Hong Kong, concluded

Location: Hong Kong SAR, China

On Saturday night, we headed over to the Lan Kwai Fong Food and Beer Festival. The Lan Kwai Fong area is a popular night spot, and the festival made things even more crazy. They were selling beer in tall glasses by the yard, 50 HKD for the first one, and 40 HKD for a refill. The streets were filled with people, and even though it rained for a little bit, the energy was high. We had some dinner there in a Malaysian restaurant as well.

Our final day in Hong Kong was quite eventful. After checking out of our "wonderful" YMCA hotel, we went to drop our stuff off at a left luggage counter in the Central metro station on Hong Kong Island. This is actually a pretty neat station; it has counters for checking your bags for a flight, even before you take the train to the airport. Pretty efficient. Anyway, after this, we took a bus ride out to the Stanley, which is on the other side of Hong Kong Island.

One note about the metro trains: they're a group of connected train cars, like anywhere else, but on the inside, they look like one long train. It's really neat:

What's really amazing about Hong Kong is that the Kowloon Peninsula and the north side of Hong Kong island look like one of the most modern, busy metropolises in the world. But the south side of Hong Kong is very peaceful. It almost seems like a different place entirely; I felt like the sun shone brighter on this side of the island:

We walked around the Stanley Market area for a little while, checking out the shops. The Stanley Market is basically a semi-covered group of alleyways, with shops selling local paintings and crafts, as well as clothing, backpacks, watches, and electronics. It was a neat area, and we picked up some nice stuff. I got a nice painting, and Ben got some as well, and a t-shirt that said "Black Belt Jones vs. Noodles of Death", with a picture of a dude with an afro on the front. I don't really understand it.

After this, we headed over to Jumbo. Jumbo is located in the Aberdeen section of Hong Kong Island. It is a gigantic floating restaurant:

You actually have to take a small ferry boat to the restaurant, passing by a marina on the way. Jumbo is 4 stories high, and each floor has a different restaurant, taking up the whole floor. We ate at a restaurant that had local cuisine. The wait was very long, and the prices were slightly high, but the food was really good.

Finally, we headed back to the northern side of Hong Kong Island. We hung out in the malls here for a little while, before making our way over to the Mid-Levels Escalator. This is a very unique Hong Kong method of transportation. It is a series of outdoor, covered escalators, that take you up a steep hill on Hong Kong Island. It carries the record for the longest covered escalator in the world:

It's pretty neat to go up, as you pass right through local alleys, which are filled with restaurants, apartments, and shops. We took this escalator all the way to the top, and walked around some more, before heading over to the JCC, for an amazing buffet dinner. Kosher food, lots of options, and only 30 U.S. dollars.

Finally, we retrieved our bags, and took the ferry over to Macau. This ferry actually took the amount of time the company said it would, unlike the one from Spain to Morocco. The ferry goes really really fast, and gets to Macau in one hour.