Partying It Up-Hong Kong Style, Part 2

Tuesday morning I woke up and thought that I was getting up pretty late, I figured that Nathan and Sallee would want to get up early and have an early start. We hadn’t really talked about it though, so when I was finished getting dressed and ready for the day I walked next door and knocked, Sallee answered the door but I could tell that they were still half asleep. Apparently they weren’t really planning on having an early start for the day, it was ok though I just read a newspaper while Sallee showered and Nathan slept some more and then Nathan showered.
A cool bonus that came with our hotel was that we got a free breakfast every morning of our stay in the restaurant that was on the 6th floor, so when we were all ready we headed downstairs to find out what kind of food they had to offer, the breakfast wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t delicious at the same time. They did have they really good scones, I think that every morning when they put them out it was generally empty very quickly because of us- we tried some of the other stuff but found very quickly that none of the other food even compared to the scones with butter and jam (yum, yum!). It was kind of interesting trying their “juice,” it said that they had orange juice and grape juice, grape juice tasted more like a watered down version (very watered down at that) of cranberry juice or something and I can’t really remember what the orange juice tasted like, except I can remember that it did not taste like orange juice.
We had decided that on Tuesday we would visit the bird market, flower garden/market, the “flea” market, and the sports area- so as soon as we were done with breakfast we headed off towards where it was supposed to be, by the map it looked like it should have not been very far but it turned out being a little further away than we had thought, it was ok though- we made it alive and made it through the day :D.
*Note: on this trip I made a discovery/decision: I decided that Nathan and Sallee are more aggressive walkers than I am, if there are people in front of them they will kind of push their way through and keep going. If someone gets in front of me I don’t really let it bother me, I will just slow down and walk behind them until I come to a spot that makes it easy and quick to pass them.. this discovery came to pass very often during the trip, I just decided that as long as I could still see them I was good.
The bird market was really interesting, we could tell when we were getting closer as we kept seeing people passing us with bird cages, and we could really tell when we were there because all of a sudden it got very loud with birds talking. I don’t think that I have ever seen so many types of birds in cages; it was really quite amazing but a little weird at the same time. There were also tons of birds not in cages just flying around; I kept on ducking, afraid that a bird would hit me as they flew by or that they might poop on me (that would not have been the highlight of my day if it happened). Something that was really interesting that we saw was the bait that people were selling, they had grasshoppers- by the thousands, of several different sizes, all in these weird wire bags (they also had some cockroaches on sale, but I chose to ignore those). We kind of just walked through quickly but I did see some people working on either repairing or making bird cages and that was neat to see at a glance.
The flower garden/market was beautiful, it was literally several blocks of florist shops. If you don’t know me very well you wouldn’t realize that I love flowers, and by far gerbera daisies are my favorites. Here in Taiwan I haven’t seen that many flowers, let alone seeing gerbera daisies and so when we walked down the street seeing the hundreds and hundreds of flowers and flower arrangements I got so excited. I could probably just stood there all day smelling the flowers and looking at all the flowers if I had been allowed. We had maybe gotten to our 3rd or 4th floral shop when I noticed that they had gerbera daisies, that completely made my day- and of course some of my favorite arrangements/bouquets were done with gerbera daisies. Unfortunately my batteries died at the beginning of the trip so I was not able to get as many pictures as I would have liked, luckily Sallee’s was still working and she did get some.
We next went what was supposed to be the sports area, Nathan was hoping that the area would just be an area of fake/cheap versions of popular sports equipment companies. Sadly it was an area of sports stuff but it was all real and expensive stuff. We did not spend much time in that area.
