Hong Kong - Part 1

there are soo many things I want to remember about this trip!

The very first impression of Hong Kong is the landscape! Living in concrete cities like jkt & sg all my life, im not used to seeing a city that is built within majestic mountains and is surrounded by so many bodies of water...altho sg does have its fair share of ocean views – somehow the ocean is still something apart...the beach you would visit on a day off, the marina a picnic spot. The ocean in HK is as much part of your daily commute as roads are in other cities. In the three days that i was there, i commuted by cable cars to get to the peak of mountains, ferries to get to the different islands, trams which take you to the peaks and the mtr which goes under the sea while crossing islands – so deep below sea level that you can actually feel the faint pop of a pressure bubble in your ear! :)

Me & K reached HK late Friday night and had barely enough energy to make ourselves to the hotel and chit-chat with R who had very graciously appointed himself as our host for the weekend!

Saturday morning, i woke up to a brilliant view of the harbour with its shining waters and the imposing HK skyline. After a hearty breakfast – we headed for the Giant Buddha which is one of the iconic tourist spots. Perhaps the only mistake we made in planning this trip was planning it in august when the weather in HK is hot & humid! After a long wait at the cable car queue, we were finally started our 20 min cable car ride! The ride is scenic and absolutely gorgeous! The cable car climbs up the steep incline of the mountain with gorgeous views of the ocean around lantau island, the lush green mountains and even the HK airport!

The Giant Buddha is this serene bronze structure atop a hill with a gazillion steps leading up to it! (ok yes i counted - there were 268 steps!) but the view from high up was just breathtaking...! there was a certain tranquillity in the air and me & R sat around chit-chatting for a looong time under the shade of the Buddha while K roamed around taking pics of the scenary! :)

By the time we left from the Buddha - the sun had drained a lot of our energy and we just wanted to get off our feet! went back to the hotel room to unwind & get dressed for dinner! we had an amazing dinner at this place called 'Mask' - R's fav rest! It was a Szechwan restaurant which we discovered was liked more by the indian population rather than the chinese! the spiciness of the food & its tangy sauces i think appeal much more to the indian tastebuds! in fact, i think the maximum no of indians we saw the entire weekend were in that restaurant! :)

Post dinner we headed back to our hotel and i got dressed to experience the nightlife of hongkong! :D this was an experience i def wanted and even though the sun had taken a lot out of me the entire day - a long hot shower, donning my fav black dress, pencil heels and my colourful purple scarf later - i was ready to the rock the streets of HK! :) the experience was very unlike sg...starting from the place itself! LKF when compared to CQ has more character....CQ i often find to be too perfect - exactly like the people living in sg...but i digress...LKF is basically an area with a couple of streets running parallel to each other...these streets are not your average wide streets - in effect they are actually small alleys which go uphill & downhill with interconnecting tinier streets in between! the whole area is actually a business center and most of these pubs turn into lunch places during the day! the night scene in HK leans more towards pubs with loud music rather than closed clubs like in sg...walking down the street - you could be listening to R&B one minute and hip hop the next and a soft ballad in the next one! its absolutely brilliant! :) after a gazillion drinks (which btw are dirt cheap!) & getting soaked in the rain...we finally got back to the hotel at like 5 in the morning! i was running on an adrenaline high when we got back and was more than ready to drink some more! while R had pretty much collapsed! :P i think all the touristy roaming around was too tiring for him!

....more later....