Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Hong Kong

August 17th - 21st, 2011

Arrived in Hong Kong on the 17th of August by DragonAir. The line at Customs and Immigration was quite long since a lot of planes must have landed around the same time.
Ranga met us at the HK station - we took the Airport Express from the airport - it was really convenient, even with all our luggage.
After resting for a while, we took the shuttle from the apartment to the "Prince's" building where we met Jayaram. Meghana got a quick snack of delicious trifle pudding at Marks and Spencers. Jayaram took us to "The Peak" (aka Mount Austin/ Victoria Peak) which is a mountain in the western half of HK island, from where we got a beautiful view of HK. We went for a short hike on the trail there. Here are some pictures of The Peak:




View from the top of the Peak:


 View at dusk:




Ranga met us for dinner at the Habibi Cafe:













Causeway Bay:

The next morning we went to the shopper's paradise, Causeway Bay. The bus ride there was interesting since we could see a lot of the city from the upper deck.



















All the designer stores were in the main shopping square and a lot of the more affordable stores were at the back!






























We saw the multi-storied building, "Sogo" and the indoor shopping complex, "Times Square." There was an exhibit of shredded paper art by a Korean artist inside.























Returned to meet Ranga at his office building, IFC or the International Finance Center, overlooking the beautiful Hong Kong Harbor:



IFC's Tower 2 is the second tallest building in HK with 88 stories:



The Big Buddha:

Day 3 took us to Ngong Ping, Lantau Island, in HK, to see the bronze statue of The Big Buddha, aka Tian Tan Buddha. The best part of the trip was the lovely cable car ride with great views (yes, we need a better camera!)
 While waiting in line for the cable car, we saw this huge swimming pool where the locals seemed to be having a lot of fun..........











Our first view of the Big Buddha