Day 41: Hong Kong-Victoria Peak and Junk Boat

At night the kids go to bed, Jacob goes to work, and I play travel agent.  I found $75 round-trip tickets to Hong Kong and couldn't get them out of my head.    Only a two-hour flight away and China was calling our names.  We booked them for our last weekend in Asia.  It must have been really late at night when I booked the flights because I scheduled us to leave at 7:15 A.M. from Clark Airport, 1 1/2 hours away without traffic 9 and there is almost always traffic).  We woke up at 4 A.M. and got on our way.  As the plane descended we could see the famous Hong Kong skyline and it was amazing.  We took a very clean and efficient train to our AirBnB apartment I found online.  The apartment's hallway was a cultural experience in and of itself.  The ceilings were about 6 feet high and smells of Chinese food (good and bad) permeated the place.  The apartment had a tiny kitchen/living room area with two tiny bedrooms, and a toilet/sink/shower room where you stood next to the toilet, turned on the shower and everything got drenched.  A first for me!  At least the apartment was clean, fit all of us, and saved us a grundle of money in one of the world's most expensive city.


We dropped our luggage and walked next door to a noodle shop where we ate some very authentic Hong Kong food:  dumpling soup, fried veggies on noodles, and other unidentifiable foods.  It was all decent and our hungry kids gobbled it up (they've learned to eat what they get on this trip).  We had to get the spunky server in the picture!

 

We walked from there on cool elevated pedestrian walkways to the tram which took us up to Victoria Peak.  We were all tired of getting our pictures taken, evidenced by the quality of many of the photos for this trip! 

We decided to walk down instead of take the tram.  When we started getting attacked by mosquitoes and the heat overwhelmed us, we hailed a cab to the waterfront.

We took a ferry across the harbor which divides Hong Kong in two.  All websites recommended taking a Junk Boat ride so walked to the port, paid, and got on.  Men dressed in pirate attire helped us on board and we sailed out into the harbor, techno-Chinese music pumping from hidden speakers.  As the sun started to set, the sky scrapers lit up one by one.  Stunning!

We deboarded, found a McD's, I'm sorry to say, because we knew it was safe and cheap (did I mention Hong Kong is EXPENSIVE?).  We took our dinner back to the harbor and ate it while watching the famous laser light show on the sky scrapers.  A ferry and cab ride took us back to our mini-apartment and appreciated beds.