Hong Kong in 24 hours

Like we mentioned, we took the overnight bus from Yangshuo to Shenzhen and we never expected it to be this time consuming to get to Hong Kong. We arrived in Shenzhen around 10am and we thought we'd be there closer to 8am. By the time we took another bus to the border, proceeded through customs and took the metro into Hong Kong, it was 1pm by the time we arrived at our hotel.

We checked in and them immediately took off in search of food (that happens quite a bit on our trip as we take long buses or trains and get off a typical meal schedule...we all know what happens when I get hungry!). We had lunch at Luk Yu Tea House, the oldest teahouse in HK. We ordered spring rolls and a bunch of their famous dim sum (small dishes that accompany tea). Some dishes were superb (dumplings, spring rolls) others (pork with lots of fat and the bean curd dessert) weren't the best. Everything was going well until Evan had a case of the dropsies with the chopsticks. He's the better chopstick user, but he tends to melt under pressure. He had to make a trip to the bathroom to clean up and returned in a better mood after he realized that it wasn't going to stain.

Our restaurant was close to the mid-levels escalators, these take you from the lower parts of Hong Kong through SoHo and other neighborhoods about halfway up the mountain. It's actually the world's longest outdoor covered escalator system.



From the top of the escalators, we walked towards the Peak Tram, stopping along the way at the botanical gardens and the zoo (both free!). The zoo had some great primates, two of which who were going berserk.



We finally made it to the Peak Tram and made it to the top. We were afforded incredible views despite the pollution. The panoramas will show the view better, but here's a taste:





We stayed up top for sunset and had a few drinks. Here's the view at night:



These pictures don't really do the skyline justice. It really is the best skyline we've ever seen. The combination of the number of high buildings with the mountains and the harbour make it a sight to behold.

We took in the Arsenal vs Liverpool game at a bar in SoHo and grabbed some dinner. We splurged on dinner as is our custom when they take Visa. We took the doubledecker tram home for a little bit of extra sightseeing and then called it a night as we had to get up early for our flight to Shanghai.

We would have liked to spend more time in Hong Kong touring the harbor and the many neighborhoods, but we chose to spend more of our time in Yangshuo and we have no regrets about that. Just means we'll have to come back!