Benjamin

One year I went to Toronto to see the Virgin Music Festival, which was held on the islands. Not all of them were open, but basically it is a collection of small islands connected by bridges across some canals, a bit out into Lake Ontario. That alone makes it pretty cool. At night you get a great skyline view of Toronto. From what I saw, the islands are mostly set up like a nice park with benches and grills, etc. In addition, there is a small amusement ride area. I was there for the concerts, but on the 2nd day of the festival they opened up these rides for free. Bumper boats, a small Ferris Wheel, spinning cups, a water coaster. It is not some high end amusement park kind of set up, but it was a very fun and relaxing surprise for me. Even with all of the stages and music going on at the festival, I could tell that normally the place was set up as a relaxing park to visit and kind of get away from the city just across the water. Cool place.

Antarctica seems like a big frozen mystery to me, and I would like to say I had set foot on the place. The idea of it gives me this strange kind of awe. Another thing is that I would like to experience 24 hours of daylight and 24 hours of night. So, putting the two together means that I would like to visit Antarctica in late December for 24 hours of light, as it would be the warmer option of the 2. I would probably combine it with a trip to New Zealand. For 24 hours of night I will consider far northern Alaska the next year maybe. Then I will get a chance to see some nice Northern Lights too, I hope. And take good long exposure photos of the lights. We get them occasionally here in Michigan, but it is too rare!

I visited Hong Kong in mid/late November of 2005. I have a friend who had been living there for quite some time working on his PhD, and all of his friends and family had visited him except me. I consider him a very good friend, so I was feeling like a bum. I had never travelled outside the country before…

If you are curious, I found the whole thing to be pretty easy to pull off. I just had to get a passport, which can take up to 6 weeks to arrive if you haven’t got one yet. Its good for 10 years once you get it though. After that I just used some service like Priceline or something to look for a ticket. I forget what the round trip cost was now… I think I went at a cheap time though. The weather in Hong Kong while I was there was in the mid 70s to low 80s and humid. According to my friend, it is supposed to be one of the niceset times of year, though with all of the walking I found it a touch warm.

I had the advantage of having a friend for a guide who had lived there for about 2 years at the time, but even without that, I think if you are a typical mono-lingual American you can get by pretty well. Most people there can speak English. Even if you end up in a store where amazingly no one speaks English, you don’t even need it if you are just buying things. Just nod and hand them your money. All of the subways have announcements in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and the signs are in Chinese and English also. For money, I was able to just use my debit card at the ATMs they have all over (subway stations are a reliable place to find them) and withdraw Hong Kong dollars. Another nice thing to do would be to get an “Octopus Card”. These are cards you can add money to and stick in your wallet. If you stop by a 7-11 (of which there are 30 million in HK), you can pick up some goodies and then to check out you can just pass your wallet or purse over the reader and it will deduct the money for you. The other main advantage to the Octopus card is public transportation. Ferries, busses, and subway station turnstile all have readers for the Octopus card so you can board quickly and easily. Also, when you use a card reader, it will show you the current balance.

It would take forever for me to be your tour guide, but a couple places I really liked were taking the trail up to Victoria Peak, and the island of Cheung Chau. Try to get some Victoria Peak during the day and night. If you take the trail down from the Peak a bit at night you will get great skyline views of the Harbor over towards Kowloon. If the walk kills you (and it might), there is a tram also. Cheung Chao is a small fishing island, but there are nice naturey trails and a small cave that I enjoyed. The town in the center of the island (which is very narrow) has a fishing port on one side, and a swimming beach on the other. Another common tourist spot is the Giant Buddha at the Po Lin monastary on Lantau. It is a scenic, twisty drive up there, and the monastary is nice enough, but I personally enjoyed the great views once you get up on the Buddha. On a clear day you can make out a bit of other islands, out past the wooded hills and across some ocean. Aside from that, on Hong Kong island and in Kowloon there are a million opportunities to shop, from street markets to these packed together mini-stores, etc.

Hopefully I was a little help to you. There is much more to see in Hong Kong than I could mention in this brief entry. You would not have trouble filling 2 weeks with activity. Just remember to do some research before you come out and you should have fun.