island. After struggling to find exact change for the bus ride to the peak, we finally reached it in the knick of time (when we came down, the line was a few blocks long!). The tram up was insane because of the extremely high angle the tram goes up. The tram ride reminded me of Lombard street in San Francisco, except for the fact that there is A) no trolley on such a steep angle in San Francisco and B) the tram was absolutely packed and seemed to exceed the weight limit…but we survived. Once we reached the top I was surprised to see that Victoria Peak was actually a giant shopping area and restaurant hangout. The gift shop was literally 20 feet from exiting the tram, and the first thing you passed through. This is just one more example of how Hong Kong is the most commercial city I have ever been to.

After planning out more of the day in a mountain top Starbucks, we decided that we would go check out the botanical and zoological gardens around the corner for the peak tram. This was by far the highlight of the day. We had a blast getting there and climbing steep sidewalks you would never find in the US. Once we got there, we began wandering around the zoo and found a very large amount of names carved into trees. We all marveled at how clean a city Hong Kong is, and Alaina documented this first hand. She took pictures of as many signs that had fines on them as possible. There are huge fines for spitting, hawking, feeding animals, and of course: illegal photography. After 15 minutes of plant admiration, we stumbled onto birds of all sorts and my favorite: cranes. Mrs. Thibeault and I were watching these beautiful cranes when one of them started purring and walked up to us. We were officially having a stare off with a very big bird. After he/she left us, we moved onto the mammals section which was the best part of the zoo. Monkeys were all over the place jumping from tree to tree in their caged off areas, but the one thing that caught our eyes were the raccoons on display. Two very large and very lazy raccoons were just trying to sleep atop a branch, but one of the raccoons couldn’t make up his mind about which way to put his head down (this reminded me of myself on the plane over…) then right as we were about to leave, the same raccoon decided he wanted some exercise, so he climbed down the cage very slowly, dangling off the edge. We all joked about that being the raccoons daily exercise and promptly left the zoo.

Getting back to the hotel, we all went out to eat lunch at a place that Mrs. Thibeault, Cassie, and Lauren visited the night before and this lunch was pretty amazing for Hong Kong. It was a nice break from the western styled breakfasts and other bad Chinese meals we had because this restaurant not only had good food but also had a great atmosphere. We were cramped into a small table that barely fit us all and as soon as we finished we were kicked out of the restaurant to make room for others coming in. It was at this point I almost passed out. We all joked about taking a siesta, but I actually wanted to.

We all met at the hotel across the street for our bus to a Chinese dinner and fireworks show, but I was struggling so hard to stay awake from my serious jet lag. We had dinner at a gathering in a Hong Kong hotel and we sat with a group of Panamanian and Venezuelan travelers who spoke great English (even though they were only talking to each other and ignoring us for the most part). The dinner was not very good, but we wouldn’t let that get in the way of our fun. Once we reached the boat we were all tired, but once the fireworks started we all got up to see them. The show was great and there were tons of boats in the harbor gathered to see as well. One particular boat was an old wooden sloop named bounty and the silhouette of the ship on the skyline was very aesthetic and cool. All this time I was about to pass out, but I still had a good time in the end.

The next day wasn’t so nice to me…I woke up tired and dizzy and didn’t stop feeling that way until we reached Guilin. The travel that day was fine, but the jet lag was still hitting me full force three days later (lucky me). Our guide Rico has been awesome so far with helping to plan out our visit to Yangshuo, helping us find electric converters, and getting us our first Chinese dinner on the mainland.