Hong Kong is Another Country, Literally.

Hey everyone, this is Alex contributing to Sarah's blog while I am here in China. I have been here almost 2 weeks now, and am having a lot of fun, though it could stand to be a little cooler!

Before our trip to Hong Kong, we went to see the Chengdu pandas, which was pretty exciting. I have seen pandas at the National Zoo in DC, but it was really fun to see so many pandas all at once, and all the babies as well.


We left last Friday for Guangzhou with Sarah's rugby team to play in a tournament and I was immediately amazed by all the white people in China. There were 6 men's teams there and 3 girl's teams, though the Chengdu girls didn't have enough for a whole team so they mixed in to the other 2 teams. It was POURING rain all day, which helped with the heat, but also made the rugby pitch a giant mud puddle. I of course couldn't play, but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and watching them all play in the mud, though I was a little jealous! The men's Chengdu team did really well, placing 2nd overall.

Sarah and I left the rugby team and Guangzhou the next day and took the train to Hong Kong. We stayed at the YMCA for pretty cheap and were really close to the water - look up a map of Hong Kong and it makes it more clear. We were right next door to the Peninsula, a fancy hotel that is the place where people used to stay before heading out on the Orient Express. Hong Kong was definitely different from Chengdu and Guangzhou - there were designer stores EVERYWHERE and the prices were much more expensive. There were also a lot more westerners so we didn't feel so stared at. On Monday we walked down the "Golden Mile" which is the main street in Kowloon, and wound up at the Jade market. We knew there would be lots of fake jade but we did our best to look for some quality jewelry. They are always willing to bargain though, which is interesting, and we ended up making some purchases that we hope are real. But you know, real or not, it is still pretty.

On Tuesday we set off for the beach on the eastern coast of Hong Kong, north of the city (Kowloon). We had read about this beach in our book, and it involved taking the train, then 2 different buses followed by a lengthy walk along the Machelhose Trail, so we figured its description of "remote" was probably accurate, and something that appealed to us. The directions from our guide book were really good, and so we made it to the trail pretty easily. The Machelhose Trail runs across the entire width of northern HK, and total is 60 miles - we walked the very last bit, which we guessed was a few miles and through the mountains, which made for some hilly walking. The entire trail, however, was paved in cement and had street lamps every so often, which struck Sarah and I as extremely odd since we didn't see a single person and the "towns" we went through consisted of a couple groups of abandoned and dilapidated houses in the middle of nowhere.

It took us about an hour and a half on the trail to get to the beach, and once we got there it was worth the extremely sweaty walk (the temperature was probably in the 90s). The beach was in Tai Lan Wan and was amazing - it is the kind of beach you dream about - white sand, blue ocean, green mountains, not a sign of civilization in sight, not even other people. Plus it was hot and sunny! The strangest thing was that we kept seeing these bulls running around, apparently without owners? They even showed up on the beach while we were there, and looked like they were enjoying themselves.
We spend the afternoon at the beach and then walked home in the evening so the walk was cooler and didn't seem so bad. We had to switch buses in a town called Sai Kung, and we decided to eat dinner there before catching the next bus back to the city. Sarah and I thought that there were probably a lot of rich Europeans who visited/lived nearby the town because the harbor was filled with Yachts and the restaurants along the water were really fancy seafood places. The did have cool huge fish tanks outside every restaurant with all of you choices for dinner I suppose. We chose a smaller restaurant that had Italian-ish food and ate outside - the food was actually really good and satisfying after our day at the beach.

Wednesday we woke up and took the "ferry" to Macau. I say "ferry" because we soon realized it was more like a boat airplane with assigned seats inside an air conditioned (i.e. ICE COLD) cabin. Regardless, we got to Macau in about an hour and once again got more passport stamps. Macau was not quite as we expected - after getting off the ferry you are greeted by the Asian Las Vegas strip - endless glitzy casinos. We wanted to go to Macau because we had read about its Portuguese colonial houses and Chinese/Portuguese food. We got out of the casinos and wandered around until we found the old part of town, which had a nice big square and some pretty buildings, more like what we expected. We also had to get new money, because like Hong Kong, Macau has it's own kind of money.

