Of course, going back to living on one salary while the other half is in school necessitates a return to frugality, which means we hadn't really traveled at all after settling back into life here in Texas. I had pretty much filed my wanderlust away into a mental drawer of things I couldn't do anything about when, to my shock and delight, I unwrapped a Lonely Planet guide to Hong Kong and Macau from husband on Christmas morning. Naturally, I immediately forwarded the itinerary to my best friend (Babushka!) who lives in Beijing, who swore that she would find a way to meet us there come hell or high water.
Despite a minor hiccup with my ticket being issued with the wrong name (more specifically, with my husband's name listed as my middle name on the ticket) - and me spending the last three days before the trip on the phone alternating between the airline and the third-party booking site (who tried to argue that we made the mistake when booking, as if my husband didn't know my name after ten years...really?) - we boarded our flight to Taipei at Houston Intercontinental on Friday night to discover that we were on the Hello Kitty plane.
Yes, you read that right. EVA Airways has a promotional partnership with Sanrio, which means that certain international flights are Hello Kitty themed, which includes:
- your boarding pass,
- your complementary pillow and slippers,
- your plasticware,
- the in-flight safety videos, and
- the outside of the plane
Sunday, March 13 - Arrival
After a sixteen-hour flight and a short layover in Taipei, we landed in Hong Kong on Sunday morning, dropped our bags off at the guesthouse in Kowloon, and returned to the train station to meet up with Babushka, who insisted on meeting up with us for four days despite having walking pneumonia. We grabbed lunch and headed over to Kowloon Park, which I quite enjoyed (despite getting rained on) for its aviary and an impressive kung fu demonstration (which apparently happens there every Sunday). We headed back to the guesthouse, where I promptly fell asleep, so Babushka and husband grabbed dinner at one of the restaurants in the neighborhood while I eliminated the vestiges of my jet lag.
Monday, March 14
We kicked off our first full day in the city with a trip to Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin, a Taoist temple (with a Good Wish Garden!) in Kowloon. The temple complex was lively and crawling with tourists, but it had some really interesting statues of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac and vendor stalls with some really funny charms and trinkets (everything from "best life" to "ward off scumbag"). After a turn through the Good Wish Garden (which had some really cute turtles), we spent some time walking through the Nan Lian garden and Chi Lin nunnery, which were absolutely lovely. We grabbed lunch at the food court in a nearby mall and then took an extremely steep tram car to Victoria Peak (which unfortunately did not provide too great of a view, since the weather was foggy and gray). Finally, we headed down and followed Babushka's lead for a delightful dinner of Cantonese dim sum.
Tuesday, March 15
One of my favorite places that we saw in Hong Kong was Man Mo temple, a Taoist temple dedicated to the gods of literature (Man Tai) and martial arts (Mo Tai). The interior, dominated by warm red tones, has a subdued atmosphere and a hazy, dreamlike quality from dozens of burning incense spirals hanging from the ceiling (though I must admit that I do not like the smell of the incense commonly used on the island). We poked around and took some pictures, and I bought a few postcards. Then we headed to the mall for Starbucks (where I wrote and addressed a handful of postcards) and lunch at Coco Ichibanya. After eating, we headed to the flower festival at Victoria park and spent a few hours looking at some really beautiful and creative displays (or in my case, enjoying seeing dozens of people trying to take selfies in front of them). After a brief siesta in the guesthouse, we headed back out to the Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon, where we ate some spicy crab and went shopping for knockoff designer bags.
Wednesday, March 16 - Lantau
We spent nearly all of Wednesday on the island of Lantau. The island is probably best known for its giant bronze Buddha statue (the Tian Tan Buddha) on Ngong Ping plateau. We took the subway to the island and reached the plateau after an extremely harrowing bus ride. The Buddha towers above Po Lin monastery, which found itself wrapped in a dense fog right as we arrived. The monastery has a relatively well-known vegetarian restaurant, so we bought tickets for lunch there and then wandered around the complex. Naturally, we made our way up to the giant Buddha statue (and even got to see the relic inside!). We headed back to the mainland (after an even scarier bus ride down) for Babushka to catch her flight, and then husband and I were feeling adventurous, so we found a hot pot place and ordered "drunken chicken" (which consisted of a whole chicken - head and all - hacked up and marinated in beer).
Thursday, March 17 - St. Patrick's Day
Unfortunately, Babushka missed her flight, so she crashed with us one more night and then took an early morning train back to Beijing. Meanwhile, we grabbed breakfast and then headed to the Hong Kong art museum - which, unfortunately, turned out to be closed. We took the Star Ferry to Hong Kong island to check out a teahouse exhibit (which was also partially closed - and the parts that were open reeked of paint) and then headed to a dim sum teahouse recommended by the guidebook for lunch.
