Adventures in HK

Hong Kong is crazy. Everywhere you go; there are people...and buildings. This city is addicted to tall buildings; there are countless old, public housing units that are 20-30 stories high. I knew that HK was in desperate need of land, but they weren't kidding. Most of the area is mountainous (which I had no idea—I thought it was flat like most other big cities), so development space is hard to come by. In recent years, Hong Kong had reclaimed land (by dumping lots of earth into the harbor) and expanded its boundaries. Still, the city is bursting at its seams.

The first night, Yale and I had a couple of hours to kill before our friend, Mackenzie landed (she was doing the dreaded trans-Pacific flight from LAX to HK). So, we first stopped by our hostel to get settled. We ended up being there for a few hours because it's located on the top on some freakin' mountain—no joke. You'd never guess that we actually were on Hong Kong Island. It's in BFE. Just imagine some jungle camp located in the mountains and you pretty much have our hostel. It's a bare bones operation here. Our room consists of two bunk beds (with little padding) and a piece of foam (as Mackenzie would call it) for pillows. I laughed when she said that because most of the places we've stayed at have a similar pillow (they try and call it a memory foam pillow, but it's not). To make it even better, the hostel has a shuttle service that runs every two hours. So, if we miss the bus (which we did since it was leaving as our taxi pulled up), you have to hang out at the hostel. I guess you could call a taxi, but it'd be quite expensive since it's in the middle of nowhere.

Well, Yale had a craving for Pizza Hut (which sounded good), so we went on a hunt to find one in HK. Yale remembered one by the old Church (now a museum). He neglected to mention that we had to climb a mountain to get to it. At first, we stumbled across Hollywood Road and the nightclub district. Yale was totally disoriented—he was like "I don't know this part of town. I never spent time here!" Eventually, he brought us to the mid-level escalator, which is exactly that. Since people live up in the hills and work down by the water, HK built an escalator that takes you down the mountain in the morning and brings you back up in the evening. You could always hire a Sherpa and yak to take you up, but that might be expensive and smelly.

By the time we reach Pizza Hut, we were both dripping in sweat (something that has become second nature). I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into a piece of Meat's Lovers (with stuff crust) and it nearly burned my mouth. Yale carried the pizza back down to the station where we feasted while waiting for Mackenzie. Her flight was late, so I took a nap while listening to my iPod. Yale watched The Office on his iPod. I joked about how funny it would be to totally let Mackenzie walk on by w/o us noticing (I couldn't see her because I was laying across a few seats and Yale was looking down at his iPod).

Once Mackenzie arrived with her multi-day backpack, we decided to hike up to the peak. And when I say hike, I mean that we took the electric tram to the top. It was like the San Francisco trolley on steroids. That little tram climbed a 48 degree hillside with no problems. The view from the top was incredible. You had this beautiful view of most of the city. My camera really doesn't do it justice.

To top of the night, when our taxi driver dropped us off at the hostel, he told us we were "f***in crazy" for staying there.