Not Long in Hong Kong

        First of our four stops in China was Hong Kong. We pulled up to the harbour and because none of us have done enough shopping already, we had to walk through a mall to touch Hong Kong street. I was a little under the weather for this port, battling one of the worst colds of my life. The weather was rather wet and gray the entire time we were in Hong Kong. I’m not sure if it’s always like that or if we just caught it at a bad time. The first day we took the Ngong Ping glass-bottomed cable car up to the top of a mountain to see the big Buddha statue. And then later that evening we went up to another high-altitude vantage point called the Peak, where you can supposedly watch the nightly Hong Kong light show. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the city lights dance from building to building due to Earth Hour but the view was pretty spectacular. We met a 23-year old Israeli backpacker named Bar at the foot of the Peak. We ended up doing the Peak with him and eating dinner together at a Mexican restaurant called Tequila Jacks where he told us all about his time serving in the Israeli army as well as his travels through New Zealand not too long ago. It’s always fun when you run into other travelers. They are usually more experienced than us SAS’ers at traveling the world and have a lot of amazing stories to share. Bar sold me on New Zealand. I think that will be my next travel spot.
        The second day I’m a little embarrassed and ashamed about. I went to Disneyland. I’m traveling to exotic places like Hong Kong and I choose to visit something that we have in America. Can you tell I have some regrets? I just wasn’t strong enough to resist the lure of Mickey Mouse and was naïve enough to believe a day in Disney, with all the sentimental family moments and memories I have of the place, would make me feel at home and strangely connected to the ones I love. Despite the terrible rainy weather and it already being noon by the time I left for the park, I bought a ticket hopped on the special Disneyland Hong Kong metro line (This train was pretty cool looking. The windows were Mickey Mouse shaped as well as the hoops you grab onto when there are no seats). When I arrived at the park all of my old childhood excitement came rushing back. I’m going to Disneyland! After about a half hour in the park, I knew I had made a mistake. Instead of serving as a remedy for homesickness, it only made me feel more disconnected from my family. The park wasn’t even that spectacular. It’s only five years old so it’s still a work in progress. I rode Space Mountain about 6 or 7 times. It was the only roller coaster in the whole park and saw a few shows. The park was literally a miniature Magic Kingdom. So Disneyland was a major misjudgement on my part. Live and learn I guess.
         The ship pulled away that evening without me on it. I had a flight the next morning from Hong Kong to Beijing so I had to stick around for the night. A few of my friends had gone hotel hunting that day. They found a reasonably priced hotel over in the Soho District. The only problem was they couldn’t book me the room and I wasn’t expecting to arrive at the hotel around 6pm. When I did arrive, I found out that it was fully booked for the night. I had a mini panic attack until my friend whom I was planning on rooming with found a hotel with vacancy a few blocks over. It was such a sweet hotel too, very European, modern, and compact. Everything worked out wonderfully. I caught the metro to the airport in the morning and was on a flight to Beijing shortly thereafter.
         Hong Kong was exciting but I wasn’t blown away by it like I have been at the other ports. I blame it on the lack of time. We only had two days. Not nearly enough time to really dive in and see what Hong Kong is all about. Maybe I’ll be back one day and can do it right.