Before arriving in Guangzhou, Ronald, Carl and I decided to take two days and check out Hong Kong. I have never been to Hong Kong before, but flew into the airport on my way to Beijing in 2008 so since then I have been intrigued to check it out. I have always heard great things about HK and since it’s only a two-hour train ride from Guangzhou, it made sense to check it out on our way. I’m so happy we did.
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| A view from our hotel. |
On our first night, we met up with a friend of our co-workers who lives here in HK and works for CNN International. He is from New York and has lived all over the world, but has spent the last three years in Hong Kong. He showed us around a bit and took us to an area called SoHo. The bars and restaurants were packed and overflowing into the streets as it was a ‘typical Saturday night.’ The crowd was a mix of young and old locals, but mainly Expats. It was actually hard to find someone who was Asian among the thousands of people out in the streets we saw. We checked out a few different bars – spending some time in a Russian vodka bar with an igloo inside – and called it a night way before the rest of the SoHo crowd did. We knew we had a long day of exploring coming up.
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| Kids playing soccer. |
Today, we spent most of the day walking around and checking out some of the older parts of Hong Kong. It was a stark contrast of the SoHo area we spent time in last night. After taking the subway, we ended up in Mankook. We strolled through a local street market where all different types of fish, meat and vegetables were being sold. I could barely recognize anything in the market. We all tried to figure out what it all was.. We found a local restaurant for lunch and enjoyed some local soups. We then found a reallwy cool park and watched locals play soccer and basketball. The court reminded me of a park in NYC. It was really cool. Later, we enjoyed some Peking duck, at a restaurant that came highly recommend by our new friend Alex who showed us around last night.
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| Kids playing basketball in the park. |
In the morning, we are going to hop a train to Guangzhou and move into our apartments. I will hopefully get a chance to update the blog and talk about the train and show pictures of where I will be staying for the next three weeks. I have already been warned the beds in the apartments are as hard as a rock. I better enjoy my last night’s sleep on a comfy mattress at the Marriott.(All photos taken by Ronald Martinez)
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| An outdoor restaurant cooking unrecognizable food. |
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| A view from our hotel |
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| Me on the subway |
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| A street trolley. |
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| A busy street. |
Today, we spent most of the day walking around and checking out some of the older parts of Hong Kong. It was a stark contrast of the SoHo area we spent time in last night. After taking the subway, we ended up in Mankook. We strolled through a local street market where all different types of fish, meat and vegetables were being sold. I could barely recognize anything in the market. We all tried to figure out what it all was.. We found a local restaurant for lunch and enjoyed some local soups. We then found a reallwy cool park and watched locals play soccer and basketball. The court reminded me of a park in NYC. It was really cool. Later, we enjoyed some Peking duck, at a restaurant that came highly recommend by our new friend Alex who showed us around last night.
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