Hong Kong with one of my favorites!

Mandy So is one of my favorite people ever. I came to Hong Kong and booked a hostel for far too much money - $22 USD a night which is way off budget for me. It seems that accomidation is very expensive in Hong Kong so I booked one of the cheapest places I could find that didn't have terrible reviews. It turns out the hostel was okay but in a very very sketchy building. While entering the Chung King Mansion I was staight up hasseled by a ton of dudes standing outside. I had to tell them to leave me alone at least 4 times so that I could find the elevator. I finally gave them my NYC stare and they backed off.

The room was clean and the staff were nice but when I told Mandy, a friend and coworker from college where I was staying she insisted that I leave. Aparently there was a Canadian girl who went missing there a while back and she and her family prefered I stay at their apartment. I happily took up their offer (mostly because I kept on thinking how terrifying it would be if there was a fire in the building and I was on the 13th floor) and packed up my stuff and left.

Mandy hosted me the entire time and took me all over the city. I came to really like Hong Kong because of the delicious food and the enormity of the city. It was also shocking how green it could become if you just drove a little farther north. I  loved getting to know Mandy and her life in Hong Kong. Her family was so nice to me and took me out to dim sum and treated me like they had known for a long time. I was constantly commenting on the fact that I loved seeing Mandy's life in action, speaking Cantonese, her parents small obsession with Chinese Opera, and going out to dinner and hearing and seeing all the small rituals in every day life. I got to meet her parents, brother, sister in law, grandmother and boyfriend (a keeper because he's a super nice guy and likes the sox) all in one visit. I often am staying at hostels and meeting up with other westerners and never feeling like I got the sense of the city but Hong Kong was different. 

A few Hong Kong highlights:

- Riding the tram to The Peaks and checking out the view of the entire city:

- Going to the Peninsula Hotel for high tea

- Beautiful, incense-filled temples!

- The Hong Kong Museum of History

- And catching up with Mandy in her city

You all will be happy to know that 2 days after I left Hong Kong Mandy messaged me to let me know that there was fire in the hostel that I stayed at and the entire building was evacuated. Whew. I would have been terrified. What are the chances that I would escape another near death experience?

Check out a few more pictures from Hong Kong:

It's time to move on once again. The initial plan was to stay in Hong Kong and head into China but since I spent some extra time in Thailand and the Chinese visa cost a bit of money I decided to skip China altogether and save it for another trip. I'm on to South Korea now and catching up with some more friends living abroad.