Now that was an interesting experience. "Teahouse" is essentially a generic term that doesn't mean much of anything - in this case, it meant a noisy and crowded restaurant with communal seating that you more or less have to hunt down yourself. The hurried waiters pour you tea, give you a paper ticket, and leave you to fend for yourself. Old ladies push their way through the crowds with tea carts loaded with bamboo steamers full of random dim sum goodies (and not-so-goodies, depending on your taste and how undercooked you'll take your meat). There is no possible way for them to make it to individual tables, so they basically just pick a spot and stand there, waiting for you to come up and ask for (or, in my case, point to) your item of choice. They stamp your ticket and give you the steamer with a plate, which you then maneuver back to your table. Being smaller and more nimble than my husband (who was a bit daunted by the whole experience), it was up to me to slink my way to the tea carts, check out the collection of dishes, and pick the most appetizing. 弱肉強食 - the weak are meat; the strong eat.
After lunch, we meandered Hollywood street, poking into several art galleries and stopping for a pint at the Brewdog pub (beer for the people!). Afterwards, we headed back to the guesthouse to shower and then ventured back out for dinner (yakitori!) and a pub crawl on the mid-levels for St. Paddy's day. We generally had a good time and met some interesting people (including two investment bankers, one of whom asked for my business card), but drinking in Hong Kong is not cheap.
Friday, March 18 - New Territories
We spent Friday (our last full day in HK) in the New Territories, a more laid-back area to the northwest. The most well-known attraction in this area is the Ping Shan Heritage Trail, a collection of shrines, walled villages, temples, ancestral halls, an ancient pagoda, and a police station-turned-visitors' centre associated with the Tang clan. The "trail," which is really just the collection of sites, winds its way through town, so it is easy to veer off and get lost, but we managed to hit all of the points without getting turned around more than once or twice. We grabbed a quick lunch at a restaurant outside of the ancestral halls and then took a minibus to Chuk Lam Sim Buddhist monastery, a beautiful temple compound that is a lot bigger than it looks. After a very full day, we headed back to Kowloon for dinner at a street stall, where we stuffed ourselves with shrimp, tofu, fried rice, and PBR. Finally, we took another turn through the Temple Street Night Market to pick up a few hanging scrolls for our bedroom.
Saturday, March 19
Our flight out of HK was not until 6 p.m., so we had plenty of time during the day to see a few more things. We started off the day by checking out Tin Hau, another quiet Taoist temple in Kowloon situated in a nice little park. Afterwards we meandered through Mong Kok and stumbled upon a Christian bistro (complete with Scripture on the walls) which made a really good tomato bisque. We spent a few hours wandering through the Sino Centre (basically, a huge otaku shopping mall) and then headed back to Kowloon for one last turn through the markets (the produce market and jade market in particular, where we haggled hard for a pair of dragons). Finally, we grabbed dessert at a little cafe by our guesthouse before heading to the airport to catch our flight to Taipei.
Sunday, March 20 - Taipei
We had the same itinerary going back to Houston as we did coming from there, but unlike the trip out, our layover in Taipei was 23 hours, rather than one, so we took the opportunity to see as much of the city as we could in one day. We arrived in Taiwan pretty late, took a bus into the city, and checked into a cheerful, tidy youth hostel just after midnight. The next morning we got up around 8, locked our bags in a closet, and hit the city.
I was surprised to find that I really liked Taipei. No, scratch that - I loved Taipei. I liked the feel of the city, the spread-out layout, the cleanness and overall vibe...frankly, I'm not quite sure why I liked it so much, but I'll take it. We started the day off at the Sun Yet-sen memorial hall and park and even got to watch the changing of the guard (which probably would have been a lot more fun for me if I hadn't been crushed by an irrationally large crowd of mainland Chinese tourists). From there we headed to Taipei 101 (ducking into a little Taoist shrine along the way), where I spent some quality time with my fear of heights and watched a bizarre video about the world's largest, and the only publicly visible, mass damper.
After lunch at the food court below the tower, we took the subway to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall (similarly ostentatious to the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall), determinedly avoiding the Frozen-themed carnival that was set up in the square (and unfortunately prevented any really neat pictures). From there we walked to Longshan temple, where we had the chance to see some kind of worship service taking place (lots of people gathered in front of the main altar, chanting sutras). From there, we headed to the Snake Alley night market to grab dinner and soak in as much of the Orient as we could before heading home.
Closing thoughts
I'll add pictures later. Writing up the trip has taken me most of today and was much more exhausting than I anticipated. This may be because I waited over a month to finally sit down and do it, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that we did so much. We crammed at least two attractions, and usually three, into each day and probably averaged five miles walking per day. This is most definitely the husband's vacation style, as I am much more of a sit-on-the-beach-with-a-book-and-a-cocktail kind of traveler, but (much to my surprise) I had a fabulous time nonetheless. I was doing some reading afterwards and discovered that people who vacation more actively generally are able to get back into the swing of "real life" more easily.
Still, I think the next vacation may call for a beach.
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