Ni Hao!!!! (again)
I’m baaaccckkk with China pt. 2 (comparable to China pt. 1)!!! In all honesty you probably should just skip down to the bottom just to see the pictures in Hong Kong…
Day 4: Beijing, China
Day 4 began with catching up a little on our sleep from our 6am wake up call the day before (remember: Tieneman Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall, oh my!)… it was FANNNNTASSSTTTIICCC!!! But we got a move on pretty dang quick so that sleep didn’t infringe on our uber important shopping plans (no really if we missed this, I think Kyle would have left me and Josey in China).
Silk Street (aka Silk Alley), a HUGE like black-market shopping center in Beijing, was where it was at…I was totally expecting it to be outdoors and very very sketchy. BUT OH NO, it was indoors and was set up sort of like the Galleria in Edina for those in MN. It was crazy nice…6 floors of literally everything you could imagine. Absolutely the type of place you could get lost in…
Oh wait, Josey did.
Because NATURALLY, we hadn’t had a major problem yet that day, which meant we were due for one!!! If you didn’t know, Kyle and Josey are naturally unlucky people while traveling apparently, but I’m usually really lucky. SO long story short, the little curly-haired blonde one disappeared for a few hours in this mega shopping complex. We searched every floor (probably for an hour or so) always coming up empty-handed.
LUCKILY, right as I started to panic that she was lost to a Chinese gang, we heard “Kyle and Katelyn, your friend is waiting for you at the information desk.” Although because a Chinese man was saying it we weren’t totally sure, but went just to check. THANK GOODNESS SHE WAS THERE!!!!
We all loved that place though, we heard over and over “you joking me right”, “I like you, special price just for you”,and “oh you handsome kids, you have pretty smiles.” Seriously if you need a compliment, just head over to one of these places, you leave with smaller wallet, but bigger confidence!!
Then we were HEADED TO HONG KONG BABY!!!! (important note: in Hong Kong they have much less restriction on the internet such as social media, more people speak English, and IT WAS 70 DEGREES. Which was SO NICE compared to the like 20 degrees it was in Shanghai and Beijing).
Our plane ride was so freaking nice, we all got multiple seats to ourselves, cookies and cream Häagen-Dazs, and they had fannnntttaaasssttiiicccc movies to choose from (a real treat for me). Josey found the chess on the TVs particularly intriguing apparently.
We got a driver to bring us to our hotel in Hong Kong (we stayed on HK island not the mainland) for simplicity, but he full on showed up in a TUX AND HAD A SIGN WITH MY NAME… THEN brought us to a Benz that drove us to the hotel…. We were livin large in Hong Kong, holy smokes.
WHOOP, spoke too soon!!! There was a huge group of us staying at a hostel in Hong Kong and the only one that could hold us was one that was what I’m going to call a character building type of place. It was great for the one night we were there, but I don’t know, snuggling up to a Beauty and the Beast on a questionable mattress for more than one night was enough character building for me (especially for how much we paid, yeeeesh).
Day 5: Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong
Day 5, wow. Day 5 was probably my favorite day so far on the trip (up until this point). After we left our *insert synonym for interesting here* hostel, we headed back to the ship to dump our stuff off. Seriously…you would have thought we were denied food in all of China based on how we ate lunch when we got there, jiminy-crickets!!! (is that how you spell that because I really don’t know)
Out of the three options for the day: theme park, giant Buddha, or hiking Dragon’s Back. Guess which one was calling my name?
Guys. Let me just tell you, it was hot (only because we were frozen kids before arriving) and it felt FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. I’m cold ALL THE TIME so this was just ideal for me. We lucked out with how nice it was, 70 degrees and sunny for our hike.
Okay I realize that sounds semi-miserable, but I promise it wasn’t!!!
Every 30 minutes, one of the six of us was convinced that we had seen the best view yet… No seriously, everywhere you looked it got better. My bad for not knowing, but I had no idea that Hong Kong was so jungle-y and green AND had such a defined and beautiful shoreline. Like COME ON!!!
The hike wasn’t strenuous at all (I don’t know if thats because we were all so excited to be there or if we were pretty fit or what), but we blinked and we were at what we thought was the top. We sat there and took pictures, rested, and awed in the view for a while before a couple told us to keep going…
So we did.
