A day in Hong Kong

For the past day, our ship has been docked at the Port of Hong Kong. Since this time, we are within reasonable distance to the heart of the city, we decided to skip the excursion and see what we could of Hong Kong on our own.

Shortly after we docked, Morgan, Marcus and I took a bus to the Diamond Hill area. We had a bit of an adventure getting cash from the ATM (Kay messes up PIN – Kay locks herself out of account – Kay must contact BMO to get back into accounts…). But no one died – or suffered any pain outside of a slight delay in hydration over that.
Cruises remind me a bit of “tasting menus”. You get a teeny tiny experience of a place. Not enough to get a true sense of the location, but also not enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth either. Our day in Hong Kong coincided with a holiday, which meant that overall – the city and streets were quieter than they would normally be. I expected that we would feel cramped, crowded (and cranky) in Hong Kong during the day. That was not the experience though. What really did strike us, was how high and dense the housing was. We counted 45 floors on the towers in that are in these pictures (and these were not the tallest buildings in the city).

And what balances out high-density housing? Gardens. Beautiful, well designed and maintained gardens. We found ourselves close to the Nan Lian Garden through our wanderings.  This garden was amazing.
There were hundreds (if not thousands) of people in the garden while we were there… and remember… we were in one of the most densely populated places on the planet… but we did not feel like we were crowded at all.
The Nan Lian Garden was a beautiful and peaceful oasis.
In the evening, the four of us ventured to the Temple Street Night Market. From 2 pm – midnight each day, Temple Street is closed to traffic and becomes an active street market. 
This space felt a bit more crowded, like we expected Hong Kong to feel – but it wasn’t overwhelming for any of us. There was plenty of costume jewelry, bags, scarves, souvenirs, sunglasses and other unique things made of plastic there for purchase.
The smells in the market area were a bit more than any of our stomachs were up for, so we didn’t spend a lot of time indulging in the food in the stalls and restaurants. I did grab a waffle though. I can always eat a waffle.
All in all, we enjoyed our brief taste of Hong Kong.