After sleeping in (to recover from our late night) we investigated the Causeway Bay area where we were staying a bit. We tried the Tsui Wah Restaurant franchise on the other side of Cannon Street from our building, since our host had agreed with some favorable online reviews & further recommended it specifically for a good, inexpensive breakfast. Indeed it was both cheap & tasty! Betsy even declared it her favorite coffee ever (dark, sweet & heavy on the cream). Then we located an ATM in the nearby World Trade Centre building & found a Hong Kong Tourism Board visitor information center on the other side of the Causeway Bay MTR station. After getting plenty of info (possibly too much!) on what all we might do with ourselves for a week in Hong Kong, we meandered a bit, discussing our plans before eventually settling down to plot our week, upon a bench on 1 of the 9 floors of "vertical shopping mall" in the Times Square complex.
An hour or so later, with a plan in hand, we then set out via MTR, passing underneath Victoria Harbour, to the Kowloon Peninsula side. Our first stop was the very popular Wong Tai Sin Temple, which represents China's 3 main religions - Buddhism, Taoism & Confucianism. We snapped many photos of the very colorfully decorated structures & watched the worshipers burn incense & chant, although we declined to purchase (from the many vendors) & burn our own. We especially enjoyed the Good Wish Gardens on the temple grounds, but we declined the fortune tellers.
We next considered checking out the Kowloon Walled City Park, formerly a high-rise slum that was transformed into a park in 1995. The distance from the nearest MTR station dissuaded us & we instead to decided to check out 3 street markets in the Mong Kok area. First, we strolled through the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. Vendors sold all kinds of caged birds as well as food & supplies. We were fairly careful not to touch any birds (signs reminding us that avian flu concerns are prevalent in Hong Kong). But we couldn't resist a bargain on a fancy wooden souvenir cage (new & clean) of our very own (to display without an inhabitant, probably). We then strolled through the adjacent Flower Market streets where vendors sold every type of plant we could imagine (meaning we'd have plenty of green to turn brown if we lived in HK). And we then made our way to the Tung Choi Street Goldfish Market, where we discovered that keeping aquariums is considered by many Chinese to bring good fortune. Thus, there were a multitude of vendors selling every type of aquatic life, habitat, food & accessory we'd ever known. Our camera did not go unused. ;-)
As the sun descended on our day, we found the Temple Street Night Market & learned how negotiable (VERY) the prices were on all kinds of products being sold. We made some mental notes & plans to come back towards the end of our trip, and made the highlight of the market a delicious open-air meal of seafood (fried prawns) & vegetables (spicy stewed eggplant) at Tong Tai Seafood Restaurant.
Our final stop for our first full day in Hong Kong was the Kowloon waterfront promenade near the ferry piers. There on the HK Cultural Centre Piazza, beside the clock tower, was a massive lantern display (of an 80-meter long dragon & 10 life-size boys) called "Dragon Dance by the Ten Brothers," part of the Mid-Autumn Festival & also highlighting Hong Kong's 10th anniversary as a Chinese Special Administrative Region (SAR), following its return from Britain to China in 1997. Our camera battery didn't stay with us long enough to inundate you with too many shots of the lanterns, just a couple to prove we were there.
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