detour and all things Hong Kong style

So i left my little city to explore all that China (and Vietnam and South Korea) have to offer. First stop, Hong Kong!  i met my friend Ashley in the Shenzhen airport and took a giant charter bus with only four people on across the mainland border to the magical land they call a 'Special Administrative Region'.  It is so special!  Once you get on the other side of the double set of customs you have to go through you are not in China anymore.  There are double decker buses everywhere, they drive on the left side of the road, and Twix is available in the 7 Eleven on the corner of every street! i left Shanghai at 7:40 am and didn't reach my hosts house in Hong Kong until 7:30 pm!  so i was a little tired from the days travels... had to take a train to Hangzhou, go to the airport and wait for my flight, then fly to Shenzhen, meet Ashley, and take the bus through customs and HK traffic at rush hour... boo!  But we were welcomed by our couchsurfing host, Vincent, and had a free place to sleep and store all of our stuff during our stay.  We cooked dinner, even though we were both exhausted, and managed to go to bed by midnight.  

Visas, and more visas.  We went to get our Vietnamese visas and it took literally 15 minutes!  But the new Chinese visas cost triple and took four days, why?  Because being American means you pay for the shitty visa system that the US imposes on the rest of the world and thus when you travel you pay the consequences with outrageous fees and having ti wait for forever.  

But there are worse places to be stranded for an extra two days than Hong Kong.  So we met our host again in the afternoon and he took us and another American he had gone to lunch with on a nature walk/hike of the south side of Hong Kong island and we walked from 3pm until the sunset.

So we hustled down the mountain so we wouldn't be enveloped by the darkness and then walk down to the would-be quaint fishing village, Stanley.  Now, it's more of an upscale shopping center with some bars and extremely expensive Western Restaurants.  The Sunset was nonetheless beautiful and worth the long walk i was not prepared for as i wore a skirt!

We woke up early and headed for a 6 hour bike ride of the New Territories to explore some  more of the nature of the islands. 

 The weather was perfect, but my butt was sore after the ride, stupid mountain bike seats!  Then Ashley and i broke off from our extremely attentive host and went to downtown Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the light show opposite the bay on Hong Kong island.  It was cool but not 

overly awesome...

The next day we went to Golden Beach, again so lovely, not hot enough to swim but i did make a mean sand castle!  Then we went on another one of Vincent's nature walks. We had a picnic and on the way down the mountain we happened upon a small village of vegetable farmers and bought some farm fresh lettuce for dinner.  Delicious!  Finally our last two days we left Vincent and met my HK girls, Grace and Celine, whom i met while working at ACRS.  They are possibly the cutest and sweetest girls ever.  They took us out to dim sum and then we went shopping. We had a famous Hong Kong treat, called Egg Balls, which is basically like a flavored waffle. We had taro and coconut-sesame, yumm!  

Our last full day in Hong Kong we went to 

Lan Tao island, and took a ferry, but the weather was less than favorable and it was pretty overcast so the view from the ferry was mainly fog.  Once on the island we took a bus to the main attraction, Po Lin monastery and Tian Tan Buddha, aka the Big Buddha.  

It was amazing and so bright once we got away from the waterfront.  There was a French tour group at the Buddha and Ashley and i just sat around and people-watched and eaves-dropped.  We went to the monastery also, bought some incense and did a prayer to the four corners.

  We were running late to meet Grace and go to the Peak so we took the MTR back from the island and got ready and met her went up to the 'magnificent viewpoint' of HK.  It took half an hour to get up there winding around the giant hill filled with the houses of the rich and famous of Hong Kong, but we took a tram straight down and it took 8 minutes! It was so steep and packed like sardines.  We went to a bar street with Grace after a very tasty dinner and drank a shot in honor of the inauguration of President Obama!  Later, around 1am Ashley and i watched the inauguration live on the BBC.  I can't believe he's president, it was so amazing to hear such a change in message and direction for the country.  i'm so excited to see that he carries through everything... (so far it looks really promising!)  

Last thing, all tickets out of Hong Kong to Guilin were sold out or way to expensive so we had to get out of HK by going to Guangzhou, a mainly industrial city with not a lot to offer but we got to live a bit luxury there and stay in a gated community, fancy-pants apartment with another couchsurfing host, this time a cool couple, dude is from Portugal, David and the girl is from Poland, Aga.  They were super nice and had the comfy-est bed i've slept on in all of China!  We ate Turkish and bought our overnight bus tickets to Guiling from there... so that's next... i'm so behind!!!