Past a sign that read “danger, stop here, do not continue.”
Would you be shocked if I told you the only person who saw this sign was the last person to start climbing?
IT WAS WORTH THE POSSIBILITY OF FALLING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN FOR.
You know when people say the picture doesn’t do it justice? This must have been the view they were talking about. Seriously.
We could have stayed up there for hours (we did for like an hour and a half) just in amazement.
Do you guys see what God created? Do you? And this is just ONE place that he formed and created for us. We’re SO DANG LUCKY!
I’d spend 24 hours a day outside if I could. I love the city, but there is something about being in nature, especially by water, that is just more I dunno, me. Dragon’s back was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. It reaffirmed again why I was doing this trip, to see things like this and spend time with people like who I was with.
Okay so let me tell you about the process of getting down: when we went up, we just went up in a direction that looked promising, no problem right? Well when we came down, there was no direct path (naturally right). So, Kyle, the outdoor enthusiast apparently, decided we were gonna go down an unmarked path down to the road, which screamed ‘great idea’ in many languages.
Guys we climbed down a jungley mountain in Hong Kong for 30 minutes with only a fair amount of expletives, a little it of crawling, a few small injuries (relax I mean like bruises and scratches).
After trying to call an Uber for a GOOD 30 minutes, some of us decided to attempt hitchhiking, with no luck… turns out its hard to get an Uber on the side of a mountain (who woulda thought).
So let’s recap, shall we? We are stuck on a mountain, all our snacks are gone (by all I mean a single orange to share between the six of us), empty water bottles, no had service, the sun was going down, AND it was about 10 minutes from a thunderstorm (but for the record there was no forecast of rain when we left).
Morale was low. Very low. But right when we started thinking about how we were going to spend the night on a mountain in Hong Kong, we got enough service to order Uber. THANK GOODNESS.
SO there we were, morale was climbing as we sang to some Poison because OUR TICKET HOME WAS ON ITS WAY (For the duration of this trip, Home=Ship, sorry mom)!!!!
Post the almost disastrous trip to the mountain, we all put on our best and headed out to the Hong Kong Ritz Carleton. Fun fact: at the top of the Ritz, is the tallest bar and restaurant in the world… a whopping 108 floors up… we just HAD to go!!
We really went for the atmosphere and the view, but the clouds blocked the view. We were in a literal cloud we were so high, so I just imagined how cool the view was (next time I guess).
Also fun fact: they don’t let men with shorts in past a certain time, but they have rent-a-pants if you need them. Oh, but don’t forget, they’re made for the Chinese, not us big Americans. You wouldn’t believe the number of SAS students that were in rent-a-pants that night!!!
Day 6: Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong
We needed some culture on China day 6..There was a lot of talk about the ‘Big Buddha’ ,but some people told us the 10,000 Buddhas was a cooler thing to go to, so we said why not?
Before we went, I pictured like 10,000 little like paperweight sized Buddhas, but that wasn’t what it was at all… As you walk up this hill, it is lined on both sides with individual Buddha statues, that are for a specific person.
Josey found the one she related with the most…
When you get to the top, the whole ceremony site is housed there. I wish I knew more about everything that was happening (and wish I had more pictures, but you weren’t allowed to take pictures at the top) because it was fascinating.
We went during Chinese New Year, which apparently was a really important time for them to go and pray. They would go on their knees, bow, and pray several times before shaking this cup that had a couple hundred what looked like chopsticks in it. Whichever one fell out read their destiny (they all had writing on it).
All I could think about was how lucky I am to serve a personal God who knew me before I was born, who always has a plan for me, and always loves me. In the same sense, it kind of broke my heart to see so many people believing that their true destiny came from a bucket of sticks.
After we saw the Buddhas, we went to what was called the Ladies Market (it was just a market on Lady St.) for some more shopping. You would have thought we were all shopped out, but apparently not. And believe me when I tell you I swear my friends bought all of China at the markets we were going to…
Six days, three cities, and one world wonder later, we were back on the ship for two days before Vietnam (which was well needed… trust me).
See ya til I wake up in Vietnaaaaammmmmmmm!!
Katelyn
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