Last Stop – Hong Kong

This morning the 5 remaining members of our group (Lysette, Sheila, Tom, Leah and I)
departed the hotel at 6:30a.m. for our 10:20a.m. flight to Hong Kong. Traffic
wasn’t an issue and after asking a couple of airport workers where we should go to
check-in, we found the proper counter. We had no issues and after we made it
through security, we had over an hour before our flight. We enjoyed some Starbucks
and free WIFI while we waited.

The flight was a couple of hours long and we were served a chicken and rice meal.
There actually was quite a lot of food on the tray and Tom and I just split one
meal. The best part was the Drumstick ice cream cones that they served after the
meal. Tom and I didn’t have to split it because we each got one.

We landed in Hong Kong to find it very hot and extremely humid. A member (Daniel)
of the tour company greeted us at the airport and we took a small bus to our hotel.
The drive took about 45 minutes. My first impression of Hong Kong was that it has
an island feel and is much more Western. It is much greener then the other cities
we have been too. Daniel gave us a printed itinerary of our time in Hong Kong and we
were starting to think we had found our next Forest, but he told us he was only
escorting us to and from and the airport.

We checked into our hotel and Daniel gave us a quick tour of the attached mall where
we could exchange our money (Hong Kong has their own money, and although some places
may accept the Chinese Yuan, it’s better to use theirs) and find a 7-Eleven.

After we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we all met back up and decided that
since it was only 3:30ish that we would try go to the island of Macau. We took the
free hotel shuttle to another one of their properties and navigated the local map to
the ferry station. When we got to the ferry terminal an employee of the Macau
TurboJet company rushed us over to the gate thinking we could make the 4:30 ferry,
even though it was 4:25. Unfortunately the gate had already closed. We went back
over to the ticket counter to inquire about the next ferry and tickets, and found
out that we needed our passports to go. We did not have our passports with us, so
we scrapped the idea of going to Macau for the day.

So without having a back-up plan we looked at the map and saw that the Kowloon Park was nearby and decided to go wonder through the park. I brought out my phone and saw there was a geocache in the park, and made it our mission to go find it since I hadn’t been able to look for any earlier in the trip. The park was quite nice and big and we stopped to look at several things on the way to the geocache. We looked at the fountain, garden maze, and workout area for the elderly. I was able to find the geocache right away. The hint was green and balanced, and the GPS took us to a workout are with two green balance beams that crossed each other. I said without looking at my GPS that if I were to place a geocache on those beams it would be right at the cross section and that is exactly where I found it.

There were no other geocaches in the park, but we continued to wonder through and looked at the birds in the aviary and the flamingos. We exited the park through a different way in which we came in and found that it took us to a beautiful view of the harbor and another geocache. We took some pictures, signed our name in the geocaching log and decided that since it was approaching 6:00 that it was time to find a place to eat. We all agreed that we did not want Chinese, so we wondered the city for a bit and came across the Spaghetti House. This sounded like a winner to us.

I had spaghetti and Tom a white vegetable lasagna. It tasted like some of the best Italian we ever had, but honestly it probably was because we have eaten so much Chinese in the last couple of weeks that our taste buds were just ready for a change. We had seen the desserts on the menu when we had ordered our meals and since the portion sizes of meals were not obnoxious, we had room for dessert. We got a piece of apple (and I think it had raisins in it) pie. This was a perfect way to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. We normally have a piece of banana cream pie on our anniversary since that is what we had on our wedding day in place of cake, but we knew that would be hard to find in Hong Kong. I was just happy that we found pie at all.

After dinner we headed to another ferry terminal area to watch a laser light show that Daniel had told us about that started at 8:00. We had great views of the
skyline, but realized 15 minutes into the show that we were probably not standing in the right spot, because although we could see the lasers they didn’t make any sense. We walked closer to the terminal and found a crowd of people and music that was playing in conjunction with the lights. Of course the show ended a minute or two after we found the right spot. Oh well, we took it as a scouting mission in helping Lysette for future groups she brings to Hong Kong. This is the first time that Kathy Loper Events (our tour company) had offered Hong Kong.

When the show was over we took the ferry to the Hong Kong island side. The ferry ride is super cheap and short. When we got to the other side we walked around for a bit, but decided that we were all hot and tired and just wanted to go back to the hotel. We hopped the ferry back and walked back to our hotel shuttle location and was soon back to our hotel.