Possibly our best trip so far in Japan was our 4 days & 3 nights in Kyoto. Yes, the city is quite amazing. Filled with temples, shrines, gardens & castles, it offers a glimpse into Japan of years gone by as well as today. We delighted in seeing so much history & culture in such close quarters. The weather was gorgeous (just before leaf-changing season when we're told the city became so crowded it was tough to move) & we were fortunate to have a gracious, knowledgeable guide (our good friend Kuro, who went to university in Kyoto for several years) to show us the very convenient bus, train & subway system. In addition to Kuro (who currently resides in nearby Osaka), we were able to rendezvous with American friends Richard (a teammate & friend of Josh's from the Triangle, NC) & Kat (Richard's friend & English teacher in Hokkaido, northernmost island of Japan). They were convinced to interrupt adventures in Tokyo to come to Kyoto for the weekend & stay in the Kyoto Backpacker's House with us! We also got to meet local Kansai region friends & family of Kuro's, all of whom were extremely delightful. So this trip wasn't just about seeing gorgeous sights, but also about getting to know very fun people! We could easily have stayed for a full week in Kyoto before feeling like we really got a good taste of life there, but we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of what we did experience.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Hong Kong: The final day
We were actually ready to come home & decompress after our jam-packed travels through the 2 Chinese SARs. (That's not something I can say about every place that we visit for just a long weekend or less.) So the final day was one of our best, mood-wise & weather-wise. After checking out of Cosmic Guesthouse first thing in the morning, the staff was kind enough to store our bags free of charge until later in the day when we would be ready to make our way to the airport. Then the day's activities included finding some breakfast (sold by a very friendly Nepalese emigrant) at a PARKnSHOP grocery store near the Salisbury YMCA hotel, a courtesy harbor tour on the Duk Ling (an authentic restored Chinese fishing junk), a cheap Star Ferry ride back across Victoria Harbour, a walk & "bio break" in the Harbour City mall complex, & a stroll through Kowloon Park. The captions on the photos give more details on some of our fun:
We had a mid-afternoon flight out, so after grabbing our bags from the guest house in the early afternoon, we jumped on the K3 Airport Express shuttle bus (at the Kowloon Hotel stop). After checking in at the Kowloon station & getting rid of our bags, we were able to comfortably take the fast Airport Express train to the enormous, modern HKIA & then spent most of our remaining HK currency on a yummy final HK lunch at the very popular King's Palace Congee & Noodle followed by some sweet Millie's Cookies.What a fantastic & exhausting trip!
Friday, September 28, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 7
Having spent the previous night in Macau, we didn't even make it back to Hong Kong until after noon & to the Cosmic Guesthouse in the Mirador Mansions building in Kowloon until after 2pm. And we still managed to find enough fun & adventure to fill 57 photos (mostly at Victoria Peak or en route via the Peak Tram on Hong Kong Island):
We also re-visited the Temple Street Night Market & negotiated some awesome deals on a suitcase, backpack, mahjongg set, a Kau Cim set (a.k.a. Chinese fortune sticks), Chinese bamboo chopsticks, porcelain tea cups & various other goodies! Dinner at another open-air seafood restaurant (Temple Spice Crab) was as yummy (if not more so) as it had been on Day 1!Thursday, September 27, 2007
Macau: Fusion of East & West - Portugal & China
In order to see all we possibly could for our 9 days of traveling, we took a 55-minute high-speed ferry from Hong Kong to the other nearby Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macao for a 2-night stay. We arrived on Wednesday evening (a.k.a. Hong Kong - Day 6) & figured out which bus would get us reasonably close (within a 20 min walk) of the Macau Masters Hotel on Macau's west coast, just across from Zhuhai. We later ventured out & found a lovely Latin-style dinner at Restaurante Vela Latina, before strolling about the attractively lighted Senate Square. Rising early on Thursday to see the sights, we spent all day exploring the Macanese peninsula, both exhausting & delighting ourselves at the same time. We didn't make it to the other 2 islands to the south (by bridge), Taipa & Coloane, but only because the sun went down before we found time. The hotel bed really felt good that night (despite the fact that it was an overly firm mattress in a very inexpensive hotel)! On Friday morning (a.k.a. Hong Kong Day 7) after grabbing some Sino-Portuguese bakery products for breakfast, we caught the ferry back to Hong Kong for a final 2 days of sight-seeing.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 6
