Quit drippin Hong Kong!

Greetings everyone, from another year in Korea and another birthday for me. Last year my birthday celebration was pretty laid back and relaxed; doing just a simple dinner with friends. This year though, I decided to go all out. And by all out I mean OUT of Korea even! That’s right, Courtney, the twins and I went to fantastic Hong Kong for my birthday! Haha alright I’ll admit, we didn’t go JUST for my birthday. The weekend of my birthday was Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) here. It was a bit shorter this year than last year, and some of us *cough Courtney cough* got an extra day off of work, but we all managed to make the best of our 4/5 day weekend. 

The twins and I had the same schedule and had to get back to work on Wednesday the 14^th while Courtney got an extra day. BUT the three of us did manage to let our teachers allow us to leave early on Friday night so we hopped on a plane and made it to Hong Kong that night! Let me just say, the plane ride to Hong Kong was by far the best flight I’ve had since Courtney and I flew to Korea for the first time. It’s a funny story how we managed to get such a nice plane in the first place…

Oh the confusion!

Ok so I was in charge of buying the tickets for me and the twins because I was the only one with a credit card at the time. So we three got together to book tickets one day. We were having a really hard time finding a flight that left late enough on Friday, but after an hour or so of searching, we managed to find a not-so-cheap flight. I put in all of my credit card information and clicked the “Pay” button, and got a (what I thought was) confirmation email. I skimmed the email but could have easily overlooked anything. So fast forward a few days. Since I bought the tickets, I’ve gotten a few emails from the website where I bought them from. Now if you’ve ever bought anything online anywhere, you know that you get all the annoying “HOT DEAL” emails after paying. So when I got these few emails from the airline, I naturally ignored them. Smart Sam. Anyway, so a week goes by (less than a week until we leave for Hong Kong!) and I check my bank account and notice that the money hasn’t been taken out of my account yet. So I go back to my email and NOW read all those emails that I earlier ignored. Haha turns out; the first email was asking me for a photocopy of my credit card to make sure I was who I said I was. And the second email was letting me know that since I didn’t send them the credit card copy, THEY CANCELED THE TICKETS! I panicked of course and rushed over to the twins’ house to try to fix things. So after much more panicking on my part, we managed to get three tickets on (get this) a cheaper and much nicer airline! It also happened to be a direct flight which was awesome.

Long story short. You really shouldn’t check those emails. Just in case they are something important.  

So when Friday afternoon came around, we three hopped on a plane, and 4 glasses of wine a free dinner and a movie later, we were in Hong Kong. One of the twins, Jax had a friend she was staying with so her sister Pips and I took a bus into the city to find our hostel at the amazing Chung King Mansion. Well… we thought that because of the name, it would be amazing. We were royally wrong. Get it?!

Haha this might as well have been our neighbor!

As soon as we got off the bus (it was midnight by now) we were bombarded by sketchy guys from every direction trying to offer us a place to stay. It was a bit of a flash back from Thailand (that entry is coming next I promise!). We found our “mansion” which looked more like an abandoned high rise prison turned crack house. Still fighting off the creepy dudes, we made it to the 4^th floor where our luxury suite was located. I hope everyone has figured out the sarcasm by now. We rang the doorbell to our hostel and were unpleasantly surprised by a seedy man with sleepy eyes wearing nothing but boxers. Lucky for us, we got there before some girls from Canada so Pips and I got to choose between a room with one twin bed, and a room with two beds that smelled like vomit. Can anyone honestly guess which we picked? We had high hopes that the smell would go away or that our olfactory senses would stop working so we picked the two bed room. I’ll say I was the luckier of the two of us because I was coming down with a cold (yep, I said luckier) and I couldn’t smell anything for pretty much the rest of the trip. Once we got settled we flopped into our beds and hoped to fall asleep quickly.

 The next morning was our first full day in Hong Kong. Pips and I made plans to meet up with Jax at a certain subway stop, but because none of us had ever been there before, we had a weird miscommunication about meeting place and the two of us wandered around the city for about an hour and a half before I managed to get wifi on my phone and emailed Jax.

 

Teaching Pips how to use my beast of  a camera. 

