Our trip to Hong Kong - this is probably mostly for us to remember, but if you want to read through it all ENJOY! :)
Our
flight over was around 19 hours of in air flight time. We flew Korean
Air from Las Vegas over. The flight went better than I expected. We
each had our own TV with movies and games and music, so Rich could watch
the movies he wanted and I could watch the girly ones I wanted :) We
each watched 3 movies and read and slept. They fed us meals, which were
surprisingly not bad. We thought the service was great on Korean Air,
especially after talking to other people at this conference who flew the
standard United and had NO movie screens and the tight, smaller seats.
Hong Kong is 14 hours ahead of Utah time. We landed in Hong
Kong Wed. morning around 10:30. We rode the MTR (subway) into Kowloon
and then took a shuttle to our hotel. Our hotel is beautiful!
It
smells very strongly of perfume in the lobby area and has beautiful
chandeliers and pictures. The view from our room is looking out at
Victoria Harbor, which is so pretty.
We
have been running every morning along Victoria Harbor. It is hot and
humid at 6:30 when we run, but so pretty and so fun to see all the
Chinese people standing out by the water doing Tai Chi or whatever they
do. There are some really tiny, OLD people out there every morning
doing their exercises.
The day we got into Hong Kong, we came to
the hotel and unpacked and showered and cleaned up and then went right
back out. We quickly figured out the subway system and Hong Kong money
and have been taking the subway everywhere. It is very quick and
efficient and easy to use. It is not scary like the subway in New
York. Here it is very clean and everyone is middle class looking and
even school kids riding by themselves in their uniforms - so cute! Hong
Kong is general is very clean and safe. We rode the subway back out to
Lantau Island (airport island) and rode a glass bottomed tram way up to
the top of a peak to see the largest sitting Buddah in the world.
They have really turned this into quite a tourist attraction with gift
shops and eatting places. It was fun to go see, it is huge! By the
time we got to the top of the Buddah, my stomach and body were revolting
from the flight, time change, crazy eating schedule, everything. We
came back to the hotel and I was sound asleep quickly after getting back
and in bed around 6:30pm.
The next day we both felt great. After
our run and breakfast here at the hotel, Rich went to the conference
for a couple hours. I went down and exchanged some money and bought a
few little gifts in a gift shop. Rich came back around 11:30 and we
rode the subway over to Hong Kong island, which is right across Victoria
Harbor from out Hotel. We are in Kowloon. We went to the church
office building where he was meeting with some people. It was cool to
be walking along this busy street and then see the grey stone building
with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints carved in it.
We
saw a few missionaries walking around there. This building is also
where a lot of church meetings are held. The building go straight up,
so they have a board in the lobby saying which level different classes
were on. Primary level 3, Sunday School level 4. One of the workers we
met with, Liana, took us to lunch after our meeting. She was so
friendly and nice. She said they have church meetings almost every
single day of the week for those who aren't able to get Sundays off of
work. She said they hold all 3 meetings. So amazing. She took us to
an authentic Chinese restaurant. No one spoke English and the menus
were all written in Chinese characters. She ordered a dim sum lunch,
which is a small portion of a bunch of different items. We ate them all
and they were pretty good. We had shrimp dumplings, a fillo wrapped
BBQ pork, spring rolls with tarro root, garlic broccoli and they didn't
have time to make us the Sweet and Sour Pork because we were running
late for the next meeting. We took a taxi to the next meeting, it was
fun to sit in a meeting with Rich and see what he does when visiting
their money managers.
Liana said she lives on the 33 floor of a
pencil apt. building (one that is skinny and goes straight up) and her
apt. is about 500 sq. ft. and it costs over 1/2 a million US dollars!!
CRAZY!! 3 million of the 7 million people in Hong Kong live in
government subsidized housing because housing is priced so crazy.
Almost everyone in Hong Kong lives in an apt. There are a some houses
up in one area we went last night that the VERY rich live in. They are
multi million dollar - billion US dollar homes. $10,000/sq. ft. It
is so crazy to see all the super tall buildings, and many of them coming
right out of the mountain.
