This is my blog entry for day three. It involves the temple again, some museums, Victoria Peak and an attempt to eat Chinese dumplings. Plus, I figured out how to add a picture gallery.
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So in the morning we got up early and went to the temple. This time I did a session and once again was amazed by the use of space. The celestial room was actually surprisingly big and really nice. It was different not having a tall ceiling in there though.
After that we had lunch (PB&J) and then headed off to the Hong Kong history museum. The journey out there was a lot of fun because it was our first time using there public transport rail system. Cool fact: Hong Kong has the most use public transport system in the world. After we got off the train, we walked quite a long ways to get the museum. One thing that I noticed about Hong Kong while walking that day was that there are quite a few 7-Elevens in that town. They did have Slurpee’s but we didn’t notice that until it was too late.
When we got to the museum, we found out that it was free admission day which meant that the adjoining science museum was free as well.
The history museum was quite interesting. They had a lot of exhibits detailing the history of the area and how it became was it is today. As is quite common with me, I found the modern history to be the most interesting. We wanted to split the time we had evenly with the two museums so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to see everything. I am one of those people that could read everything in the museum if I had the time too.
The science museum was cool too. Imagine a Discovery Center on an overdose of steroids. One exhibit that I liked was one where they had small streams of falling water with a very quickly flashing strobe light in front of it. The effect was that it looked like the water droplets were just floating there and sometimes they looked like they were moving upwards. Another display that I like was a cut out of a diesel engine.
After that we caught another subway to Victoria Peak. Victoria Peak is the point from which almost every picture of the downtown of Hong Kong is taken from. To get to the top of it you have to take a tram up there (which was a tourist trap of course). That ride was a fun one because it was super steep and I was standing up in a kind of awkward position so it was a bit intense at times.
Once we got to the top, we then had to take about five flights of escalaters to get to the viewing platform. Once there we had a really awesome view of the city. From one side you had a view of the downtown and then from the other you had a view of a harbor and a beautiful sunset. On the top they had a display thing that you could hang a love note on. That was pretty cool. There was also a dragon dancer that showed up on top as well. On the way down from the top we had a pretty cool view of the city and the lights.
The lights are a pretty cool part of the town. Almost all of the tall buildings in central Hong Kong are lit up in some fashion. I believe it is part of a tourism initiative to attract people to the town. It was really cool to see it all from the ground as we were making our way to restaurant that we were going to eat at.
This place was our first experience of Chinese food. Here we had what they call dumplings. I was expecting something like what we call dumplings in the western world but they were more like pot stickers. The food was fried in oil so it was quite greasy and if you weren’t careful, the hot oil inside the dumpling would explode in your mouth or on your hand. Sometimes even your neighbor. Haha, but the food was really good and a fun experience.
After that we went back to the housing. With my feet sore and still a bit swollen, I laid down and accidentally fell asleep again.