Hong Kong seemed like a very futuristic place to me. 

When we finally found the others, our first stop in one of the most densely populated places in the world was to check out the WORLDS LONGEST ESCALATOR! We had all heard about it and it was just something none of us wanted to miss out on. After a long search for this said “longest escalator”, we finally found it. To say it was not what I had pictured is quite an understatement. From what we had read in the travel books, I think we were all under the impression that this was one continuous escalator. Silly us. It turns out; it is just a cluster of inclining moving sidewalks and escalators. Don’t get me wrong, it was still nice to not have to walk up the massive hill that is Hong Kong, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations of the longest escalator in the world. 

Haha so this wasn't the escalator we saw, but this must be the worlds shortest escalator!

So much to look at!

Bamboo scaffolding. 

We spent a good part of the day in the swanky parts of Hong Kong, taking in all the scenery of places too expensive for any of us. After that we decided to pull a total 180 and headed over to the Hong Kong Ladies Market. The market was cool to look at with hundreds of things for sale on the street. After a while though, things started to all look the same and we were starting to get hungry. Jax and her friend Justin wanted to have dinner somewhere special to catch up so Pips and I decided to have an awesome dinner somewhere else.

Mmm Pad Thai.

We had made plans with them to meet after dinner at a hotel that Justin knew about. So after Pips and I had an average Thai dinner (after getting back from Thailand, not much can top real Thai food), she and I headed to the hotel Jax told us to meet at. Here we had another problem with communication…

Justin told us to go to the hotel bar and have a few drinks, and they would meet with us when they finished dinner. That didn’t sound like a bad idea. The problem was, when we got to this “hotel bar” we realized that the hotel he was talking about was a massive building, and had about 16 different bars in it. On top of that, Hong Kong on its own is super expensive, but a 5 star hotel bar IN Hong Kong is just a stupid place to have a drinks. We hadn’t set a certain time to meet; just when we all finished dinner so we had no clue how long the two of them would be before they met with us. It was a pretty crappy situation, but then on top of that, Courtney was flying in that night and I told her we were all meeting at this “bar”. I wasn’t thrilled because there was no wifi so I couldn’t message Courtney to tell her the problem. So Pips and I tried to find the nearest “cheapish” bar that had wifi that we could sit and wait for everyone.

Long story short, the whole night turned into a mess with us never finding Jax or Courtney. Well we did find Courtney but only after we got back to the hostel around midnight. There was a bit of frustration on everyone’s part, but it was just a big misunderstanding and we all found each other by the next day when we met for the start of a new day.

So now we are on Sunday. This was Courtney’s first full day in the city, and our second. After meeting up and having breakfast, we all slowly meandered through the streets of another swanky part of city until we came to a Jeans market. This market wasn’t like the one we went to the previous day. This market was more for locals looking for deals on clothes rather than trinkets and things at the ladies market. This one had more interesting things to look at, and we had our share of fun in the different shops.

Gatta love Hong Kong fashion!

After the market we went to a Frank Gehry exhibit that was being held in a museum not far from where we were. The exhibit was really cool; it was about his life as an architect but focused mainly on a building that he designed that’s being built now in Hong Kong. It was really cool to see his thinking process of the whole structure. The exhibit was amazing and his work made me realize why I fell in love with architecture in the first place.

When we finished at the exhibit, the South Africans (did I mention that the twins and Justin are all South African?) wanted to watch the rugby game that was going to start shortly. So we made our way back over to the loooooong escalator part of town to a nice little pub. This was Courtney’s first time over there so while everyone watched the game, she explored the area we checked out yesterday. 

The game was fun, but I lost interest after a while along with the twins, around the time Courtney got back from her walk. We girls went to get some frozen yogurt and when we got back the game was over so we were able to start a new journey to the Peak Tram!

The Peak Tram is the highest viewpoint in Hong Kong that gives you the most amazing view of the city skyline. The way to get there was a total mystery to us. Luckily, we had a guy with us who lived in Hong Kong and knew EVERYTHING about Hong Kong. So despite some hesitation we followed him for about an hour around and UP the city, only to find out that he took us in pretty much a massive circle before asking for directions. Lets just say, he was not our favorite person. 

