Hong Kong

Typical of the mass of signs on every street.
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We had worked on this around the world trip for months, in bits and pieces with several changes in destinations and everything worked smoothly until we arrived in Hong Kong. It was a small error on our part--we arrived a day early and the hotel was full and didn't seem to have room for us for the extra night.  But they somehow found a room so we were relieved we didn't have to load up our 6 suitcases and go to another hotel for a night.  We stayed at the Sailsbury YMCA and recommend that hotel to anyone visiting Hong Kong.  Forget about the YMCA part; we had a lovely room with a fresh fruit basket, newspapers every morning, and a 5 minute walk to the Star Ferry.  All for a very reasonable price.

A paper lantern store.
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Hong Kong is a place I'm glad I've seen but can't imagine returning.  It is a giant busy city and shopping seems to be the favorite activity.  Stores are open very late, sometimes past midnight.  There is a really fun night market that we cruised through every night looking at all the stalls and buying a few items.

But we spent most of our time crossing the harbor on the Star Ferry.  I loved to watch the activity on the water, with all kinds of working and pleasure boats chugging along.  For breakfast every morning we went to Starbucks and got an "American Brownie" and took it to the promenade to watch the boats.

Street market.
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We never had great weather; it was overcast and cloudy every day.  We heard a local complaining that because of the pollution there were very few sunny picture-perfect days.  Don't know if that is really true but we never got a clear view of the skyscrapers across the water.

This is the last of our exotic locations.  On to Japan and back to the day-to-day routines of shopping, cooking, cleaning and teaching.