Family Travels Part 1: Hong Kong

Many of you probably already know about the ridiculosity that was our first night in Hong Kong, but for those of you who don't, here's the short version: The hotel company booked us a room not simply in the wrong hotel, but in the hotel in the wrong province. A good three hour plane flight away. So seeing the fam was great, but finally getting into bed at 3:something in the morning after all of us having been up for many many hours...was good too.

One of the first things we did on our first day in Hong Kong was take a cable car up one the little mountains to the observation area to take a look at the city. The cable car ride was pretty awesome, and comparable to a ride at disney world. We did occasionally believe the car was going to give up and roll backwards down the hill. That thing was steep.

The view was totally worth it, by the way.

At the top of the mountain, a poor man was being filmed for a movie whilst wearing a full suit. The weather was at least in the 90s, so they kept having to pat his forehead down. I am amazed he did not get heatstroke.  

And, um...yeah.

We took the cable car back down, and Rachel took videos. I really just like this picture. I have no real reason for posting it.

 

People. They were waiting for the cable car. It was like Times Square on New Years Eve, only fewer flashing lights. 

Then more stuff happened. I will now switch to captions, just for the sheer pleasure of messing with you.

A view from the ferry ride back to our island.

Rachel kindly takes a moment to point out our location on the map.

Food. Also, exhaustion.

Strange display of some sort. Not sure what it was for. There were animals riding in teacups/coffee-bean-bag-balloons.

The next day we went to see the giant Buddha. It was cool. Half that coolness was the gondola ride up to it. It went up the mountain, across the water,  over another mountain, over a ways, and then to the Buddha. The ride took about half an hour.

Cuteness.

 And there you can see the Buddha. It's still really far away. It's just super-freaking-huge.

There was a cow. Just...wandering. I couldn't resist.

Many stairs away, the Buddha waits serenely for all the huffing, puffing tourists to make it up the hill. 

Duuuude.

In other news, the hike up to the Buddha also awarded us a wonderful view of the surrounding hills and ocean. 

There was cotton candy. 'nuff said. 

I am still dreaming of this.

 Later, back in the main area of Hong Kong, we saw a temple. It was nicely lit up for the evening.

Also, we went to a market. 

And saw the pretty view of the opposite shoreline at night. It was pretty awesome. 

A/N. Also, Beer.

Ok. Here's the deal: my vpn failed me for over a month, and by that time I was well into the begining of classes and stuff, so the blog just never got updated. So Here's what I'm going to do. I'll post a bunch of pictures of what I've been up to since then, and I'll post them all really soon, but that means no long descriptions, because if I put up nice long stories for everything, I'll never get my midterms done. Which would kind of suck. Really.

So here's the fist one: Qingdao (青岛), which was the two day over-night trip at the end of the Summer semester. We saw a brewery, lots of beer, ate food, lots of beer, climbed a mountain, lots of beer, there was a beach, lots of beer, a night club with a trampoline floor, and lots of beer. If I was in any way inclined to actually like beer, I may have enjoyed the trip just a little bit more. It was pretty fun anyway, though. Even if the entire city does smell like beer.

Qingdao brewery. Bet you guesses as much from the GIANT PACK OF BEER on the roof. No? Well, you have only yourself to blame.

A beer fountain. Fitting.

I don't know if this was meant to read "Careful! Staircase." or "Careful Staircase" but my conclusion is the same in any case. Was this sign put up in response to something? Do many people have problems with the stairs?

Not entirely sure why they had to warn people not to eat this...seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

Shiny beer-making stuff.

The brewery had a drunk room. Just in case anyone interested enough in beer to come see the factory and get free samples didn't know what being drunk was like. The tv screen on the wall is showing us crazy people inside obviously incapable of standing up.

I swear the camera is not tilted.

The night market sells puppies

It also sells loads of chuar (串).

And small turtles.

Some of the apartment buildings had the best paint jobs ever.

Still not entirely sure what the floating thing is above that building. We never could find it during the day.        Therefore, obviously aliens.

There is a reason that five out of the nine people you can see are asleep. That reason being basic college student stupidity, but still. There's a reason.