HONG KONG part one

This entry has to be two parts because there is so much to tell! But honestly, I don't even have the energy to explain how much fun I had in Hong Kong but I will do my best.

SO, I am back from Hong Kong and I have pretty much decided I want to move there!!! I was looking forward to this visit but I was not expecting it to be this fun. Phillip and I left from our work around 12:30 on Friday and our co-worker dropped us off at the train station. I had never been on a train before and I really liked it. Nice and roomy and it went by fast. The ride was two hours to Kowloon (which is the part of Hong Kong on mainland China). Chapman, our boss, picked us up from the train station because he arrived the night before. He is from Hong Kong and goes back every weekend. He had also bought us a bus pass with 100 H.K. dollars as a welcome gift. So we road a double decker bus to our hotel! Because HK was originally a British colony, they still drive on the left side of the road, have double decker buses, and all learn English with a British accent. So, we take the tunnel under the ocean to Hong Kong island and we get off at a bus stop by our hotel. As soon as I step off the bus stop I am blown away by how many people there are and how fast paced it is. And I love it! We walk to our hotel that is about 1/4 away and we pass 3 malls on the way!!! You can imagine my excitement. We get checked in and have a couple of hours to walk around the block until Chapman will meet back up with us for dinner. We stayed at the Excelsior hotel which was very nice and expensive. We thought it would be a nice change from the mats and no airconditioning but we shouldn't have spent the money because we were only there for about 8 hours the entire weekend!

Chapman met back up with us about 7. We took the trolley to the seaside and from there we took the fairy across to the Kowloon side. There, we just walked around a little bit and saw some really amazing building. Oh, I forgot to say, the trolley was sooo cool. It was dark by then and all of the streets were lit up with bright lights and there were just people everywhere. It was like Time Square in NYC but never ending!! Also, if you stuck your arm out of the trolley it would get knocked off by other passing trolleys, they passed that close. And the trolleys were decorated with very upscale adds. There are some pictures of them in my Hong Kong album which I am trying to get loaded ASAP. So, the fairy was just as cool because you could see all of the building lit up and I got some great pictures of that. After walking around for a bit, we decided to head back to HK island for dinner. Chapman took us to this little hole in the wall that is famous for its spicy crab and it was out of this world!!! It was not more than 20 feet across and maybe 50 feet deep and it was so crowded. The three of us were seated at a table with 4 women who were regulars. I am not even going to be able to explain how good the food was so I will just skip that but we also got a free dessert bc we were sitting with these ladies. It was a sweet red bean soup and it was good!

After dinner, I thought I was going to burst (which would soon become the trend of the weekend as you will see). Chapman suggested we visit an outside market called Ladies Lane (the name was derived from the large number of hookers who use to frequent it back in the day, now it is not like that). I had heard a little about it but didn't really know exactly. OMG, it is like shopping heaven. I am getting goose bumps right now just thinking about it!! But, before we go there, we meet up with a friend first. He name is Tran Chu. She is actually the Aggie that noticed my ring in the Tokyo airport. We exchanged contact info in hopes of meeting up for some site seeing in Beijing. She has been in China as long as we have for business. She does internal audit for a company in Houston and travels all over the world. Basically any country you name, she has been to. She is very very energetic and spunky but we will talk more about that later.

So, we meet up with her at the Renaissance hotel and all four of us go to ladies lane. Here, we spend about an hour walking through passing stand after stand of stuff. They had everything from shoes, to bags, to belts, to picture frames to jade and there was sooo much stuff I wanted, but I held out ( I made up for it the next day!) and we ended up getting to the hotel about 1 :30am. I couldn't go to sleep because I was sooo excited so about Hong Kong. I finally fell asleep around 3 only to get up at 7! Ok, this is the end of my first entry about HK and it looks like this might be a three parter.