Day Thirty-Four

So today was a little bit more eventful than yesterday... I went to Hong Kong! I was pretty close to not even going too. Last night I couldn't fall asleep, ( I think I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning, just trying to read myself to sleep). Despite my utter exhaustion from almost no sleep I managed to gather enough energy to get up, get ready, and go to the dock to catch our boat.

We got to Hong Kong around ten o'clock and right on time to see the Handover Parade at the Happy Valley Sports grounds. In case you didn't know, Hong Kong, exactly ten years ago, was a British colony. In 1997 England gave Hong Kong back to the Republic of China. July 1st of this year celebrated the Tenth Anniversary since the handover, (quite a big deal for Hong Kong). There were multiple ceremonies, including parades, sports matches, and other miscellaneous festivities.

The Happy Valley Sports grounds was the point at which the main Handover parade began. The main portion of the show consisted of synchronized skydivers flying down in different costumes with flares, smoke bombs, and fireworks.

When we finished at the sports grounds we grabbed a taxi and went to Hong Kong's Times Square. Although Hong Kong's Times Square is nothing like New York's it was still amazing. We ate lunch at the Times Square and then took off to the Peak Galleria.

The Peak Galleria is a giant shopping mall at the top of a hill that sits behind Hong Kong. It can be reached by one of two ways; tram or taxi. We opted to take a taxi but came back on the tram. While we were at the peak we took a bunch of pictures of Hong Kong's amazing cityscape.

Once we got back to the base of the hill we hired a taxi to take us to Victoria Park. Unfortunately, the cultural parade we had hoped to see ended up being a Worker's Rights March. Not really in the mood to be activists we jumped out of the taxi and just explored the city on foot.

We walked to the Hong Kong Convention Center, located on the ocean and then walked all the way to Hong Kong's Soho district. At the Soho district we had a small snack and a couple drinks at a bar called Staunton's. Once we finished with our snack we had a taxi take us to Lan Kwai Fong, a district filled with various flavors of bars and pubs. By the time we finished our drinks we were pretty tired. We shot back down to the Hong Kong dock and hopped onto a ferry to come back to Macau. Home sweet home now, I think we're going to watch a movie tonight and then catch up on some sleep. Night everyone.