May 10 and 11, 2009:
After Yangshuo we took a quick day and a half visit to Hong Kong. To get there we flew from Guilin to Shenzhen, which was much cheaper than flying directly into Hong Kong. After spending the night in Shenzhen we took a taxi to the Lo Wu MRT station where we cleared immigration. Even though Hong Kong is a part of China it is a SAR (Special Administrative Region), which grants it many civil liberties, most important of those is free speech! In Hong Kong you will see a lot of posters about the human rights issues in mainland China and it is perfectly legal.
We took the MRT into Hong Kong, but then we had trouble finding our hotel. The address said it was near the Mid-Levels Escalator, but I never imagined such a long escalator, that snaked up above the steep hills of Hong Kong. It turned out that it is the world’s longest outdoor escalator system! Some very friendly people stopped to help us find our way when they saw that we were lost, and we eventually found our hotel near the top of the escalator system.
After checking in we took the bus down to the Star Ferry, which we took across to the Kowloon side. It was a short 5-minute and enjoyable ride. The fair is low enough to ride it back and forth just for the view of the city lights.
After checking out the endless malls on the Kowloon side we headed back to the Hong Kong Island side.
The next morning we got up early and took the cable car up the very steep hill to the Victoria Peak viewpoint.
That was only our morning excursion… our adventure continued that afternoon!