A Day in the Life of Hong Kong

Whew! I'm glad I got that post about the Philippines off my chest. Now on to my most favoritest city, Hong Kong.

After flying back from Manila, we had a couple of days to spend in Hong Kong before moving on to Macau. Some background: Hong Kong consists of Hong Kong Island, which has all the big shiny buildings; Kowloon, which is a peninsula across the harbor, and the New Territories, which lie between Kowloon and the mainland and are more rural. We stayed in a hotel in Kowloon but did most of our sightseeing on the island.

First, we took the tram to Victoria Peak on the island, which is probably the most popular tourist activity. You get an OK view of the city, but I prefer the view of the skyline from the Kowloon promenade across Victoria Harbor (you can see a photo in the very first post about Hong Kong; unfortunately I can't link back to anything because of the net nanny, so you'll have to hunt for it yourself).

At the top of Victoria Peak (the sun was really bright and my sunglasses were broken--that's why I look like I'm in pain).

For dinner, we ate dim sum at, well, Dim Sum. This is the most famous type of Cantonese food, but we had pretty low expectations because dim sum in Beijing is not so great. Dim sum in Hong Kong, however, is fabulous, at least at this restaurant. We ordered duck dumplings, pork rolls, mango fritters, and rice in bamboo with pork. It was all so, so yummy...my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Dim sum = yum.

The restaurant was conveniently located near the Happy Valley Racecourse, and it conveniently happened to be a race night, so that's what we did in the evening (that's one of the two super cool things we did that I posted about earlier). Horse racing is huge in Hong Kong, and Happy Valley is pretty much the only "inner city" racecourse, so we felt lucky to have this quintessential Hong Kong experience that most tourists probably miss.

View from the stands.

Waiting for a race to begin. (Note the mister trying to keep everyone cool.)

Warming up before a race.



Beverage of choice: beer through a straw.

There were 8 races, and we stayed for 5. Betting can get quite complicated, so on last race we simply bet $1 on a horse (I think his name was Shining Dragon) to place in the top 3. For awhile it looked like he was going to win, but in the last few seconds he got pushed into the rail and came in second to last. That was enough betting for me! We were pretty exhausted anyway--it had been a long day.