I finally ended my wonderful trip with Hong Kong, which should have been a small stopover of 1 hour before returning to France. I payed the HK airport taxes in order to go out of the airport, and
stay for a week instead. It was like 10 euros to enter HK, which is more than affordable. :)
What is much less affordable is the accommodation there. Hong Kong is considered as one of the most expensive place to live. I don't know if it's really surprising, since HK was a British colony.
We can see that in HK remains a bit the British culture.
But what a surprise, I have a cousin there. And even more than one!! Isn't it convenient? ;) So I didn't have to pay for an accommodation. I stayed at my cousin's place, who lives with 2
other Frenchies.
I thought I had really bad luck when I arrived, because the weather was perfect there before I arrived, they told me they even went to the beach two days before my arrival. When I arrived, there
was a big storm. A really biiiiig storm. I thought the plane would have crashed, because the jolts were soo strong! Plus I thought I had lost my keys of my luggage, which would have been a big
problem... Plus I lost my lucky charm key holder in the airport, bouhooou!
Finally I found my keys, and the weather became a bit better the day after. It was just really dump, with 80% humidity!!! (not kidding!) You go out you're just sweaty all day long.
Anyway, I had a great time there. I had a very nice guide, who was one of my cousin's roommate. Other friends of them were there visiting also so we visited together.
We started the visit with a museum in the New Territories, in Shatin. It was the Heritage Museum. Sounds a really serious visit, doesn't it? But this museum not only presents the evolution of HK
town, it also has many exhibitions, such as the very famous honkongese singers or what is a chinese opera.
Every night, it is possible to see the Light Show from Tsim Shai Tsui, where we can see all the buildings of Hong Kong completely illuminated (a bit of energy waste...)
The day after, we've been to Lantau Island, which is one of the most famous islands of Hong Kong, in the Western part. Hong Kong counts more than 300 islands.
We had to pass through Hong Kong, and took the tram, which is the cheapest transportation there. Otherwise the metros and buses are not so cheap...
You can notice the two floors british style tram. :)
Do you see this white strange building on the left? It is the bank of China. Try to find it on the Night view picture! Easyyy.
Sooo let's talk about Lantau. You can visit the biggest sit Buddha of the world. To reach it, you have to take a cable car. If you want, you can also take the stairs, but it will take you hours
or even days to go to the top.
When you arrive on the top, it's not finished. If you want to get closer, more than 200 steps wait for you.
When you arrive finally, you see a big Buddha (yipee!) and a nice view of the foggy mountains.
Close to the big Buddha, there are the Wisdom passage and the Po Ling temple to visit. We haven't been to the Wisdom passage by lack of time, but we saw briefly the temple:
The day after, we have seen Stanley, famous for its market and beaches. Very touristic place :)
And at the night fall, we took a tram to go to the so-called 'peak' and see HK by night.
Back to Tsim Shai Tsui. There is an 'avenue des Stars', with many Honkongese actors putting their hands in a star on the floor: Jacky Chan, Bruce Lee, Maggie Cheung, Jet Li, Tony Leung, Andy Lau,
Michelle Yeoh and many more!
The same day, we've been to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Shatin again. You have to take the 400 steps stairs with many statues of buddhas accompanying you along the way, all unique!
And the same day (youhou!), we 've been to Mongkok. A biiiig shopping place, especially for computer stuffs. There is the famous 'lady's market', where you can haggle the prices so easily. If you
look foreigner, they higher the prices, so we have to be careful with that. For me it was ok since I look chinese, but unfortunately I don't understand cantonese at all, so I tried to speak
mandarin with them. They can all more or less understand mandarin but are unable to speak! So they answered in cantonese, which wasn't really practical for me...
And the same day (!), I saw a good friend from Denmark!! We've been to a very good Japanese restaurant, with a conveyor belt presenting any kind of sushis or makis.
After the restaurant, we went to a racecourse at the Happy Valley Hippodrom. Half of the hippodrom was full of foreigners. It was amazing. But in itself I'm not very fond of horse races,
because you have to wait every half an hour to see 30 seconds of race.
My last visit was the island of Cheung Chau. A nice little island in the South of Hong Kong. We took the ferry to go there. On the island, we rented some bikes to go around. The problems of the
island were very strong hills and f%**$@ mosquitoes. But the landscapes were amazing. Very typical.
I ended up the trip by watching my cousin training for the Dragon Boat Festival at Stanley beach, which will normally take place in June of this year. If you have nothing to do, go and support
my cousin! ;) She'll need it!
My three months trip is now over. I can't wait to do it again! ^^
classmates
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