I arrived in Hong Kong after a 12-hour flight from Frankfurt at around 6am local time, check-in at the hostel was not until 2pm, so some other travelers and me took a first walk through the city to get most of our stay. It was hot and humid as expected, but our conversations kept my mind busy and I didn’t feel too exhausted (that would come afterwards). We managed to get the amazing Octopus card, the first chipcard used for transportation systems (oh I love this thing), and managed to find the fish market quiet easily. Other markets we wanted to see were not as easy to find and we’re still not sure if we ever found it or not.

 

The next day, I took a ferry to other parts of Hong Kong, mainly where the skyscrapers and business towers were howering, I was not surprised to see many construction sights and got lost a few times because I discovered, to my surprise, that the actual city in 3D looked nothing like the 2D map (yeah, real surprise).

Later I took a little cable car to Victoria peak to watch the sunset. Unfortunately, the line was incredibly long (welcome to Asia) and when I arrived it looked something like this:

On the way down, I skipped the long cable car queue and walked down, in between hotel skyscrapers built halfway up the hill and some roads for taxis to drive on so they can pick up hotel guests from the hotels. I think that I missed the direct way down because it took more than 90min for me to reach the next metro station, but I made it sound and safely into the hostel (but hungry, missed dinner time).

The grand buddha was on my list for the next day, at the gondola station, I saw a storm warning, but quickly discarded it since I did not see any clouds in the sky. Asian tourism traps amaze me everytime, this time, there were two types of gondola to choose from, the standard one and one they called the crystal cabin which basically only had a clear bottom so you could see through it. They charged double for it. Consequently, half of the gondolas were empty and the queue very long. -.-

On the way up to the grand buddha, I discovered a new Asian invention: the selfie-stick. Which, I would later find out, made it to Europe a bit later and is now a must have for tourists.

The village and buddha were a bit too touristy for me, so I headed back pretty soon, but just in time, as it seemed. As soon as I exited the gondola, the storm hit the city and I fled into the next Outlet mall. Bought a new pair of shoes (hey, it was a great deal) which turned out to be a lifesaver because on the way back, my other pair got soaking wet, as well as the rest of me.

 

 

It still rained when I took the ferry back to Kowloon, the fog got denser and denser until the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island disappeared and left LED jack-o’-lanterns hanging in the mist.