Asian Adventure: Hong Kong Edition

Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed the pictures of Beijing. Here are few pics of our week in Hong Kong. Enjoy.


Hong Kong is the busiest, loudest place I have ever visited. Every street is lit up by neon signs and filled with strange sights, smells, and sounds. Our hotel was located in Kowloon near many of the unique markets of Northern Hong Kong. This is part of the bird market, a place that not only sells birds, but also serves as a hangout for local old dudes who want to bring their birds so they can all sing to each other.


This is part of the Ladies' Market, although it sells just about everything you can imagine. I suppose this would be considered a residential neighborhood in Hong Kong, and it is still packed with people.


They also have a fish market, which again sells just about anything imaginable, including tropical fish, cats, rabbits, lizards, insects, etc. Those are fish hanging in the plastic bags behind Sarah.


One of our favorite attractions in Hong Kong (which also happened to be one of the cheapest) was taking the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island.


It offers amazing views of all of Hong Kong Island, and it only costs about 35 cents.


Hong Kong Island itself is the financial center, and it has some pretty amazing skyscrapers. All of the buildings apparently have to follow the principles of Feng Shui; otherwise they must collapse. We managed to take a picture of some of the skyscrapers in one of the few green spaces in the central district.


One of my favorite things that we did in Hong Kong was travel to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha. It's the largest, seated, outdoor Buddha in the world, which seems like a lot of qualifiers. To get to the Buddha, you get to take a 15-minute gondola ride which offers some spectacular views. Alternatively, you can hike to the Buddha, and it only takes about six hours! We decided to pass on that.


Here's a picture of the Buddha statue from our gondola ride.


Once you get to the site of the statue, you have to climb about 150 steps to actually see it up close.


I'd like to say that this is some ancient wonder of the world, but I think it was actually built about 30 years ago. Still, it's pretty cool.


The statue is located right next to the Po Lin monastery, which is one of the oldest monasteries in Hong Kong. This picture was taken from the inside of the monastery looking out at the Buddha statue.


Like I said, we loved taking the Star Ferry to and from Hong Kong Island. Here's a shot of the city all lit up at night.


For those of you who know me, you certainly know that I would not pass up the chance to have a suit made while in Hong Kong. Sarah and I finally settled on Mr. Joseph Ma, who made me an awesome three-piece light gray suit. If you're going to Hong Kong anytime soon, I recommend Mr. Ma.


On the Saturday before we left, Sarah and I decided to take the hydrofoil to Macao, another "special autonomous region" of China. It was settled and owned by Portugal up until a few years ago, and many of the people still speak Portuguese today. Although most of the city is covered in casinos, we spent most of our time in the historic city center, which still looks like an old Portuguese village even today.


Here's a picture of the ruins of a Jesuit cathedral built on a hill in the center of Macao. It burned down over 200 years ago, so only the facade remains today.


Sarah and I had an awesome time in Hong Kong. It really was the trip of a lifetime. If I have time later in the week, I'll certainly put up one more post of my favorite topic for any trip: the food.

Asian Adventure: Beijing Edition

Hey folks! Sorry it's been a while since my last post; it has been a very busy couple of weeks. But I took my last law school final EVER yesterday, so life is good! I can't believe we made it all the way through law school. It will be nice to take a couple days off before I start preparing for the bar exam.

But in other news, Sarah and I had a fantastic time in Asia. We left on March 30th for my law school competition, and didn't get back until April 12th. We had a lot of fun, even though we didn't win the competition. Plus, Sarah managed to find a way for us to have an extended layover in Beijing on our way to Hong Kong, so here are some photos. I'll be sure to post more from the rest of our trip later in the week.


We arrived in Beijing at 5:20 in the morning after 23 hours of traveling, and immediately hopped in a cab to head to the Mutianyu portion of the Great Wall. In retrospect, hiking up a mountain at high altitude directly after a day of flying was probably not a good idea, but we made it to the top, and basically had the whole wall to ourselves.


Fortunately, Sarah and I had brought some pop tarts for an awesome Great Wall energy boost. I'm contemplating writing a letter to the makers of pop tarts to thank them. Those guys kept us alive and moving during our one-day marathon in Beijing.


After that, we had our cabbie drive us into town to go to Tiananmen Square and take some photos of the giant Communist statues. Sadly, the line to see Mao's creepy preserved corpse (behind me) was too long so we had to skip it.


After that, we made our way to the Forbidden City, which is just on the other side of the street. It is massive! It took use a while to go through and see it all, but it was really amazing.


Then we had some lunch, and were amazed to find we still had some time, so we made our way over to the Temple of Heaven to see some of the sights surrounding the Buddhist temple. By then, it was time to head back to the airport for our 6:30 flight to Hong Kong. We really packed in everything we could during our 12 hours in Beijing, and we had a great time. Stay tuned for an account of our adventures in the Special Autonomous Region of Hong Kong.