This is one of my favorite shots of the trip!

When we finally found the tram, we waited for quite a while in a line to get to the tram. The tram ride up to the peak was actually really cool because we got to see the whole city miniaturize in front of us! Once we got to the top, we took some more escalators to the top of a roof and saw the most amazing night time view of Hong Kong ever! The long wait was definitely worth it to see what we got to see. After I took about a billion photos, we had dinner before heading back down the tram into the city. 

Courtney Pips and I parted ways from Jax and Justin and despite the fact that it started pouring rain at this point, we three made one last stop before heading home. We visited our 3^rd (and the best) market in Hong Kong. This was the night market and it was close to our hostel so we just made it a pit stop on the way home. The stuff being sold at this market was really cool with beautiful leather bags and cute hand made trinkets.

Courtney Pips and I parted ways from Jax and Justin and despite the fact that it started pouring rain at this point, we three made one last stop before heading home. We visited our 3^rd (and the best) market in Hong Kong. This was the night market and it was close to our hostel so we just made it a pit stop on the way home. The stuff being sold at this market was really cool with beautiful leather bags and cute hand made trinkets. I treated myself to a pretty handmade perfume bottle strung on a rope to make a necklace.

 

Happy birthday to me!

It was pretty late and the market was closing so we made our way home. But not before I held the girls up with my trying to get some cool night time traffic motion photos.

So cool.

The next day was my and the twins last day in Hong Kong. Our flight wasn’t until midnight so we technically had the whole day, but we had to check out of the hostel anyway. And here we go with #3 with the miscommunication and inconveniences. Justin and Jax were staying at a hotel IN the airport, and we wanted to check out a big Buddha statue near the airport before we left. So Pips and I decided to first take our things to their hotel and drop off our bags before we all went together to the big Buddha. The train to the airport was crazy expensive so we got on a free hotel > airport > hotel shuttle that we thought would take us to the airport for free. We thought we were so clever. It turns out we sat on the shuttle bus for about an hour before it just took us back to where we came from. The upside was that we got a free tour of Hong Kong via car.

 We ended up - instead of meeting at their hotel and dropping our stuff off – meeting them at the big Buddha and making the trip with our packs. Luckily this was a short trip so we didn’t pack too much, but it was still less pleasant than we would have liked. To get to the Buddha we took a sky gondola which was even cooler than the tram from the night before because we were doing it in the daytime. It was a breathe taking trip up and we got a whole gondola to ourselves.

 

When we got to the top we had some lunch and then trekked up the many stairs to get to the actual Buddha. It was a really massive monument and the scenery around it was amazing.

After the Buddha we headed back into the city one last time for an awesome sushi dinner and more frozen yogurt for dessert. Once we finished, Courtney surprised me with the best possible cake anyone could get in Korea. Haha and by that I mean she got me a Mrs. Fields cookie cake, which they don’t have in Korea, so I was over the moon! At this point it was already like 10pm so we had to say bye to Courtney and head to the airport.

So delicious.

The flight back was just as nice as the way there, but seeing as how it was midnight, two thirds of us wanted to sleep on the flight. I celebrated the first 5 hours of my birthday on the best flight I could have asked for, so that was nice. When we got into Seoul, we three decided we were going to meet up with our friend Marty and have margarita and Mexican food before heading back to Pohang. The only problem was that we landed at 5 in the morning and in Korea, not even coffee shops open until noon. So we did what any normal group of girls would do. We found a nice place on the floor in the airport, behind a bank kiosk, and took a short 5 hour nap. Surprisingly, it was a very pleasant nap, with not one person bothering us or stealing our things.

The rest of my birthday pretty much consisted of massive burritos, multiple rounds of margaritas at noon, and a less than pleasant slightly tipsy 4 hour bus ride home. I would have to say that overall, despite all the miscommunications and crazy accommodations, this was one of the coolest birthdays I’ve ever had. Thanks to Courtney and Pips and Jax for coming along and spending my birthday with me in the home of the worlds longest escalator!

As for my Thailand trip; that was about a 4 times longer trip than this so it’s taking me a while to get organized and write about it. BUT I will post it soon!! Don’t fret everyone!