Hong Kong
We're here! It's currently Monday afternoon at 4 and we have survived our flight over to Hong Kong and spent a day touring around. Hong Kong is very westernized so we haven't had to deal with too much culture shock, just the 12 hour time difference.
We left our home in Ottawa on Saturday morning at 5 am. Jonathan's parents were kind enough to drive us to the airport so that we didn't have to take our car. Our flight for Vancouver left on time at 8:20 and once in Vancouver we had about 5 hours to kill before our flight to Hong Kong. The original flight was to leave at 2:15 but it was changed to leave at 3 pm and then we spent an hour on the runway having some landing gear fixed. The entire flight was about 14 hours long - we both had numb butts by the end of it! We both slept a bit on the plane but spent most of the time reading our books or watching the in flight movies. We arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday at 7:30 pm. We had prearranged to take a shuttle bus to our hotel, which was easy enough to find, and we arrived here at the Standford Hill Hotel around 9 pm. The hotel is quite nice and western looking and there are lots of shops close by. We both slept great last night and we up early and ready to start the day this morning around 8 am. We recognized all the breakfast foods, which is always a good start to the day! (Bacon, eggs, hash browns, cereal, yogurt, fruit and fried noodles, which Jonathan did try!)
We spent today taking a ferry over to one of the main islands and then taking a bus up to the Peak which looks over all of Victoria Harbour. It's quite warm out, probably 30 C, and smoggy too so we couldn't see too far from the top. We did come across some interesting shops, but recognized lots of westernized places as well - McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King, etc. Our most interesting stop of the day was a Christian Book store right up at the Peak in a mall. They had all sorts of texts and literature and were quite helpful in translating anything that we were curious about. (One of the shop owners wanted to know if we were visiting China for pleasure or for ministry!) They even had "Precious Moments" chop sticks! After our tour of the peak, we took a tram back down and then the ferry back to the island that we're on and continued onto SOHO where we ate lunch at a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant. I think our waitress felt sorry for me as I attemped to eat my noddles with chop sticks so she finally brought me a fork. I thought I was doing okay but I guess watching me was painful. We just wandered around some of the side streets for the afternoon and arrived back at our hotel around 3:30. We are to meet with our tour guide at 6 this evening and then go over the activities for tomorrow. I believe we are to take an early morning flight to Guilin. We'll probably rest until then and make use of our comfy hotel room. Not quite sure what the rest of our hotel rooms will look like!
Hope everyone at home is doing well! Leave us a note if you're reading this =)
We left our home in Ottawa on Saturday morning at 5 am. Jonathan's parents were kind enough to drive us to the airport so that we didn't have to take our car. Our flight for Vancouver left on time at 8:20 and once in Vancouver we had about 5 hours to kill before our flight to Hong Kong. The original flight was to leave at 2:15 but it was changed to leave at 3 pm and then we spent an hour on the runway having some landing gear fixed. The entire flight was about 14 hours long - we both had numb butts by the end of it! We both slept a bit on the plane but spent most of the time reading our books or watching the in flight movies. We arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday at 7:30 pm. We had prearranged to take a shuttle bus to our hotel, which was easy enough to find, and we arrived here at the Standford Hill Hotel around 9 pm. The hotel is quite nice and western looking and there are lots of shops close by. We both slept great last night and we up early and ready to start the day this morning around 8 am. We recognized all the breakfast foods, which is always a good start to the day! (Bacon, eggs, hash browns, cereal, yogurt, fruit and fried noodles, which Jonathan did try!)
We spent today taking a ferry over to one of the main islands and then taking a bus up to the Peak which looks over all of Victoria Harbour. It's quite warm out, probably 30 C, and smoggy too so we couldn't see too far from the top. We did come across some interesting shops, but recognized lots of westernized places as well - McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King, etc. Our most interesting stop of the day was a Christian Book store right up at the Peak in a mall. They had all sorts of texts and literature and were quite helpful in translating anything that we were curious about. (One of the shop owners wanted to know if we were visiting China for pleasure or for ministry!) They even had "Precious Moments" chop sticks! After our tour of the peak, we took a tram back down and then the ferry back to the island that we're on and continued onto SOHO where we ate lunch at a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant. I think our waitress felt sorry for me as I attemped to eat my noddles with chop sticks so she finally brought me a fork. I thought I was doing okay but I guess watching me was painful. We just wandered around some of the side streets for the afternoon and arrived back at our hotel around 3:30. We are to meet with our tour guide at 6 this evening and then go over the activities for tomorrow. I believe we are to take an early morning flight to Guilin. We'll probably rest until then and make use of our comfy hotel room. Not quite sure what the rest of our hotel rooms will look like!
Hope everyone at home is doing well! Leave us a note if you're reading this =)
posted by The Patterson Pair at 4:00 AM
1 Comments:
Dear venerable daughter( Andrea),
We look forward to reading your very interesting Blog: from the num "Butts" to the lofty "Peak", you never fail to disappoint your loyal readers. Who else could provide us with such a detailed account !!
Honorable Father
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