Victoria Peak in Hong Kong

This weekend, Vi and I went to Hong Kong. While we've both been to Hong Kong, neither one of us have done a lot of sight-seeing there. The most beautiful place in Hong Kong has to be Victoria Peak, which is on the northwest corner of Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong's split into 3 areas, Kowloon Peninsula, The New Territories and Hong Kong Island.

We simply crossed the border and got aboard the MTR train to Mong Kok station in Kowloon Peninsula. It took us a little under an hour on the train but not bad. We stayed at a hostel called City Plus Hostel. It's extremely cheap for Hong Kong, just HK$ 280 (roughly $40). It was incredibly small but clean and the beds were comfortable so you can't ask for much more. It was also located in a residential building. It had an entrance on Nathan Street, by far the most popular road.

We checked in, dropped our stuff off and headed back to the subway. Unfortunately, it had been raining on and off so we hoped for no rain to the area we were heading. We got off at Central on Hong Kong Island and followed the sign to the lower terminus of the tram and got in line which moved quickly to our delight.

We made the very steep climb up the mountain with gorgeous views of the city. We arrived at the top and made our way up to the top observation deck to get a view with the sunlight. We took many pictures and it really was just beautiful. It's unique because I don't think you can get that kind of view of any other huge skyline anywhere else in the world. It's incredible.

We made our way around the mall and checked out all the restaurante before settling on the Bubba-Gump Restaurant. It was also amazing. I haven't had a real burger in a long time and it was great. We also had an appetizer called "A Road Through America." It had fried shrimp, chilled shrimp, popcorn shrimp, hush puppies and buffalo chicken. Vi said that it was the best shrimp she's ever had. I had a burger with onion rings on it and Vi had a baked rice dish with clams, shrimp and fish. It was all very good and it really felt like I was in America, except the view of the Hong Kong skyline from out table.

After dinner we made our way back to the top observation deck to get some great night shots, which we did. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any great ones with us in the picture with my camera so we had a professional photo taken and bought a frame for it there. It was worth it because the picture's great and it's the first framed picture in the apartment and it's motivated us to print and frame more to put up in the apartment.

The trip was great and we headed back to the hostel to get a good night's sleep. We were exhausted after the day.

In the morning we got up and went to a dim sum restaurant for breakfast. Dim sum is a typical Cantonese breakfast that we love. The dim sum was great and we just walked around the area for the next couple hours before heading back to Shenzhen for a nap.

All in all, it was a great trip to Hong Kong. We'll go again soon but to the outlying islands for hiking and relaxing.

Check out the incredible pictures.

An Aussie Burger

Last night some of the teachers and myself went to a sports bar to try to watch Andy Roddick play against Andy Murray in the semi-finals of Wimbledon (American vs British). There, I decided to get a burger. The owner explained to me what was on the burger, pretty normal until he said, "Oh yeah, we put pineapple and a slice of pickled beet root on top of the buger." Well, this kind of threw me as I never would've guessed that, especially the beet root considering I don't think I've ever had beets. Anyways, I got the burger and it was quite good. The pineapples and beet root added an interesting flavor and the burger was quite delicious. I just wanted to share that this is considered a normal burger in Australia. If you were to go to a family bbq, they would all have pineapple and beet root on their burgers. Also, when you say Aussie, you need to pronounce the "ss" as a "z" sound or they're not happy. I was corrected on this many times last night. Just thought the Aussie burger was different and needed to be shared.