The Waygookin Way: Vacation - 1st Stop

Hello everyone!!! We're back in Yeoju after our super-fantastic-non-stop-awesomeness vacation. Now we have the enormous task of loading / sorting / editing the 2 million photos we took. We'll try to do this in chronological order, splitting it up as we see fit. This post has over 25 pics and this was just a 22 hour stopover!! Welly well, here we go . . .

As luck would have it, we were able to book our flight to Bangkok with a long stopover in Hong Kong. We arrived in the evening . . . and it was HOT (in fact our entire vacation was ridiculously hot - more on that later). We caught a double-decker bus and headed to our guesthouse.

We were booked for the night at the Yiu Fai Guesthouse in Kowloon which is part of mainland China. It was clean and safe but maybe a little on the small side. Space is at a premium in Hong Kong so this is what our budget afforded us . . . a closet with a bed.

Our view was a little lackluster but hey, check out the cool bamboo scaffolding - not sure I'd wanna climb up that. Even in Cambodia they were using modern metal scaffolding. Well, enough about scaffolding. If you want to read more you'll have to check Wikipedia.

The location of Yiu Fai Guesthouse was amazing!! The subway was right outside the door, we could walk North and hit the main shopping district, or walk South and get to the harbour . . . which is exactly what we did.

We watched some of lights at the harbour-front and then hopped on a ferry to Hong Kong Island. Then we took a short bus ride to the Peak Tram. We obviously weren't the only ones heading up the hill that evening . . .

The Peak Tram takes people from Central District up to Victoria Peak. The tram ride is a kilometer and a half and takes passengers almost 400 metres high. It's been running since the 1880's.

The ride was fun - at the top they had souvenirs, attractions, and restaurants (not unlike the CN Tower).

At the top we went to the lookout points but we were greeted with fog (the pea-soup kind). We couldn't see past our noses but we had a good laugh about it anyway.

Our time in Hong Kong was precious so we went back to the mainland and went in search of food.
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Lucky - we found a McDonalds!!!

Really??. . .Do you think we're crazy??? We just used their bathrooms and went in search of real food . . . and we found it.

We went to the Temple Street Night Market and wandered for a while checking out all the bootlegs and fake watches. Around 11:00(late dinner), we stopped where there were a group of small restaurants with patios that spilled out into the streets. We headed straight for the busiest one . . .

A delicious Chinese dinner with some San Miguel (brewed in Hong Kong) and we couldn't be happier.

Then we called it a night and hopped the subway back to the guesthouse. We wanted to fit in some sightseeing before our flight the next day.

We woke up early and went to the Nan Lian Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery for a beautiful stroll.

We could smell the incense and hear the chanting. It was a calm and relaxing place to offset the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong.

We had one last stop in mind before heading to the airport. . .The Jade Market - a vast complex devoted entirely to Jade hawkers.

Shawna made friends with this hawker and after some serious bartering back and forth with the calculator (see photo) ended up with a small keepsake from her first trip to China.

Well, we had no choice but to hop on a bus and catch our flight to Bangkok. The double-decker bus ride gave us a glimpse into the shipping yards of China on the way to the airport. Absolutely Massive! Imagine all of those 'Made in China' things inside those crates.