After exploring a bit we walked along the water to this hotel Sarah had read about that was a former army fort. We had been told to "have a drink on the terrace" and so that was what we did - we had iced coffee because once again, it was HOT and we were sweaty from walking around. After our refreshing drink we did some more walking, visiting the Ah Ma Temple, and afterwards picked a restaurant to try the famous food. Sarah got Bacalhau, Portoguese dry salted cod and I got "African" chicken, both specialties in Macau. We were also very excited about the warm bread, since good bread is scarce in China.












Thursday we spent the day across Victoria Harbor on Hong Kong Island where most of the skyscrapers are, as well as more designer stores. We first sought out Dim Sum, which the region is known for. They walk around with trays of little Chinese hors d'ouvres type food and you just pick what you want to eat with your tea. The place we went was really good and Sarah and I tried a lot of different kinds of food, all of which was delicious.


After eating we visited the longest escalator in the world, which if you didn't know, is outdoors and goes uphill in the middle of Hong Kong. We rode all the way up to the top, and it really is long, though I was somewhat disappointed because it is not continuous, it is more like a bunch of normal escalators in a row.

Once at the top we decided to head over to Victoria Peak, which is one of the most famous places in HK and to get to the top you take this really old funicular. On the way to the tram we went through the HK zoo, which was small but OK, we saw a bunch of kinds of monkeys and apes, and they all looked pretty healthy. We rode up the funicular to the peak and it was fun but kind of scary since it was REALLY steep but they've been doing it for over 100 years so we figured they knew what they were doing! The top of the peak was a little touristy for Sarah and me, I have learned so far in China that any chance to put a mall and shops somewhere, they will. We took a walk along the old loop road that circled the peak, and it was a nice way to get away from the tourists and enjoy the view.

We wanted to leave Thursday afternoon because Sarah had a presentation Friday morning that she wanted to be home for, so next we took the train back to Guangzhou. I guess now we should have been more suspicious of all the stamps we got in our passports, because on arriving to Guangzhou and going through customs, I was told I was not allowed to come "in to China." Since we had a flight from Guangzhou to Chengdu Sarah had run ahead to try find a cab, so did not realize I had not made it through customs. See, we were under the impression that when they say HK is now part of China (it has been 10 years now since it came back from Britain) that by going to HK we would not be leaving the country, and therefore my VISA would still let me back to the rest of China. However, arguing with customs officials, especially in China, is pointless and they told me I had to immediately go back to HK. They also said that if I was from another country, like Canada, I would be allowed to stay and apply for a new VISA there, but because the USA doesn't let the Chinese do this, that the Chinese do not let Americans stay and apply there. So at this point i was freaking out because Sarah had no idea what was going on and I had no way to go find her. They kept bringing me around to other people and to the train, saying I had to buy a ticket and leave, but I kept trying to relate to them I wasn't alone and had to find Sarah. Finally Sarah came back and saw us and found out what was going on. We really couldn't do anything though and so had to get back on the train we had just gotten off of, and go 2 hours back to HK, where they welcomed us with open arms. By this time it was 11pm, and all we wanted to do was go to sleep, so we found a hotel close to the building where we would have to go in the morning to see about a VISA.

We got there in the morning and all I can say is thank god this happened on Thursday because otherwise we would have had to wait in HK over the weekend. We got there early enough in the morning so I could choose the rush service and go back in the afternoon to pick up my new VISA. Sarah and I spent the day just hanging out - it was really hot and sunny again, and after I picked up my VISA we once again attempted to go "back" to China.
We successfully made it through, exactly 24 hours later, and took a cab to the Guangzhou airport, where we knew we would have another potential battle awaiting us over missing our previous flight. We got there around 9pm and the lady told us the next flight to Chengdu was not until the following afternoon, at which point we wanted to cry. But then she asked some other guy and said they could get us on the 9:10 flight with only an extra supplemental fee. The lady was really excited and so were we, because we just wanted to get home - we got our tickets and SPRINTED through the airport - thank god airport security is not so strict in China because we just carried our bags full of shampoo and other liquids without a problem and made it on to the flight. 2 hours later, we were back to Chengdu, and soon after we were asleep at Sarah's apartment.