Hong Kong: Day 1

Once we got settled in, we made our way to Avenue of Stars for the light show. It runs every night at 8 and lasts about 10-15 minutes. If you get there a little early, you can catch a spot right up front by the river and not have a large crowd standing in front of you.

What is also cool is that, besides for many of the buildings (on both the Hong Kong and the Kowloon side) are part of lie light show, the cruises passing by are part of it too!

Avenue of Stars is located on the Kowloon side of the river & faces the Hong Kong side. To help you understand better, you can think of it as in the country Hong Kong there are different cities including Kowloon & Hong Kong.

After the show ended, there was another light show special for the week being projected onto the building next to us. This one was much more interesting and had really fun music.

When that ended, we had a lot of fun doing a photo shoot! (More pictures of that in a separate post)

Goodbye Taiwan, Hello Hong Kong

再見 台灣, 你好 香港!  

"Zai Jian Taiwan, Lei Ho Hong Kong," or in other words "Goodbye Taiwan, Hello Hong Kong!"

view of Taipei from Maokong

After the perfect fun-packed week in Taiwan, it was time to move on to our next destination: Hong Kong!
Meanwhile at the airport in Taiwan....

A Hello Kitty check-in counter for Eva Airlines

A Hello Kitty check-in counter for Eva Airlines

I met this guy back at the airport in NY!

hmmm

Our flight from to Hong Kong was really good and only an hour and a half. The best part of our flight was our food. We had  two desserts. We received a light chocolate cake topped with chocolate mousse. If that was not good enough already, we also received a chocolate covered cannoli! If only I can have such great desserts on all my flights...

At the airport, I passed by an area to get brochures of the city and a man kindly gave me a few of them (a little more than I needed). I started to say "thank you," but I like learning a few local words of the area I am in so I asked him how I say "thank you." He told me to wait a moment and pulled out a small paper from a shelf on the counter and hands it to me. It had a few useful phrases in Cantonese with their English translation. He showed me where it said "ngoi" ('thank you') and "dor tse" ('thank you' when you receive a gift). I thought that was it and was about to leave when he started talking some more saying "...for example, let's say you are in a market and something is too expensive." So I looked for the phrase "too expensive" and said "ho gwai ah!" I said it in the way I would have in any language if I would have been annoyed at someone for overcharging me. His face shot up and he had a big look of surprise on his face. I must have said it perfectly. He responded with "I see you are good with languages." Well, as long as I made someone's day!

To get to Kowloon (the section of Hong Kong we were staying in the first few days) we took a bus from the airport and then walked a few minutes to get to our lodgings. The temperature was already somewhat humid but still nice. It is a good thing we went in March and not in the summer.

the double decker bus we took from the airport even has special luggage racks

the double decker bus we took from the airport

traveling from the airport passing the busy ports in Hong Kong

traveling from the airport passing the busy ports in Hong Kong

What was also interesting on the bus is that there was a screen providing info about the areas of interest as we were passing them during the ride. It was a nice to be given a tour right from the beginning!

Stay tuned for the rest of our day after we got settled in!

Also check out our first destination, Taiwan!