It was so great! It started out nice and early on a Thursday morning. Nice and early like catching a 5am bus early to the airport. Man I really took living so close to the airport in Joburg for granted. I'm about an hour bus trip away now :(
I eventually got on the plane and was on my way to Hong Kong (with two seats worth of space might I add, no one sat next to me.. win!) I arrived and made my way to the hostel I was meeting Robyn at. Robyn is one of my best friends from back home. She had finished her teaching contract in Bangkok and had been travelling Asia for a while before meeting up with me in Hong Kong to make her way home. It was sooooo good to see her! Id kind of forgotten what it was like having a familiar face around, someone that knows you, and knows about your life. Its really great meeting new friends whilst living abroad but it still takes a while to really get to know each other and learn about each others backgrounds. I was super happy to be enjoying this experience with a friend that knew what was what.
After sorting out our hostel arrangements we decided to go visit the 10 000 Buddhas Monastery in the New Territories. It was a really cool place with a long pathway of stairs up to a monastery. The pathway was lined with gold life size Buddhas each with a different face or doing a different action. When we got to the top we went into the temple which was lined floor to ceiling with smaller gold Buddhas It was well worth the long walk up there. The temple was built by a Buddhist man whose preserved body is in a glass case in the temple. A little creepy but the gleaming gold Buddhas made you notice the dead dude in the room a little less which was nice. We went into a pagoda outside the temple which had Buddhas in the windows too. While I tried to catch my breath and get used to the humidity we sat outside on a bench overlooking one of Hong Kong's many skylines. It was a really peaceful place to start our fast paced couple of days ahead of us.
After the monastery we headed over to Victoria harbour for some supper and to check out the big yellow duck which Hong Kong had been going crazy about. We caught the star ferry to get over there. The lights from all the buildings in Hong Kong are amazing and seeing them from the water made it even better. The duck is an art installation by dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. It was docked in the harbour for a certain period bringing tons of people from all over the world to take pictures with it (The duck has since been deflated, we made it just in time!). It was funny to see how this one big installation got every small entrepreneur in Hong Kong jumping on the bandwagon. We saw everything from duck key rings, branded t-shirts, squeaky toys and even a guy making duck balloon animals! Yellow everywhere!
The next day we went to Disneyland! Read about it here :D:D
After the monastery we headed over to Victoria harbour for some supper and to check out the big yellow duck which Hong Kong had been going crazy about. We caught the star ferry to get over there. The lights from all the buildings in Hong Kong are amazing and seeing them from the water made it even better. The duck is an art installation by dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. It was docked in the harbour for a certain period bringing tons of people from all over the world to take pictures with it (The duck has since been deflated, we made it just in time!). It was funny to see how this one big installation got every small entrepreneur in Hong Kong jumping on the bandwagon. We saw everything from duck key rings, branded t-shirts, squeaky toys and even a guy making duck balloon animals! Yellow everywhere!
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