We visited the highly recommended Cheung Chau Island & it was well worth the time, one of our favorite days spent in Hong Kong.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 5
Ocean Park was the main activity of the day (& the vast majority of the photos in this album support that claim) but we also visited the overpriced Jumbo Floating Restaurant & later witnessed the highly recommended annual Fire Dragon Dance & Lantern Festival.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 4
We visited Lantau Island. After a thrill-ride on a public bus hurtled us over green hills, we perused the fishing village & its many residences lining canals built on stilts. Then we checked out the world's largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue in the town of Po Lin, before having a vegetarian meal (every was tasty except the congee soup, possibly our least favorite dish of the week) at the monastery.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 3
The day was spent on the Kowloon Peninsula & New Territories areas of Hong Kong SAR. After a Chinese-style (well, more so than American anyway) breakfast at a local chain, we jumped on the MTR & made our way to the Tsuen Wan Station. Nearby we found the Sam Tung Uk Museum & learned about past culture & life in Hong Kong. We then walked to the town's KCR West Rail station which led us to our next destination near the Tin Shui Wai Station, exploring the Ping Shan Heritage Trail's interesting pagoda, shrines, temples & ornate town halls. Arriving for a late lunchtime at the Fung Ying Sing Koon Monastery, we enjoyed a delicious vegetarian meal in its dining hall before really checking out the grounds & gardens. The day was capped off with visits to the Museum of Art & adjacent Space Museum (they were included in our week-long museum passes so we decided to just quickly explore each).
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Hong Kong: Day 2
We started our 2nd day on the Kowloon side and stopped off at a McDonald's for breakfast (mainly because we knew they had coffee & actual breakfast food). Fortunately, it was a little different than McD's in Japan & the US so we still qualified it as a Hong Kong experience. ;-)
Then we made first use of our 7-day unlimited Museum Pass (for just HK$30=US$4 each) & visited the Museum of History. We watched an informative little film about HK's history before joining a wonderful guided tour, courtesy of the HK Tourism Board. We learned all about the history. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable & even handled our many questions very well. We felt compelled (since our pass included it & we were right there) to then visit the adjacent HK Science Museum. We figured out that it wasn't exactly unique info to HK, so we probably wasted time there (a nice lunch would probably have been better).
Next we made our way back over to the Central MTR station on Hong Kong Island, where we utilized the world's longest outdoor escalator system, the Central-Mid-Levels escalator, to make our way to the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Museum. There we took a guided tour (thanks again, HKTB!), learning all about the medical doctor's training in Hong Kong & subsequent efforts to abolish the long Chinese imperial rule. That tour was followed immediately by another, following the historical trail in the area, visiting several places that Sun frequented in his HK days.
Having only a few minutes left before it closed, we next inspected the nearby, under-repair Man Mo Temple. It was kind of cool to see how they used bamboo for scaffolding in the repairs instead of less eye-pleasing materials.
We than again crossed the harbor (via MTR) to find the Lei Yue Mun Seafood Bazaar, where an impressively large numbers of live seafood vendors & restaurants awaited the many hungry customers. Unfortunately, we encountered a few too-pushy vendors & the many too-foreign customs (of knowing how to select & then purchase, maybe negotiating for, we're not sure, the live seafood for immediate preparation, possibly at our direction) so we were convinced to snap some photos but then go elsewhere to find more familiar cuisine. So we finished our day with a yummy meal at a chain restaurant, Tai Hing Roast, where we still had very unique food experience, the way we like it.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Hong Kong - Day 1
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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