Hong Kong

Halloween in Hong Kong is totally different than in the US. We went to LKF, Lan Kwai Fong, an area in town with lots of bars ad restaurants where everyone goes on Halloween. People come here to watch and take pictures of the people who are dressed up. It's mayhem! Mobs of people walk the streets all night long just so they can take pictures! Less than half the people are dressed up, but if you could imagine that they were famous movie stars and all the other people with cameras are paparazzi following them, it was exactly like that.

This was one crowded street in LKF

We didn't have costumes but we had fun anyways!

The bars were packd too, and many of the convinience stores set up coolers on the side walks and were selling drinks, and there is no open container laws here either so everyone just buys drinks and walks with them.

We slept in the next morning and went to lunch at the same sushi restaurant we had dinner at last night, because we loved it so much! They have very interesting sushi combinations here, my new favorite is salmon and mango, which I've never seen in the USA but I really want to tell the sushi chefs about it back home!

We spent the afternoon on Lantau Island, which is reachable by subway. On the subway ride there we met three boys from the navy who are here for a few days who are stationed in Japan, and we ended up spending the day and night hanging out with them. One even has a sister who was an Alpha Xi Delta sister!!! We took a 20 minute glass bottom cable car up the mountains to the Big Buddha. We passed over the bay too and could see fisherman out in the water, about a fotball fields length away from the shore, crabbing or claming, I couldn't tell from that high up!

Yes, I took a picture with the clipper!

The Big Buddha

Do you seen me standing along the railing?

We walked around the little villare there then headed to Tai  O, a fishing village on the island.  We went on a boat ride through the waterway in the village then we went out to the bay and saw pink dolphins! The boat ride last about 20 minutes and only cost 20hkd ($2.60).

Tiny houses on stilts

 

A view of the village from the boat.

We walked through the Tai O Market afterwards and I tried grilled dried shrimp. They were paper thin and I think they had been lying out to dry for a few days, its very popular here to eat dried fish, its hanging everywhere in the markets! And the shrimp actually wasn't bad, the texture wasa bit strange but it tasted like shrimp! I also tried some dried red fruit they were handing out samples of in the market. It tasted citrus-y, but I have no idea what it was! We also tried dried shrimp XO Sauce which I've seen in the grocery stores at home but never tried before. I tried the hot one and it wasgood but extremely spicy! It's made of dried shrimp, dried scallop, garlic, honey, red chili, sugar and vegetable oil. They put it on everything; stemed veggies, noodles, bean curd, fried fish, baked potatoes, etc....

We took the cable car back down and headed back to the city to LFK for dinner and drinks with the boys we had met from the Navy. It was much more fun this time, we were actually able to walk around the streets and dance without being surrounded by hundreds of people!

He was 6'7!!! only 17 inches taller than me....

The boys had to be back to their ship by 11PM so we went our seperate ways, and got some ice cream on our way home, which only cost $0.34 for a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone!

It was 30 degrees Celcius, it was hot but so much better than Beijing, which we just saw on the news that it snowed there!!!