Day 226: On My Own

Today was a fantastic day!

I woke up around 10am and was fully ready to hit the town again, despite my marathon-like pace of travelling the day before. I wandered down the street and found a place called Oliver's Super Sandwiches that makes like the best sandwiches ever! Forget Subway man! Oliver's is where it's at!

I walked back down to the ferry pier (which is only minutes away from where I'm staying) and took the Star Ferry back across the harbour. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and it must've been close to 30 C! Wow - a beautiful day for hanging out in the city! I headed straight for the Hong Kong Planning & Infrastructure Exhibition (aka: Heaven for Urban Planning Geeks!) It was complete nirvana for me!!! I spent probably a good two hours or more in there checking out all the cool models, displays, virtual reality simulators, future plans, diagrams, maps, and everything else a geek like myself would love. It was awesome!

After the exhibition I decided to go on a little self-guided walking tour of Central Hong Kong, provided courtesy of my trusty Lonely Planet. (God bless Lonely Planet!) The walking tour began at the ferry terminal right where I got off and as I was walking there I noticed all the dozens, if not hundreds, of Filipino ladies hanging out in the shade chattering away. Most of the housemaids and nannies in Hong Kong are immigrants from the Philippines and every weekend they get together at various public squares and parks to hang out and chat and swap stories with each other. It's fascinating to watch as not only are there just *so many* of them, but they're all so happy and jovial and cheerful - and so loud! Filipino has a very strange sound and when you have a large group of them all talking at once it sounds almost like an aviary full of birds. Cool!

The walking tour was awesome and right up my alley. It took me all through the downtown area and past just about every major famous landmark building in Central Hong Kong - the Bank of China Tower, 2 IFC, the HSBC Tower, Lippo Centre, St. Joseph's Cathedral, Jardine House, City Hall...it was awesome! The buildings in Hong Kong are completely unreal! They are SO BLOODY TALL!!! I spent half the day with my neck craned up! Walking through HK feels like you're walking through a living, breathing SimCity or something! Amazing!

I was in the best of spirits all afternoon long. I felt so free and so independent and so...I dunno...in sync with the rhythm of the universe or something, for lack of better words, while being out and about. Here I was, thousands upon thousands of kilometres away from my hometown, out in the world, doing my own thing, travelling like I always dreamed of, in an absolutely incredible city that I was loving every inch of. I just felt so alive!

After the walking tour I headed back to the other side of the harbour to an area north of TST known as Mong Kok (try not to giggle when you say that...it's hard, I know!) I was meeting up with a friend from LA who was gonna give me a little tour of the market shopping area and then go have some dinner. Zack took me around Mong Kok which turned out to be pretty cool - very busy, occupying several blocks, and full of mostly useless stuff but fascinating nonetheless to walk through. Just *being IN* Hong Kong is an experience in itself - just to soak all of it in. We had dinner later on at a Chinese restaurant and it was really yummy!

After dinner Zach had to head off to do some studying so I decided to go for a walk along the waterfront Promenade to enjoy the view. To see the Hong Kong skyline at night is more than enough reason alone to come to Hong Kong! It's absolutely breathtaking each and every time and so completely surreal. The buildings look so beautiful all lit up in such bright colours, like an alien city from the future or something. I strolled along the walkway and found myself in The Avenue Of Stars. The Avenue Of Stars is Hong Kong's equivalent of Hollywood's Walk Of Fame. It's full of names and handprints of all of HK's most famous movie stars (the HK movie industry is HUGE!) and it was cool to check it out, even if the only names I recognized were Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

After walking along the Promenade and just soaking up all the Hong Kongness, wishing that I could forever preserve that image in my mind as sharp as it was that night, I decided to wander back through the Temple Street Night Market again. I never seem to get tired of exploring all these Asian markets! I almost never buy anything there but the experience is just to be there and to just be part of the crowd. One of the coolest things about just walking around HK is that you realize how incredibly cosmopolitan and international this city is! In walking like only a block you can hear like twenty different languages! Unbelievable! There's people here from literally every corner of the planet. Wow!

After having my share of the market I decided to head back to my hostel to hit the hay. I was tired from yet another amazing busy day out exploring this crazy beautiful city. Tomorrow I'm doing a little sightseeing outside of HK and it should be pretty darn cool again! Good night! :-)