Deb's Adventures in Asia 2011: HONG KONG

Today is my last day in Hong Kong, my flight home leaves at 19:45 tonight. Hong Kong is an awesome place and makes a great layover city. It's nice to leave all the chaos of S.E.Asia behind and get back into a developed county again. Hong Kong reminds me a little of Tokyo but with far less people and an simpler and easier to use metro system...and more Chinese! It's an extremely easy place to get around, I've barely looked at my maps at all. As long as you know what metro station to get off at for the site you want to visit all you have to do is follow the well marked signs. There are even signs all over pointing you in the direction of the closest metro station so if you get disoriented just follow them to an MTR station and off you go! They have a really efficient airport express train that takes you immediately from the arrivals area of the airport to the MTR station you need complete with shuttle buses to all hotels for about $10...the train goes 135km/hr so you are in town in 20mins and they have same day in-town luggage check-in for your flight home....so when I check out of my hotel today all I have to do is head to Kowloon station, check my bag in and I can wander the city at my leisure until my 7:45pm flight without having to worry about what to do with my luggage!

The Peak

I visited the Peak yesterday, too bad it was a bit rainy/cloudy... the views would have been better on a clear day. You get there on one of the world's oldest and most famous funicular railways, the tram rises to 396 metres (about 1,300 feet) above sea level. It is so steep that the buildings you pass look like they are leaning a gradient of between 4 to 27 degrees!
The 360-degree panoramic view across the Hong Kong, the Sky Terrace standing at 428 metres above sea level has spectacular vistas of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, much of the New Territories, the outlying islands, mainland China, and Macau.

Lantau Island and the Big Buddha

Lantau Island, Hong Kong's largest island, was the location of my day trip 2 days ago. It's an easy 45min metro ride. There you take the Ngong Ping, a gondola cable car, the 20min, 5.7Km journey up to the Buddha. It has really amazing views of Lantau Island and the South China Sea. You are soaring above the airport too at one point and can watch the planes take off and land. The cable cars have glass bottoms as well that made your stomach drop!

Buddha on the hill to the left..the final destination.

YIKES!

The Big Buddha, or as it’s officially known the Tian Tan Buddha, is a 34ft tall statue of a seated Buddha that’s part of the Po Lin Monastery complex. Weighing over 250 tons, the statue is the biggest, bronze, seated Buddha in the world and one of the world’s top ten Buddha statues by scale.

Start climbing...30C makes that a lot of stairs.

The skyline of Hong Kong is really like no other I've seen. Hong Kong Island Skyline looks so great because of the small size of Hong Kong, there are more skyscrapers packed into a tiny area.
Hong Kong actually boasts two skylines: one on Hong Kong Island and the other on Kowloon across Victoria Harbour. I think Hong Kong Island's skyline is the most impressive one, and since I was staying in Kowloon it offered me great views!

They have a light show every night at 8pm which was pretty cool. Hong Kong's skyline is impressive during the daylight hours but it really impresses when all the skyscrapers are lit in the evening.