Our next stop was what we called the “flea” market, strangely as we were walking through many people were just starting to set up their places so there wasn’t a ton of stuff for us to look at. Though Sallee did find a couple of purses that she liked, there was one that I really liked and thought that it was cute but the people were not willing to knock down the price under $180HK and I was not willing to pay over $120HK, so I had to walk away…it’s ok though I ended up getting another purse that was just as cute. When we were finished with the flea market we walked home and dropped off our stuff so that we wouldn’t have to be carrying them for the rest of the day. At one point I was a little bit behind Nathan and Sallee, I didn’t see the guy fall but Nathan and Sallee did (they said that there was a big knock sound as he hit the ground), all I saw was someone on the ground a big group of people quickly gathering around him to help. Sallee made the comment that it was really cool to see how quickly people from the different groups stopped to help- there was the guy in the business suit, the punk with his piercings and tattoos, the lady that stopped to hold her umbrella over the guy so that we wouldn’t be hot, the person that was calling the ambulance, the other person that was standing behind the guy that had fallen- supporting him. It’s not very often that you see people stopping to help each other and so when you see something like that it makes you feel happy and have trust in people again.
Once we had dropped off our stuff we went to the ferry and got it over to Hong Kong Island, where we caught a bus that we rode for a very long time. We were going to area Stanley, where they were supposed to have very cool shopping (just can’t go wrong with that can you?) and an amazing view of the ocean. This market was amazing, it had tons of really cool stuff to look at, I got this Christmas gift that I am super excitram ed about, but unfortunately I can’t write about it because the person for whom it is for reads this and I don’t want to ruin the surprise (it’s a good thing that Christmas is close because I’m not very good at keeping in secrets about stuff, especially if I am really excited about it!). We all found some really cool stuff that I am pretty sure that we were excited about. Besides the Christmas gift that I can’t tell you about (:D) I also got a bunch of cool chopsticks (Nathan questioned if I will really use the chopsticks that I have been buying, I am pretty sure that I will- I haven’t gotten pretty used to using them to eat almost everything with chopsticks and am getting pretty good at it) and I also got this cool thing that is my name in Chinese with the meaning of it.
When we were done with the market we wandered over to the look at the water, it was the most amazing view- you could look down and see thousands of little fish. I took a picture for a couple- it has been kind of interesting to see how many people use their cell phones as their only cameras and they think that those are actually good pictures. There were also several different couples in really fancy clothes taking pictures around the area. When we were done there we caught a bus to central and then another to Aberdeem where we decided that we were very hungry.
I got to try a new kind of food—Thai food, I was a little hesitant about trying it but it was actually really, really good. I ordered fried rice and it said something about coming with fried pineapple, I didn’t really know what to expect but it came out in a fried, carved out pineapple—Sallee took pictures for me, but for some reason right now I can’t get any pictures to upload onto my blog. The people were really kind at the restaurant, it seemed every time I turned around they were re-filling my water cup for me and then when we were leaving we had asked the manager how to get some place, rather than just tell us the directions he walked us out to the street and showed us how to get there. We then caught another bus back to central and then another one to the peak.
The bus kept on going up, higher and higher, at first we thought that we would be taking up to the top of the mountain and I was a little concerned because in my opinion we were rather high as it was already. I was glad when I found out that the bus was actually taking us all the way to the top and that when we got off the bus we weren’t actually going any higher. When we got off the bus I had to go potty and so that is where we went first, I went into the bathroom and I thought that the toilet seat wasn’t down so I pulled it down. I then sat down and was like there is no way that my bottom is fitting on this, I stood up and realized that the seat that I had pulled down was actually a smaller seat made for kids (silly me!). There was also this cool thing that you could use to dry your hands, it was like this little box that you placed your hands in and then it did the normal air drying thing.
Next stop was a gelato place, yeah well they said that they were gelato- it wasn’t really, not even close ! It was good, but I would have preferred real gelato. After that we went up to like the 6th floor to what they called the “terrace” it was an amazing view, looking down into the city. The lights were amazing and I couldn’t believe the view. I don’t think that pictures can even do it justice.
When we were done on the terrace we went downstairs and got in the line for the tram. When the tram pulled up and we got on I got a little nervous, the seats were backwards and it looked like we wouldn’t be turning around. It was pretty intense, we went down the hill backwards in like 5 minutes, which was intense considering that it had taken us nearly 30 minutes to go up the hill. I like to describe it as a carnival ride gone wrong, my stomach was not feeling the best when we got off it.
When we were done with the tram we caught the bus back to the ferry (barely having enough money on our octopus cards to make it there) and then the ferry back to Hong Kong. Walked…shower, journal, and then bed.