Side trip to Hong Kong! I will see you again!
My friends were asking to see more pictures w/ me in them. I took all of these before the request. It sounded like a Sandeep request via Tracy. You guys will have to tell me if I am right – I can hear Sandeep voice/inflections w/ that request. It is hard to take selfies w/ a camera.
Ok – I am not sure why I thought everything would be cheaper in Hong Kong. Now I understand why people go shopping in the US. It really is a lot cheaper for the same name brands. Hong Kong is probable not the best place to compare prices, it is an expensive city.
I took a quick side trip to Hong Kong for back to school shopping and Disneyland w/ Meg and Mirielle. I will not turn down a trip to Disneyland and it is Hong Kong!!
Quick Observations:
- Disneyland is a lot smaller in Hong Kong than the original CA Disneyland (w/0 California Adventures). A lot of Korean’s must come to HK, because our hotel has a Korean b-fast section (not very big, but normally I never see that) and HK Disney sell Korean snacks as well a fresh juices. Hidden Mickey and pin trading is not as popular, but Raymond bought Mirielle some Disney pins to start her pin trading collection. We had a great time trading pins w/ cast members and looking for hidden Mickey’s.
- Very cute – you catch the Disney Train. Also it is funny to see the “mind the gap” sign in Hong Kong. I know Hong Kong use to be a British Colony, but I wasn’t expecting to see this sign in Hong Kong.
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- Can you find the hidden mickey in the Disneyland Resort sign – I took this picture before I found the Hidden Mickey – so it is not the main focus of the picture.
- Iconic – Disneyland train station picture. For some reason this Mickey’s face is slimmer in HK than the one in CA. If you look up or pull up old CA Disneyland pictures – I think it is true.
- I thought shopping malls were big in the US. They are big in terms of taking up more space, but the HK mall are huge and several stories tall. Shops seem smaller, but a lot of shops packed in a small space. We were here before the crowds but there are several levels of escalators.
- Good eggplant and Dim sum weekend. Everywhere we ordered egg plant and dim sum was great! (except the dim sum at our hotel during b-fast).
- MTR (Subway and public transportation) is like any other big city – fairly easy to read and find my way around. I will be a lot slower than Meg, but it is easy to use the Subway system. I kept calling the subway card the Oyster card (London’s subway system pre-paid card) vs the Octopus card.
- Public transportation is very inexpensive compared to the US. Nice! I can use the Octopus card for everything – subways, trolleys, payment as some restaurant – like at the airport – very efficient.
- There are a lot of people in HK (7.2 M (Sources include: World Bank, United States Census Bureau 2013)
- Kowloon Park is huge! The public swimming pool is large.
- Avenue of Comic Book Stars – Raymond would have like this! We went through a phase of watching anime. One should always have younger cousins to make great anime suggestions.
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- Famous clock tower
- The harbor is beautiful. One of my friend Andrew use to say that he loves the SF skyline. The HK skyline is very nice!
- Mid Level Escalators! That is a lot of escalators!
- Donguri Republic (aka Totoro store). A bunch of cousins and my friend’s kids would love this store. Who am I fooling, a bunch of adults as well.
- Kubrick Book store (some people think that it is named after Stanley Kubrick).
- Eslite Book Store – huge – 3 stories in the middle of the mall!
- Oh – this is a great city for night owls. Nothing seems to open until ~11 am.
- Wow – I think that was it! A ton more to see in Hong Kong. I will be back. I am meeting friends here again in a few months! I guess I will keep that Octopus card!
