Hong Kong

We spent the day exploring the So Ho area on the island. It's an old part with steep streets and banyan trees. Everything seems to be growing. There are trees coming out on the sides of buildings, it's pretty cool! We walked down one street that had a market going for blocks. It sold everything from luck charms to dried squid. Streets are really narrow and busy, they mostly have english names like, Hollywood and Peel. A lot is under construction and all the scaffolding is made out of bamboo, which seems kinda crazy but aparently it's stronger than steel by weight! On our way from the train station to our cousin Ryans apartment we took the longest outdoor escelator in the world, it was great because we were tired. It was in the air like a +15. Ryan is great and he is putting us up. We went for lunch with him to a place he knows and he ordered his favorites. Crispy duck and peanut soup that was so spicy I cried a little. We had a good time trying to explain to the waitress that dad couldn't have peanuts. Ryan lives just off of a street called Ladder, cars can't go on it because it's steep and only has stairs. Ryan has lived in HK for 6 and a half years, he's a broker and loves it here and I can really see why: this city is so full of life, you could explore around and never get bored. I've never seen a city like this. (or been old enough to remember) Signs hang onto the street and everything's so colourful. There such a huge contrast between run down building and the new, glass highrises. The mish mash of contrasts is so overwhelming, it's hard to take it all in.

Pat loves the urban area because it is so vibrant, he drooled over the parks and busy shopping areas. He took a couple pictures of park signs to show his colleagues. In a garden called Hollywood Park there is a small section with a rough pebbly pavement that you can walk on without shoes and it gives you sort of a shiatsu foot massage, (P: inovative landscape design!) we found it painful and a couple local seniors thought our reactions were pretty funny.

Tonight we fly to Kathmandu. We'll spend a couple days in HK on the way back.