Hong Kong consists of a mainland on China’s southeastern coast and about 235 islands. It is bordered on the east, west, and south by the South China Sea. Hong Kong was a British dependency from the mid 8140s until July 1, 1997, when it passed to Chinese sovereignty as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Doug and I had been to Hong Kong before when we were on our land China trip. We loved it then and looked forward to returning. It was everything we remembered it to be. We arrived into port very early on Sunday morning. We had great views (although a bit foggy) of both the island of Hong Kong and the other side where we were docked – the Kowloon side, separated by Victoria Harbor.
The Hong Kong side from our ship in Victoria Harbor as we came to port.
After arriving, the first thing we did was to make as many calls to family as we could because of the 12 hour time difference between Hong Kong and New York. It was fun to catch up with almost everyone.
We are docked in the best location possible – Ocean Terminal which is attached to Harbor City which has 4 levels of shops and restaurants, which is linked to the Star Center with an equal amount of shops, etc. It is where you get the Star ferry to get back and forth between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. You would never have to go out of those two complexes to buy everything you’d want – and it’s all on the waterfront!
We spent the rest of the morning in this complex getting a new hard drive for our laptop since we have used almost all our picture capacity – and we still have a month of pictures to go! We also spent a lot of time in the Chinese Arts and Crafts store. It had beautiful Chinese things – not a “craft” store like a Michael’s, etc. We bought material to have some pillows made for our new sofas.
We had a Dim Sum lunch at the Jade restaurant in this huge complex. It was a Sunday, after church, so there were tons of Asian families dining as well. The service was slow and the food just fair.
In the hunt for buying for our new house, we went to the Art Museum’s gift shop and found some Chinese prints we liked. Then headed down Nathan Rd. (the big shopping street) and found a piece of luggage for all our new purchases.
Met Diane and Craig back at the ship to go our to dinner and watch the light show at 8 p.m. We walked around the town and could not find anything (it was only 6p.m.) and we needed reservations for most of the spots. So, we walked back closer to where the night show was going to be and ended up at a Vietnamese restaurant in the complex close to the ship called Rice Paper. We were a bit concerned that it was not crowded, but had to eat so as not to miss the light/music show. Were we ever surprised when we were able to eat outside (didn’t know that it had an outside!) overlooking the harbor. The food was good, but the service was slow. So, we had to rush to get to the viewing area to see the light show.
At 8 p.m. every evening near the Clock Tower, there is a viewing platform so that you can see the light show on the Hong Kong island side, but also has the music playing there that coordinates with the lights. We had seen the light show the last time we were here, but didn’t know about the music that goes with it. So, this time we were able to see and hear it!!! It was really good – lasts about 15 minutes. On many of the buildings, they have lights that move around the building and change colors. We didn’t get very good pictures of it, but I did get a good one afterwards with just the lights of the city at night.
This picture is only one very small part of the Hong Kong skyline. It goes forever!
Normally, about this time we’d be heading back to the cabin to call it a night, but not in Hong Kong which is a 24 hour city! So the four of us headed off to one of the Night Markets in Kowloon called the Temple Street Market. We took the metro which was an experience in itself! It is basically one long street with little stalls (on wheels) that are set up just for the evening.
The aisle is very narrow so that two people side by side is very crowded. And crowded it was!
We saw lots of crew and passengers from our ship there – as well as lots of locals. It was great fun! We picked up a few fun things. My favorite was finding the “flower tea” packets. You put this little brown packet into a glass tea pot, and when you pour hot water in it, the flower opens up. It looks like it would be very pretty.
Took the metro back to the cruise terminal and decided to call it a night around midnight!
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