After the meetings and lunch we went
to the Ladies Market. In their main shopping district they have 3
parallel roads that are many blocks long, the first is the sports
street, then the ladies market and then electronics street. The sports
street had a million Nike and Adidas stores, but they were really stores
and prices were the same or higher than in the US. Ladies market is
more like Jamaiica or Mexico with tons of booths set up back to back and
you barter with the sales people. For the most part they are much
friendlier than in mexico or the caribbean.
Some are pretty young girls and so cute.
That
night the CFA society had a dinner/mingling event in the ballroom of
the hotel. It was crowded and not a lot of space or tables to sit and
eat. We went but didn't stay too long, we were both pretty tired by
9pm.
On Friday Rich had meetings all day and I was going on a tour
arranged for guests of the CFA members. It was mostly women, there
were 2 men and a couple of the women had little kids, so that was fun.
We first went to a Buddist temple where people go to lite incense and
say prayers for good luck, health, prosperity .... It was interested,
but very smokey and smelly.
We
were on an air conditioned bus which then took us to the Jade Market.
Where they have tons of booths selling pretty much the exact same
thing. They said if you really want the REAL stuff you should go to a
jewelry shop, but they have different quality and levels of jade.
I
met a girl on the bus who I sat by and we shopped around together all
day, which was fun. She had been to the Jade Market the day before and
was telling me what to look for and prices to barter to. After the Jade
Market we went to the Bird Market and Flower Market.
Birds
are a big deal over here. Apparently many people have birds for pets
because they don't take up much room. At the bird market there were
birds in cages everywhere and they were all chirping and squawking, it
was pretty loud. There were also tons of crickets and bugs and worms
and albino frogs in bags, totes, crates for people to buy to feed their
birds. It was wild to see.
The flower market was about 3 full blocks all the way around. It was amazing!!
It smelled SO awesome and there were so many different beautiful flowers. It really was amazing how big it was.
After those markets they took us to the Cultural Center for a dim sum lunch.
It
was a beautiful building overlooking Victoria Harbor (which is where
most of the shipping exports take place to send things made in China to
other parts of the World). We had so much food for lunch, they just
kept bringing more and more and stacking the baskets higher and higher.
We had all sorts of dumplings, spring rolls, rice in leaves, noodles,
red bean pudding. I thought the food here was all pretty good.
After
lunch they took us over to the ladies market. I had been with Rich a
little bit the night before, so I had an idea of what it would be like.
This is where all the bartering takes place.
When I would be
bartering they would say, or type a price into a calculator and then I
would say NO and they'd say OK how much you pay. I'd type it into the
calculator and if they said no I'd say OK and start to walk away, they
always chase you down and barter more. Some were so cute and grab my
arm and hold my hand and wouldn't let go. I'd joke around with some.
It was fun. One booth had jeans and I was interested in getting some
but hesitant to buy jeans without being able to try them on. But the
lady measured my hips and pulled out a pair and said they were perfect
for me. I asked if I could try them on, thinking I would just pull them
on over my shorts as best I could to get a little better idea. She
gasp and covered her mouth, thinking I was going to take my clothes off
:) she was cute and fun to play around with. I ended up getting the
pants and surprisingly they fit when I tried them on in the hotel. I
bought a couple knock off hand bags, one is a red Marc Jacobs and one is
a mustard yellow Jimmy Choo bag for my primary stuff. It really was a
fun day. We got back to the hotel around 3:30 and relaxed until 6pm.
At 6pm we met in the lobby of the hotel to be bussed up to The Peak for
dinner and an amazing view of Hong Kong at night. The drive was
practically straight up this mountain on tiny, windy roads full of buses
and cars.
Dinner
was good, it was a buffet and they had lots of food choices on all 3
levels of the restuarant and plenty of places to sit and look out the
big glass windows overlooking the Hong Kong. At 8pm they do a light
show each night. We walked out on a balcony and watched as building
would light up and start flashing and they had spot lights on the tops
of sky scrapers shining and pointing. It was really an amazing view and
site. We tried to take some pictures but they just couldn't capture
how amazing and beautiful it was.
