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!

Taiwan: Days 3-4

view of Taipei from Maokong

Friday's itinerary consisted of taking the gondola to Maokong, a village which grows tea leaves. We chose to take the glass bottom gondola and the view was amazing! It was also really nice to be able to see Taipei city from the distance.

We returned by bus and went to the Taipei Zoo.

We kept things a bit on the short side as we had to get ready for Shabbat where we joined Chabad. During Shabbat we took a walk to a park and to Tonghua Night Market where we experienced the extremely unpleasant smell of stinky tofu, probably one of the worst things we have ever smelled in our lives!

After Shabbat was over, we went to the mall at Taipei 101, one of the tallest towers in the world!

 Stay tuned for more!