Hong Kong: 2012

Greetings from China!  We are so happy to have made it out here safely and that our trip is going perfectly as planned!  We got on the plane to Detriot and from there had a "quick" 18-hour plane flight to Hong Kong.  We woke up early the next morning and started running because we were so excited to be here.  Who cares about jet lag?!

We like to ride public transportation when we travel, so we did everything by walking or by the subway.

Here is Jason on the subway.  

The city of Hong Kong is made up of several islands, with Kowloon being attached to mainland China.  Our hotel was in downtown Hong Kong, which faced Kowloon.  That first day we traveled to Lantou island, another island nearby Hong Kong.  We specifically wanted to go to Ngong Ping where the Giant Budda is located.  You can drive out to Ngong Ping, or you can be a bit daring and ride the tram up the mountains to the island.  So of course that is what we did!  It was an awesome feeling to travel up and down the mountains and over the bay.  Here is what the trams looked like.

Here is the Giant Buddha in the distance.  It slowly got bigger and bigger to us as we traveled closer and closer to the mountain.  

Here we are on Ngong Ping.  We first walked up a ton of steps to see the Giant Buddha.

We kept walking up the staircase to find ourselves standing right beneath the Giant Buddha, which is actually called the Tian Tan Buddha.  

We then walked around the village and saw the Po Lin Monastery.  

Outside there is this welcoming gate and several statues leading our way around the village.  

For the rest of the day we traveled to the Disneyland Hong Kong.  Did you really expect us not to go?  Even though Disneyland HK is set up very similar to our one in Anaheim, it has many differences.  One of the main differences is that it has a Toy Story land.  We liked this land because it was so different and they made you feel like one of Andy's toys.  Here are some pictures from over there:

This was a cool fountain with Mickey surfing on the top.  The surfboard actually moved up and down.  

Entrance to Toy Story Land.  

Here is a picture from Astro Blasters, but all of the words are in Chinese!

Some fastpasses that are in English and Chinese.  

The park has a lot more room than the California Disneyland, so the park feels really empty when you are there.  It was so different to walk in the park and see the castle but then see green mountains behind it.  It almost looked like a real castle in the forest.  All of the big rides are separated around the park so the castle appears to be the biggest thing up front.

One of our favorite rides there was the Jungle Cruise.  There is a lake in the middle of Adventure land and an island in it with Tarzan's tree house on it. Jungle Cruise takes places around the tree house.  We actually did get to choose to do an English speaking tour, but how much English we actually understood is questionable.  The main phrase we kept hearing from our tour guide was "Oh no! Save us!"  It was pretty hilarious.

Our tour guide.  

The park closed early at 8:00pm, but not without a fireworks show.

After not having much sleep on the plane ride and being completely flipped on our timezones, we were exhausted by the end of this busy day.

Jason has always wanted to travel to Hong Kong just to SEE Hong Kong.  It has such an amazing skyline that makes it such a beautiful city.  We spent the entire day just enjoying the many views.

We went up to Victoria's Peak, a viewing area from atop a mountain, to see the city in the early morning mist.  To travel to the top of the peak you have to ride a land-based tram up the mountain.  So we embarked on yet another interesting way to travel in Hong Kong, and again we loved it!

I never realized how green the mountains were here in the city, so the climb up the mountain was beautiful and calming.  And when we reached the top, it was the most glorious view.

When then traveled down to see the shoreline.  It was so unique to see the water in the bay, then immediately skyscrapers, and then directly behind them green mountains.

A great location to see the skyline is down on a sidewalk called "The Avenue of Stars."  This is basically the same concept as stars located in Hollywood, but these are famous Chinese actors.  We didn't recognize many names there.  We naturally found the stars for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan because those stars had the two biggest crowds around them.  The only other name that we recognized was Chow Yun-Fat, so I needed a picture by his star.

Jason and Bruce Lee.  

Lisa and Chow Yun-Fat

As the evening progressed the skyline became more and more impressive.  It sort of reminded us of Vegas, but imagine the same amount of light bouncing off skyscrapers.

Every night in Hong Kong there is a light show, but the entire city is the participant of the show.  There are spotlights, lasers, and neon lights on several of the tall buildings and they move in-sync with music.  You can watch and listen to the music from the Avenue of Stars.  Some clouds rolled in that night so the lights were easier to see but they didn't expand the distance of the whole sky.  It was still spectacular!

It was the Dragon Boat Festival in Hong Kong when we were there.  It was fun to watch some of the races against all of the different countries.  

Down one of the streets we went shopping.  

We wanted to meet up with one of Jason's law school friends the last day and hand out with him for a bit before they would start classes the next week.  We did that in the morning and then in the afternoon we changed into our Sunday best and headed to the Hong Kong LDS Temple.

It was just lovely to be there, feel the Spirit and meet the Temple workers there.  We ended up talking to this cute couple from Maryland for over an hour.  They were telling us great stories from living in Hong Kong and they kept trying to convince us to move out there.

We then went home and packed because we were off to our next adventure.  We jumped on an airplane and headed to mainland China to the city of Nanjing.  This is the city where Jason will be doing his classes and some of his externships for the summer.

More to report later from China!