Sea Day/Hong Kong/Sea Day

March 22nd-24th
Sea Day/Hong Kong/Sea Day

As usual, nothing much to say about the sea days, but I have finally gotten my schedule worked out and started my gym routine back up again, so that’s nice to get going. But the 23rd was Hong Kong and my first day to actually get out and explore downtown, and let me say, that city is amazing. It’s kind of hard to explain, but the development, architecture, and layout is just amazing. First, I had to take a ferry from the dock across to river to the downtown area, something costing about $2 hong kong, or about 30 cents US. Unlike Sanya, it was really easy to find a place to exchange money, so that wasn’t a problem. Then, I started out by spending 3 hours on my computer in a mall picking up one of the twenty wi-fi signals I was detecting. It was really nice to be able to go on and do all the surfing I haven’t been able to do without paying for it, but by the time my battery was drained, I had completely forgotten about making these posts, oops! At that point, I bought an apple cinnamon pretzel at the café I’d been sitting at and headed out to find whatever I was to find. I started by just checking out the mall I was in, which was really really nice. I checked out a couple of the shops and after figuring out the clothing in downtown Hong Kong wasn’t really any cheaper than the rest of the world, I left for the city. Now the layout of the city is crisscrossed with pedestrian foot bridges, a maze of walkways that without, it’d be virtually impossible to cross certain streets and return back to my ferry. So after walking into the city a good distance via these bridges, I decided to risk it and get down to street level, at which point I quickly discovered how much more difficult is was to get around walking at street level. I walked for 50 minutes or so before I thought I should make my way back to the ferry with enough time to spare for getting lost or completely confused, luckily, neither of which happened. I did successfully find my way back up to the bridges though, and then navigated the maze back to the central bridge that returned me to my ferry, and for another 30 cents returned to my dock. I still had some time though when I got back near the ship, so I figured I’d walk around a little more and see what was on my side of the river, not to mention I really wanted some food. So after walking for a bit, I saw a sign for a music store which I followed down below street level, where I came across a huge food court and crummy CD shop. Well, the food court looked great, so after figuring out their ordering process, and got real ramen noodles!! For $20, or $3 US I got a HUGE bowl of ramen, and the noodles were fantastic. It was called Tokyo ramen, which meant they put a slice of beef on the top, but this ramen is soooo much better than the dorm classic. So I quickly ate and ran back to the ship to get ready for boat drill, and that was about it for the day. I really can’t wait to go back to Hong Kong though, especially now that I’m familiar with it. And like I said, the next day was a sea day, uneventful as usual, just a couple big band sets to play. Tomorrow is Taiwan! Have a great day!