Kong Fu: Day Two in Hong Kong

I really should be asleep right now, so let’s make it snappy.

Today, for the record, was AWESOME.

It’s very easy to get around Hong Kong by taxi – there are heaps of Westerners everywhere, and pretty much everyone speaks English (one of our taxi drivers didn’t, so he called the taxi centre to get them to translate our address from English to Cantonese for him). I’ve had a couple of conversations (about Louisette) in Mandarin, which has been a lot of fun, but I probably won’t have any more until we go to Beijing (on Thursday).

Focus, Louise!

Okay.

The food was, needless to say, delicous. I wrote about it at weekend notes.

The City Hall building is RATHER nice. It used to be directly on the water, but Hong Kong is slowly reclaiming land from the sea – including all that you see in the foreground out the window. The first shot is of Bil and his fiance, and the last is of the fiance and Louisette. She’s British, and impossible not to like both immediately and permanently. Her whole family is a lot of fun (and her Dad showed up for the first time last night in a truly horrific pink number after his Rugby 7 attendance).

After stuffing ourselves with Hong Kong culture, we returned to the 2IFC building, and went as high as we were allowed to go (for which we needed to show I.D., and we were only allowed up to the 55th floor, which was about halfway). All of Hong Kong is very shiny, but the 2IFC building is particularly so. Including the lift. And the lift ceiling.

There’s more at weekend notes, including photos.

Then we caught a ferry across to Kowloon Park, which I wrote about at Weekend Notes.

This is the street literally just outside Kowloon Park. We all thought it looked just like Generic Asian City Street Of The Future.

Before heading back home, we sat on the harbour (with many others taking photos of the scene) and looked back towards Hong Kong proper to watch the lights come on as the sun set. The tallest building is the 2IFC, with the much smaller, cute-looking IFC two buildings to the right of it (both have giant concrete “teeth” on top). You can just make out “The Peak” in the dip of the mountain. The view from the place CJ and I are staying is basically behind this one and looking in the opposite direction.

Okay, now I’m REALLY going to bed.

Tomorrow we visit another island of Hong Kong, and see a pirate’s cave.