“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien (Part 1)

Sometimes, those who wander were just too busy with work and life to help plan a vacation.

Instead those said people rely on good friends to plan out parts of the holiday so that said people know awesome things await without having to know all the details...

I've had the pleasure to travel abroad (Guatemala and India) with my fellow companions in the not so recent past, so I knew I was in good hands.

My travel companions

We packed in three destinations in a short, less than 2 week trip, spending 3-4 days in each locale. It was an AWESOME vacation. So good that the other day, I fell asleep right after I got off work, woke up in pitch darkness and wondered, "Where am I? What country am I in?" So yeah I'm a bit jet lagged, but it was worth it!

Just a little background:

I basically tagged along on this trip. Two of my grad school classmates were getting married and two of my other classmates were determined to go to the wedding. They set up the general itinerary and then convinced a handful of us to go. (Yeah, you can see the scars on my arm from having them twist it... um, not so much...) I had not been to any of the destinations and a chance to hang out with this crew, count me in!

First stop: Hong Kong

Hong Kong Island Skyline

 I have a friend that lives here as an ex-pat. She was super helpful and gave me advice on how to get to the hotel from the airport. My friends arrived together from New York about 4 hours earlier, while I got in from LA around 11pm. With my friend's advice, I took a local bus to the hotel.

MTR subway

My friends thought I was quite brave to navigate the city alone around midnight, but I had faith in my ex-pat pal. She surely wouldn't have allowed me to roam around the streets in the middle of the night if she thought it was a bad neighborhood! :)

I felt a little like I was on my own mini version of Amazing Race. I had no idea what I was doing but figured things out. (Thank goodness that a lot of the signs are in English as well!)

We stayed at Eaton Hotel in Kowloon. Great location, close to a few MTR (subway) stops and lots of great places to eat! For help on that, I looked up Anthony Bourdain's excursions and a few other food blogs.

The MTR is an awesome subway system. It's very clean, the trains are seemingly endless and when you are in the station, they have well labelled exits to help you figure out where you need to go.

When we were looking at places in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST to the locals), I remembered this from Russell Peters:

That guy cracks me up! Ok, I digress...

We took a series of walking tours and different neighborhoods. While we were in Central, we stopped off at Kau Kee for some beef brisket noodles.

We had a core group of 5, but were lucky enough to have others join us at varying points of each leg to even us out to 6. Our Taiwanese friend joined us on our first tour of HK.

Kau Kee

As a party of 6, there were not enough seats for all of us, so we initially sat apart with other diners. This is quite typical in these smaller places, but when the table opened up, we got the guys to come over.

Even though the bowls looked small (especially compared to American standards), it was a hearty meal and delicious! The noodles started off a bit al dente, but the warm and savory broth softened them to a perfect texture. I'm craving a bowl right now!

Lunar New Year Lantern Display

Chinese New Year (aka Tet for my peeps) was at the end of January this year and lucky for us, we caught the tail end of the light display at the Cultural Center in TST. We took the Star Ferry over and got great views of the Hong Kong skyline (see above) and got to see the Symphony of Lights. Frankly, the skyline itself was more impressive, especially if you've seen things like the fountain show at Bellagio in Las Vegas. Just sayin!

The lanterns had a Love theme, showcasing various wedding related things, which seemed appropriate, since our next adventure would take us to our friend's wedding in Manila.

Tian Tan Buddha

But before that, we took a ride on a glass bottom gondola to see the Big Buddha. My recommendation would be to go up on a regular gondola and go down on a glass bottom cable car. We ended up waiting in a long line and if we reversed it, we would have been golden! You can also take a hike up to the top, but after seeing the path from above, I wouldn't recommend it unless you had a good half a day to get up.

It's totally worth it to traverse those extra 250+ steps to get to the top. The views are beautiful and it's not as bad as you might think! (Unless you have joint problems that is!)

Hong Kong is such an interesting place with a rich history. It's very humbling to walk around with the hundreds of skyscrapers looming over us. It seemed like temples were around random corners and much of the historic sites seemed to have been replaced by newer buildings.

In the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Center there is a library and free museum on the 55th floor that displays  a picture of HK in 1895 where the tallest building was about 3 stories high. What a difference several decades make!

Victoria's Peak

One of the best views of the city is at Victoria's Peak. Even with the fog that rolled in, we were still able to capture beautiful views. There are several trails around the peak as well as a mall where my friends were able to pick up some souvenirs. If we had enough time, it would have been an amazing to see the view at night.

We had the company of another friend who has been working there for several years and introduced us to another side of Hong Kong: Lan Kwai Fong (aka LKF).

LKF

We had done most of our sight seeing during the day and had yet to explore the night life. Filled with foreigners (like us), loud music and drinking on the streets, we were determined to live it up on our last night in HK. Such the party animals, we made it past midnight! =)