Rain, rain go away...

Well, it was another rainy day here in this paradise of Hong Kong.  Instead of embracing the rain like we did yesterday, Jeremy and I decided to escape into the downtown of Hong Kong.  Our shuttle dropped us off in front of one of the largest malls in Hong Kong called, Harbour City.  We were astonished to discover upon entering the front doors that this mall was comprised of hundreds of the world's most prestigious brand name stores.  

      The above picture only touches the hundreds of high end stores we discovered.  While it was fun to walk through the stores, the prices deterred us from purchasing any purses, clothing or accessories.    Thirsty from our walking we went in search of somewhere to get a coffee.  Thankfully we came across a Starbucks-a little piece of home in Hong Kong :).

After our stroll through the mall, we further escaped the rain by finding a movie theatre and watching Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.  We were very pleased to discover that the movie was in English and after a few minutes of viewing completely forgot that there were also "Chinese" subtitles on the bottom of the screen (an excellent movie, by the way, and I recommend it to everyone reading!). 

Our day concluded with a tour of the Hong Kong harbour.  This was a tour we had previously arranged with our hotel.  First stop on the tour was at the downtown market. This very much reminded us of being in Mexico, strolling the markets and being hackled by stall owners.  With it STILL raining, our first purchase was an umbrella for Jeremy.  Walking further into the market we came across a stall selling Toms shoes.  I was curious and stopped into the stall just to see if they were even real Toms.  They were, and the store owner would not let us leave without a purchase.  We negotiated her down from her original price of  $40 CND to $20 CND!!!  From the market, we boarded a small version of a cruise ship for our tour of the harbour.  Upon boarding (with about 250 other passengers) we were encouraged to grab some appetizers and find a table.  After setting sail in the harbour, we were ushered to the top deck to view the "spectacular light show".  To our disappointment, the "light show" turned out to be a few spot lights and literally, the lights from the buildings-not quite what we were anticipating.  We decided to head back under the deck and have dinner.  We were served an international buffet, complete with fondue!  After a relaxing ship ride, and MTR treck ride home we hit the pillows around 11:30 PM, already anticipating what adventures tomorrow will bring :)

Bamboo, the Pacific, High-rises, and Ocean Park!!!

There is no denying that there is beautiful scenery in Hong Kong (especially my wife, Leah!!!).  We do miss the wide open spaces found in Canada, but are also intrigued by this brand new landscape.  We are getting more and more used to this new culture everyday but we know full well that there will be even more culture shock tomorrow as we head into our small city of 4 million called Huizhou in the province of Guangdong.

One familiar thing that Hong Kong and China shares with Canada is the Pacific Ocean.  We have seen no one brave this chilly water but I am sure somewhere in this part of the world someone does.  Also, as seen in my hand, the other thing we share is our love for coffee, particularly Starbucks Coffee. 

This is the view from our room in the Panda Hotel.  As you can see there is high-rise, after high-rise, after high-rise.  Everywhere you look there is something BIG.  I am a little surprised to see a basketball court in this picture because it seems that everywhere you look a massive building fills your view.  

As we have everyday we have been here, we are going to leave the comforts of our hotel and explore Hong Kong!  Today we are going to brave the MTR again and ride a city bus for the first time in Hong Kong as we head to Ocean Park  http://www.oceanpark.cn/html/en/home/  (a really great amusement park).  We will blog more about Ocean Park later!!!

Flights, Umbrellas, Personal Space, & Disney

It's going to be a long flight!!!  And it was!!  Especially without any in flight entertainment.  However, Leah and I had the chance to have first class style seating in the economy cabin.  Since the flight was not full, we were able to both stretch across 3 seats (6 total between the two of us) and sleep the entertainment-less flight away (although Leah spent most of her time playing the Sims).  It was excellent!

Our first purchase in Hong Kong  (besides a small snack) was an umbrella.  As you can see on the window of the shuttle we are in, rain is falling (and has been falling ever since we arrived).  The day before we got to Hong Kong there was a big typhoon that knocked down thousands of trees.  It was and is quite a mess in certain areas.  Since it is the rainy season, everyone, and I mean everyone has an umbrella.  This sounds great and all but let me assure you, it is not great for me.  You see, when thousands of people (all much shorter than me) put up their umbrellas in a place like Disneyland the guy who is 6"4 (that is me) gets those nasty umbrella spokes darting towards his eyes.  Let me assure you, after a rainy day like it has been today, I am lucky to still have my eyes!

Personal space is something that we take for granted living in Canada.  I think it is a cultural thing, but people here don't seem to be bothered by being really, really, really close to other people that they do not know.  This little girl is just one example.  Leah and I were in a line up for a ride at Disney and every 3 seconds this girl was touching me and Leah.  It was as if she wanted to get by us, but every time we moved out of the way for her to move past us in line, she didn't seem to want to go anywhere.  But it wasn't just her, even in the washrooms people were pretty much touching you as you were using the urinal because they were so close to you in line.  It was a little (okay, alot) uncomfortable for us Canadian folk who like to live on our acreages and never touch another soul unless we know who they are!!

Here Leah is with her umbrella at the entrance of the Disneyland gate.  Hong Kong Disney was really cool, much like the California version, but with its own unique aspects.  We really enjoyed Disneyland and were glad we decided to go.  We took the MTR (i.e. LRT or train) back to our hotel and we made it after transferring twice.  People here are quite helpful and assisted us when we were getting lost.  All in all, it was a great first day in Hong Kong!!!