Nov 3rd
We had a late start to our final day in Hong Kong. I had stayed up late catching up on blogs and uploading pictures and Jess is coming down with a cold and not feeling up to par. Needless to say the idea of sleeping in was appealing to both of us so we turned off our alarms and fell back to sleep. Around 11am we put ourselves together and were on our way. We jumped on the subway and headed about 30 minutes north to Man Fat Monastery which is known as the land of 10,000 Buddha’s. The subway let us off into a large mall (On a side note- you wouldn’t believe the underground malls and shopping areas connected to almost all of the subways in Asia. Many of the places here you can literally walk for miles underground and get from one side of town to the next and about 50 of the same exact stores. Its unbelievable), we were quickly confused and lost, never seeing a sign for anywhere near where we wanted to go. We continued to walk through the mall which was huge with no luck finding a sign. We did find signs for a hotel so decided to follow them and ask the concierge for directions. En route we found the food court and grabbed a quick bite to eat.
Afterwards we finally make it to the hotel which was approximately a mile away and asked the first hotel staff member that we could find for directions, she didn’t know. We found another staff member and asked her for directions, the second lady had never heard of it, by the time we asked the third staff member I was ready to give up. He seemed to know what he was talking about and pointed us outside of the building and directed us to walk towards some apartment buildings.
We got outside and started walking. We saw lots of signs giving directions to tourist sites, but none to the 10,000 Buddha’s. We asked a young man walking by for directions and he waved us off, not having time for us. We decided to go back in the mall and ask for help some more. We finally found a lady who spoke English and was willing to help us. She told us that we were very far away and needed to take a bus to the 10,000 Buddha’s and pointed us in the right direction. We ended up back at the subway station. We asked for directions at the ticket office which took 3 people to answer our question and point us in the right direction. We went outside again and were dumb founded that we had read so much about visiting the 10,000 Buddha’s yet there was no directions to it and no one seemed to know anything about it. There were no signs pointing us in the right direction. We found a map that was in Chinese and since Jess and I are so smart were able to translate enough of the map to get ourselves going in the right direction. We crossed the road twice and took several turns and FINALLY we saw a sign for the 10,000 Buddha’s. Luckily it was only about a five minute walk. No busses necessary. Not to toot our own horn, but I seriously wonder if people who are bad with directions would ever been able to find this place.
The monetary was wasn’t as exciting as we expected but we made the best of it. We hiked almost all of the 480-something stairs to the top seeing Buddha is every position possible. We were surprised that we only passed about 5 other people during the whole time we were hiking, I guess no one could find it. There were lots of signs saying “beware of monkeys” and “don’t feed the monkeys” and we definitely heard the monkeys, but never actually saw them- which was disappointing to me.
Jess and I were also ill prepared for the cold front that has hit Hong Kong. I wore shorts and a t-shirt thinking it was going to be 90 degrees again, but it only reached a high of 60 degrees. I froze. Jess started to feel really tired and didn’t want to get even more sick to we headed back to Kowloon. We decided to split up in front of our hotel. Jess went back to the room to lay down and I went out for a little more sight seeing. It was literally the first time I’ve been alone during the whole trip. It was a weird feeling- I wondered if the feeling will start to hit me when I’m traveling alone in Peru in a few weeks. I can do it alone, and its kind of nice to see what you want, and do what you want to do when you want to do it. But its also great to have someone with you to chat and joke with, as well as two brains when your figuring out where to go or what to do. My time alone was actually quite short to tell you the truth. I had really wanted to go to the Hong Kong space museum which is this huge dome really close to our hotel. When I got there I quickly learned that its closed on Tuesdays- just my luck. I walked around, but really didn’t have anywhere to go or do, so I decided to get a pedicure- something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It felt great! It was $100HKD ($12USD) and the lady did wonders for my feet. Althought here they don’t cute your nail or even paint them- its more of cleaning them up and messaging them. I guess I’ll have to get another one soon to all some color to my piggys! Trying to sell me a full body message she gave me a free trial full body message. I laid down on the table and the little Asian lady jumped right on my back. She spend the next 15 minutes walking up and down pressing on different points and bending and cracking my body in ways I didn’t know my body could move. She ended with a neck and head message- it was wonderful! I didn’t want to spend the money in Hong Kong because it is pretty pricy here compared to the rest of Asia, but its definitely something that I will look forward to in the next week or two.
I returned to the hotel room to find Jess relaxing. We spent the next 2 hours planning things to do in the Philippines and booking a hostel (we had originally planning on couch surfing but haven’t had any luck recently getting in touch with the guy we were supposed to be staying with- plus we’ve had great luck meeting people in hostels and have had lots of fun with them- were hoping to have a similar experience in the Philippines). I was reading lots of info about the Philippines and am very aware that its one of the most dangerous places that we will be. There are lots of warning to travelers about theft and scams. I even read that the most common scam is when locals offer tourist food and drug them, then steal their money and valuables. The warnings that I read definitely scared me and I will be on the look out.
Around 5:30pm we decided we needed to get up and see a bit more of Hong Kong. We found the bus stop that we’ll need to take in the morning to get to the airport as well as spoke with the hotel staff about checking out so early. We then walked to Temple street to check out the night market. I bought two pashmina scarf’s and a black Mark Jacobs small purse/wristlet. Afterwards we grabbed some more sushi (we were worried that we won’t be able to get as much good fish from here on- so we made sure to get our fill). During dinner we got a call from Carlos (our Spanish friend from the hostel in Beijing) wanting to meet up with us and grab dinner. Since we were both full, Jess wasn’t feeling good, we had a lot of packing to do, and we had to get up early the next morning to go to the airport we decided to call it a night. We stopped at 7-eleven (7-eleven and the subway are set up with the same credit card so you can wave it in front of the machine and it deducts money right off the cards- its pretty cool) and used the remaining amount of money that we had on our subway passes on snacks for the plane (otherwise we’d loose the money all together). We went back to the room and skyped home, packed our bags and set our alarm. We need to be out of the hotel by 5:15am tomorrow! Eeeekkkk!
Well off to bed!
Love,
Katie
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