Hello friends!
This morning we had to say goodbye to Thailand. We were all alive alert awake and
enthusiastic (not really) this morning at 5:30am to have breakfast at the TK
Palace before loading up the hotel shuttles for the airport. Tears were shed as we all said our
goodbyes to P Dang and P La. After
a slight incident of one of our team members accidentally leaving a security
checkpoint without his boarding pass, we made it on the plane at last call and
headed to Hong Kong. We arrived in
Hong Kong around 1:00pm local time (1 hour ahead of Bangkok).
Driving from the airport to our hotel on one of the other
islands, it really hit the team how incredibly massive the city of Hong Kong
is. Since Hong Kong is a
city-state and has very limited space (its on an island) everything must expand
up instead of out. There were
skyscrapers and high-rise apartments as far as we could see for the entire
drive across the city.
We were all exhausted when we got to our hotel, but the
excitement of getting to see Hong Kong lured us in. We had Thai food for dinner around the corner from the hotel
(which ironically seems to be in the Thai neighborhood of Hong Kong). The hotel is on the mainland in the
Kowloon district of Hong Kong. Now
it was time to go to “The Peak” which is the top of the mountain on the Island
of Hong Kong, which is above all the skyscrapers in the city, and you can see
the entire city from the lookout at the top. We split up into groups and took taxis to the Lok Fu MTR
station to catch the subway. For those of you familiar with Chicago transit, if you think the red and brown lines get packed, you should have seen these trains! I have never seen so many people packed in one place in my life. Trains would come in to the station within 30 seconds of each other, and each one would be just as packed! After
a transfer to a different line, we got off at the Admiralty station on the
Island part of Hong Kong. Then we
walked about 10 or 15 minutes to the Peak Tram, which is a train that is pulled
up the mountain by cables. The
ride on the tram was pretty crazy.
The incline seems to be more than 45 degrees at some points and it is so
steep that it looks like the buildings are sideways. At the top it was a little windy and chilly, but the view
was incredible! Going back down
the mountain was a little scary too.
There weren’t quite enough seats on the tram, so Ben sat on Scotty’s
lap. Of course everyone else on
the tram thought this was hilarious, and a couple people even took pictures of
the “crazy Americans.” From the
tram, we took a double decker bus to the star ferry, which took us back from
the island of Hong Kong to Kowloon where our hotel is. From there, we had to get back on the
subway to get back to the Lok Fu station, and then take taxis back to the hotel
from there. We are back at the
hotel now and ready to pass out for the night. Our shuttle leaves for the airport at 7:45am tomorrow, and
we are all looking forward to that wonderful 15-hour flight!
Pray for safe travels, see you when we get back to the States!
God bless,
-Kyle Salesky
No comments:
Post a Comment