Hong Kong part deux!
Hong Kong is so last month, now that we are in real China (except it is kinda like our Asian home and we will probably spend the rest of our lives romanticizing it and looking for BBQ pork that is half as delicious). Anyway, here are the rest of the pictures from HK:
Ocean Park! We were expecting this place to be really cheesy or filled with a bunch of sad, beaten monkeys. It was neither, thank god! The place has won awards for animal research and all of the facilities are really nice looking.
Aaaand they have one of those log rides!
and it actually is right next to the ocean! It makes the roller coasters that much more terrifying
The tanks they had there were unbelievable! All the marinas or aquariums I've ever been to have been in North America, so it was cool to be on another continent and see the completely different sea life.
I think I stared at this thing for two hours.
The only thing that might have been better was this jellyfish exhibit.
They were playing trance music and the colours in the room kept changing, while the jellyfish swam around. This is possibly why no one in HK bothers to take real drugs!
Gondola ride to the other side of the park.
Red Panda!
Tom and Giant Panda!
Nomming on some bamboo
The world's largest Buddha statue in the Po Lin Monastery, on Lantau Island. Oddly enough, this place felt far more tourist trappy than OP. They wanted to charge is like 200 HKD to go eat in some restaurant!
So we got our obligatory tourist photo at the bottom and got out of there pretty fast.
but not before we took this other obligatory tourist photo.
We quickly conformed to the HK mentality of 'why own anything if it is not incredibly, almost aggressively adorable?'. So we threw out our boring, unadorable old shit and got with it.
Tom's fanny pack having words with me.
Kowloon Walled City. It used to be a land full of degenerates and illegal dentists!
Now it's a really pretty park.
So we used to pass this place in the mall all the time and always wondered why there were a throng of kids waiting outside to get in (really, like at least 30 at all times). We soon discovered it was an all you can eat sushi place for EIGHT dollars. You can order as much sushi as you can dream of and they only charge you extra if you leave any left over. We definitely went back a second time.
My Doraemon socks?
This was taken at the Noah's Ark Theme Park on Ma Wan, a tiny island part of HK. Yes this place actually exists and yes we paid 200 HKD to go inside. They have an ark built to "scale" after all!
I'm sure the people living nearby were totally thrilled about what this did to their property value.
Bears!
Komodo Dragons!
Elephants!?!?
So I thought it was going to be an exercise in humiliation for us, but it actually turned out to be kind of fun? Everyone who worked there was really cute and genuinely sweet. Two girls sat us down and gave us markers to draw pictures on each other with. They called them "presents" and told us to hug and kiss after we'd given each other our gifts! It was bizarre but they were so sincere, it made the whole thing cute instead of creepy.
Also, if I had a picture for it, I'd tell you about the ride where we got strapped in plastic cases and told we had five minutes to live.
Beach at Ma Wan
The neat fishing village we found on the other side of the island
It was neat to see, sort of a preview into "real" China
Sham Shui Po, from the rooftop of our apartment on the last night we were there. A huge part of our experience in HK being so good was this neighborhood, I kinda miss it already! Hopefully one day we'll get to go back.
Ocean Park! We were expecting this place to be really cheesy or filled with a bunch of sad, beaten monkeys. It was neither, thank god! The place has won awards for animal research and all of the facilities are really nice looking.
Aaaand they have one of those log rides!
and it actually is right next to the ocean! It makes the roller coasters that much more terrifying
The tanks they had there were unbelievable! All the marinas or aquariums I've ever been to have been in North America, so it was cool to be on another continent and see the completely different sea life.
I think I stared at this thing for two hours.
The only thing that might have been better was this jellyfish exhibit.
They were playing trance music and the colours in the room kept changing, while the jellyfish swam around. This is possibly why no one in HK bothers to take real drugs!
Gondola ride to the other side of the park.
Red Panda!
Tom and Giant Panda!
Nomming on some bamboo
The world's largest Buddha statue in the Po Lin Monastery, on Lantau Island. Oddly enough, this place felt far more tourist trappy than OP. They wanted to charge is like 200 HKD to go eat in some restaurant!
So we got our obligatory tourist photo at the bottom and got out of there pretty fast.
but not before we took this other obligatory tourist photo.
We quickly conformed to the HK mentality of 'why own anything if it is not incredibly, almost aggressively adorable?'. So we threw out our boring, unadorable old shit and got with it.
Tom's fanny pack having words with me.
Kowloon Walled City. It used to be a land full of degenerates and illegal dentists!
Now it's a really pretty park.
So we used to pass this place in the mall all the time and always wondered why there were a throng of kids waiting outside to get in (really, like at least 30 at all times). We soon discovered it was an all you can eat sushi place for EIGHT dollars. You can order as much sushi as you can dream of and they only charge you extra if you leave any left over. We definitely went back a second time.
My Doraemon socks?
This was taken at the Noah's Ark Theme Park on Ma Wan, a tiny island part of HK. Yes this place actually exists and yes we paid 200 HKD to go inside. They have an ark built to "scale" after all!
I'm sure the people living nearby were totally thrilled about what this did to their property value.
Bears!
Komodo Dragons!
Elephants!?!?
So I thought it was going to be an exercise in humiliation for us, but it actually turned out to be kind of fun? Everyone who worked there was really cute and genuinely sweet. Two girls sat us down and gave us markers to draw pictures on each other with. They called them "presents" and told us to hug and kiss after we'd given each other our gifts! It was bizarre but they were so sincere, it made the whole thing cute instead of creepy.
Also, if I had a picture for it, I'd tell you about the ride where we got strapped in plastic cases and told we had five minutes to live.
Beach at Ma Wan
The neat fishing village we found on the other side of the island
It was neat to see, sort of a preview into "real" China
Sham Shui Po, from the rooftop of our apartment on the last night we were there. A huge part of our experience in HK being so good was this neighborhood, I kinda miss it already! Hopefully one day we'll get to go back.