I arrived to Hong-Kong on Wednesday around 10PM HK time. Despite the fact that I was totally exhausted from the flights and "sleeping" on Doha airport, we managed to see a bit of Hong-Kong from some sky-bar still that day.
On the next day we went to Disneyland! It was my 2nd time in Disneyland (if the Skopje city centre also counts, then 3rd). Besides having really good fun with Osvald and observing the whole perfectly functioning machinery for creation of fun, few thoughts came to my mind. First of all I noticed how incredibly happy are the children there and imagined how excited would I be if i had experienced all of this when I was 8,9. But I also realized a sad fact that the vast majority of the children in the world didn't ever hear about anything like Disneyland, not mentioning visiting it... and that maybe the huge amount of money used for creation and maintenance of such places as Disneyland might be used for a bit different purpose...
"Co teda?!"
We jammed the whole go-karting track by "not being aware of" the one and only rule: do
not bump into the car ahead
Osvald got himself a premium vistor card! :))
After Disneyland we went to a beach on Lantau island to refresh ourselves a bit (btw. the climate in Hong-Kong was terrible! The temperature didn't go below 30 even during the night and by the amount of people and cars on one place, the air was almost unbreathable. So they compensated this by blasting the A/Cs everywhere where possible. So by moving around Hong-Kong you are constantly forced to go from +30 to +15 and back...)
Lantau beach
In the evening we returned back to the city centre and took a tram (they have double-decker trams in HK :)) and we used a ferry to get to the other side of the gulf to see the skyline of the Hong-Kong downtown.
Hong-Kong downtown skyline from the ferry
The next day we took a lift/tram to Victoria's Peak to see some more views over HK and mostly in order to see it also during the day. The reason why the biggest attraction of HK are the views is obvious: it is a city without any historical sights and walking beneath the skyscrapers in financial district is not a big fun either :)
View over Hong-Kong from Victoria's peak
Of course the lift station and viewpoint were located in a shopping mall
After that, we went to Lantau island again to go to visit the Ngong Ping village with a big Buddha statue and buddhist monastery. Of course the village and statue were built recently in order to attract tourists and not any kind of historical monuments. Moreover, when we got to the top, I found out that the village is not even a village, but a street full of souvenir shops, Starbucks, Subway etc. :) I don't know anything about the monastery, but I suspect that even that is not real ;) (in case I'm wrong, I apologize to all the monks up there in Ngong Ping). But the highlight of this trip was hidden 10 minutes walk through the wood behind the monastery: beautiful view over the ocean and nearby islands from below a nice hill (Lantau peak). So we made some nice pictures of the sunset and coming rain and went back to the city.
Ngong Ping "village"
Big Buddha statue
Lantau peak shot from the "wisdom trail"
Amazing sunset view of the ocean and islands
In the evening we went out with few Osvald's friends to experience some HK night-life. My flight was departing at 11AM next morning, so I insisted on not staying too long and not drinking too much. My intention was completely ruined once we got into a pub with Corona for 10HKD (less than 1EUR). To cut the story short, we came back to Osvald's place at 4:30 in the morning. But I caught the flight next morning without any troubles ;) Btw. HK nightlife is exactly as HK as such - crowded, noisy, crazy.
To sum it up: I'm glad I experienced HK, but these 3 days were perfectly enough for me to see that I couldn't ever live in a city like this. Just the look on the buildings where they live made me feel a bit claustrophobic. Not even mentioning that you would need to spend a fortune to buy a view from one of these windows:
PS1: Svako: dik za vsetko a dufam ze sa vidime skor ako v TT (citaj: NZ;))
PS2: I'm currently waiting on the Singapore airport for the last flight of my trip that should finally bring me to New Zealand :)
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