Rich's conference finished up
Saturday early afternoon. After he finished up, we changed and went
down to where we were running in the 5K race. It was about 20 min. on
the subway and 20 min. by taxi to get down to Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir,
which in closer to the south end of Hong Kong island. Hong Kong has
beautiful green mountains all over and this reservoir is hidden down in
some of these mountains. It is absolutely beautiful!
We
got to the reservoir about an hour early and hiked around for a while.
A lot of racers were starting to show up and apparently they all think
you should run the race as a prerace warm up. Everyone was running the
race course, except Rich and I. We were walking it :) It was so
pretty, we race across these little bridges you see in the picture. The
course was an out and back course. The first 3/4 of a mile was pretty
flat and nice, then it went straight up a mountain for 1/2 a mile. It
was crazy steep and hard. It flattened out at the top and you turned
around and ran back down the steep hill and back across the flat part to
the finish. This race was #2 in a series of 4 races. You have to
run in 3 of the 4 to get a race shirt. I had been emailing the race
coordinator asking for directions and stuff for the race. Before we
started the race I asked him if he had any race tshirts we could buy as
souveniers. He said they didn't bring any tshirts with them to the
race. Oh well, I thought it was worth asking. After the race a little
chincse lady came up to me and told me to go talk to Freeman about race
shirts. When I found him he told me they had a couple extra Race
Marshall shirts, for those who were there to work the registration
booths and stuff. He have me one of those to have as a souvenier. :)
So nice of him!
The 5K race was definetely one of the highlights of our trip. It was such a fun experience and the most beautiful race course.
After
the race we tried to dry off a little, but it is so humid here that
once you start sweating you don't stop. And we all know about Rich's
sweating issues anyways. We cleaned up the best we could and then had
to take a 20 min. taxi ride and 20 min. packed subway ride back to the
hotel.
There was another guy from Rich's CFA society on this trip
as well, but his wife couldn't come, so we took him out that night to
the ladies market, and dinner and riding the subway. He is a really
funny, nice guy.
Sunday we went to church back at the
Church office building we had went to a few days before. We went to an
English branch. I was so surprised at how many young american families
there were with lots of kids. It was like we were in a ward in Utah.
It was fun to see.
This is a picture showing how much taller I am than everyone over here :) They are all so tiny.
After church we went up and saw the Temple.
We
did a little more shopping and walking around and relaxed the rest of
the day. Every time we went back to the Markets we'd find more and more
stuff to buy, mostly for the boys. The biggest hit with their gifts is
the Beats headphones. I heard other ladies on my tour talking about
these and how expensive they are in the US and how popular they are - I
had no idea. But after looking around and seeing all the chinese kids
wearing them and hearing other people talk about them, we decided to get
the boys some. I'm so glad we did - they are going crazy for them!!!
They knew what they were and how much they cost in the US and were so
excited to show their friends. We got them all MP3 players as well and
so now they all walk around with their headphones on listening to music.
:)
We had all day Monday to do stuff, our flight
wasn't until 1 in morning. We spent most of the day at Disneyland Hong
Kong. It was weird to go to Disneyland without any kids, but really
fun to go to Disneyland in Hong Kong. :)
There
is a separate subway line that goes out just to Disneyland and the
subway trains have mickey windows, and mickey handles and soft padded
seats and bronze disney character statues throughout the train.
Disneyland
in Hong Kong is much smaller than the California Park. There aren't
many bid rides for adults, but they didn't seem to bother people, on
many of the smaller kid rides we'd see only adults riding. We filled 7
hours up pretty easily riding some rides, going to some shows and eating
lunch.
The shows we saw were much better than I was expecting. They were all really entertaining and fun.
After
a LONG plane ride home with lots of stops in South Korea, Tokyo Japan,
LA and then finally Salt Lake, we are happy to be home. The jet lag was
killing me today, and it takes a couple days for our kankles to go away
after sitting for so long on the plane. We LOVED our time there. It
is such a beautiful place.
