The Peak

Frank left the car in Central after hanging out with his friend last night, so we had to take buses and the metro to Hong Kong Island. Frank hates public transportation, but I thought it was fun and Carries likes it too. We had the mini bus to ourselves on the way; they seat 16, to Sai Kung. Then we took another mini bus, which was full, to the metro. The train was packed! It wasn’t nearly as bad as Japan though, it just was that no one moved over for you. So the far side had tons of room but right beside the doors was uncomfortable.

Upon arriving in central we went to this high end store that Carrie and Frank’s extremely rich neighbor owns. I forgot his name, but he is a journalist and owns a lot of stores here in Hong Kong. He fly’s people by helicopter to his house, and has had lots of famous people come. All of the clothes there were amazing. The style is kind of modern with heavy Chinese influence. You can have a dress made out of beautiful silks for about $1000+ dollars US.

We had a very tradition lunch and then walked through an outdoor market. The government is tying to get rid of the market because of sanitary issues, but some of the vendors families have been selling there for about a hundred years. We had desert at this little shop that the old governor (emperor?) used to love. There were pictures everywhere of him eating sweets. It was pretty good; they were just pastries with egg yolk filling. They tasted too much like for me, but I guess they are really popular.

After we went to a store named G O D. it isn’t said like “God” and means something different. They have all these things that say “DELAY NO MORE”. In Cantonese, it means “fuck you” or something. But they have some great stuff there and I got some great gifts. Much to Frank’s annoyance, we stopped at the Man Mo Temple. Dating back to the 1840’s it is a big tourist attraction. Our eyes watered from all of the giant sand wood incense spirals hanging form the ceiling. It takes them a couple weeks to burn though. The temple was dedicated to Man, the god of literature, and Mo, the god of war.

Next, we went through a market selling lots of bracelets and trinkets, posters and Buddha’s, and other things like that. I got this little old lady to cut the price in half. The people around me where laughing but I was excited about it, thinking I was tricky for telling her I only had forty dollars. Next we went and got the car because the line for the tram was huge. There is a huge shopping center. We went to the very top and looked down on the city. Everyone got some American candy, they were all overjoyed because it is hard to find here. Then we went to the peak restaurant or café, something like that. It was very neat, the whole day was!