Day 11: China Adventure – Hong Kong

We woke up early for the most hyped breakfast of the tour. It had both Western & Chinese breakfast options. My favorite part was the fact that they had a pancake machine where you push a button and a pancake pops out a minute later. It cooks the pancake on a moving conveyor belt.

After the awesome breakfast, we met our local guide for Hong Kong, Gain. His jokes throughout the tour were hilarious and his mannerisms were similar to Austin Powers.

Our first stop on the tour was Victoria Peak. The bus dropped us off at the bottom and we took a trolley up to the top. It was quite foggy, so we didn’t have a perfect view of the city.  What we saw was pretty breathtaking, though.

View of a foggy Hong Kong from Victoria Peak

Our bus met us at the top of the peak & we went down the other side of the mountain to a fishing town named Aberdeen.  We took a boat ride and passed by house boats, fishing boats and a floating restaurant.

Famous JUMBO Floating Restaurant

After the boat ride, we went to Stanley Beach, the area that a lot of expats live. A few people from our group went shopping, but we grabbed lunch overlooking the water. I wasn’t too hungry, so I just had an espresso.

After lunch, we went back to our hotel for 10 minutes. Then all of us went to the Tung Choi Street, or the Ladies Market, which is where a lot of vendors set up souvenir booths along the street. I needed to grab a few things for people back home, so it was a perfect place to go.

Ladies Market

Then, we all headed back to the mall attached to the hotel to relax. We met up again in the evening for our final night together as a group. We started by watching A Symphony of Lights, a laser show some of the buildings do at 8:00 PM every night. Only 16 buildings participate now, but it used to be quite the spectacle. Many buildings stopped participating after the financial crisis in 2008, however, it was still a very nice show.

Hong Kong Skyline

Hong Kong Skyline in Black & White

Picture with all the guys

After the show, we walked to an English pub for our final included dinner. I didn’t want my final meal on the tour to be British food, so I had the sweet and sour chicken. It was actually pretty good.

After dinner, we cabbed it over to Hong Kong Island for a final night out. I was tired in the cab, but got my second wind and stayed out until the group that stayed the latest decide to go back. Since it was after 2:00 AM all the taxis wanted us to pay an exorbitant flat fee, so I used Uber and we paid half of what the taxis wanted!