I arrived in pretty late and stayed at a nice hostel in Hong Kong Island, where the Dark knight scene is performed, for about 149hkd, which was worth it because Hong Kong is very compact like every big city.
I only booked for a night because I wanted to check out the other areasof the city and get a feel for most of the place. So I booked a place on Nathan Road in the ChungKing Mansions, don't do unless you want a crazy time or have been through India and if your a girl I wouldn't recommend it because I've heard of rape stories, for around 70hkd. I don't want to say too much about it but a lot of smells - shit, garbage, Indian food, and a lot of Nigerians, Indians, and Pakistanis yelling at you to buy stuff which I've already dealt with so it's nothing. Plus the room was more like a prison cell with no windows and was super costraphobic. I booked one night there and was pretty close to not staying there because the smell of smoke was pretty bad, too much is just irritating, but I managed till the next day.
I mean dont get me wrong the area around there and Nathan Road is very cool though. It's filled with malls and millions of shops to very high end shops to fake stuff as well.
I then found a place up north near Mong Kok station, which is where the Lady Market is, and found a nice place in an ok building right across the street of Argyle called Dragon Hostel. The room was similar to the Singh Guest House, the Chungking experience, as in a small bathroom, small room with no windows of light but much cleaner and a way better energy with the price of paying a 100hkd a night. I stayed there for two nights while running around the city checking out small delicious noodles and rice places to eat with also a climbing gym in Kowloon called Just Climb to get my strength back.
After deciding I had a little extra time on my hands I booked a return flight to Xi'an, where the Terra Cotta Warriors are. I was really surprised on the way from the airport to the city because there was a Million, exaggeration of probably 30, high rise apartment buildings already built and more being built!
I got into the city by the airport bus which costs 26yuan and as soon as I got off it was back to the bargaining games right away with a storm of taxi drivers, tuk tuk peddlers, and motorbike hop on the back dudes nipping at me like a pack of Hyena's. I got a motorbike man to take me to my Hostel, Warriors cat piss Hostel that is for 30yuan a night in a mixed dorm, which was a quarter half mile away for 10yuan, which 1usd = 6yuan roughly fluctuating, and was stoked because the place looked just like a backpackers cool hangout. There was a lot of backpackers there but most of everyone was doing they're own thing so I planned on going to see the Terra Cotta warriors the next day by myself and then head out the next day in the morning. But while I was there I did end up playing some pool with some Chinese gents and gals. But back to the cat piss part of the story....
The hostel has a black and white fur knotted cat that pisses everywhere and they didnt seem to do anything about the smell or didn't notice the smell. So most of the downstairs, where the dorms and pool table is, smells like cat piss. So uou could imagine playing pool with people smoking cigs with cat piss was just delightful. But luckily my bed or the room I was staying in didn't get hit by the pussy so I was happy. But again 5usd for a nice bed, some pool table action, a good restaurant that I forgot to mention with cool staff who wanted to work on their English while teaching me Chinese, and just a cool environment overruled the cat piss that came from the unknotted and need to be shaved pussy so far.
I woke up the next day and set out to find me some cool history of the Terra Cotta Warriors and believe me it was a trek. A 30 minute public bus ride to get to the train station that almost blew out its brakes, hit pedestrians, ran over scooters, and rear ended other busses or cars. Then a 1hr and a half bus that stopped to yell at people to come to the Terra Cotta warriors. Then when I got there I walked to the other side of the whole place to buy a ticket which ended up being a student ticket on accident.
After realizing that, I walked through a million shops and vendors yelling at me to buy noodles, buy jade, and buy a sword? Why do I need a sword? Then I got to the gate after all the yelling and was faced with the ticket man asking me where's your student ID and I'm like here you go, ahowing my drivers license, which he didn't know the difference and gave it back with letting me in. An accident that turned into a WIN.
I then got in and there's three pits to see so I decided to see pit one and three, but they were so dark that you couldn't really see what you where looking at. I then meandered into pit two with hoping for light and was like: "whoa, here we go!" At the time it felt like you were in a spaceship dome with the sun peering through the ceiling and the crazy eerieness of the past about the warriors overwhelmed your imagination.
So a aimple brief tell you my way summary about them is that all of them are different, they were individually made by one artist to one soldier, the Emperor made them so he could rain in his afterlife, the generals are made taller than the soldiers, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang was crazy and his advisors were telling him that small amounts of mercury per day would make him a god, but in turn it made him a little more and more coo Koo so he decided to murder all the artists so no one could find a weakness about his soldiers, but in the end of massacuring millions of people he brought the seven parts of China to unification. So that whole part was very interesting and also a mind boggler.
But I then had to take the same journey back through the peddlers and the 1hr and a half bus to the crazy similar Beijing and New Delhi train station filled with massive amounts of people to transfer back on the public crazy brake busting head bobbing bus to get to the hostel.
After that I took it easy for the night with some cat piss pool and then the next morning headed back to Hong Kong.
This time I didn't want to mess around with sketchy places again so I booked the rest of my stay back in the place I first came to, Yesinn in Fortress Hill for 149hkd a night, and then decided to check out the rest of Hong Kong I didn't get to see. And in addition a friend, Kaila Sweeney, I met in Laos came into town and we saw some cool stuff together. We ended up taking the ferry from Hong Kong side to Hong Kong island, walking around most of the business district, went to Victoria peak because the weather was superb, and had run through the lady market before she headed off home to Canada. The next couple days I went to a cool climbing gym called Da Verm and played some basketball at the local courts of Victoria park and Wan Chai playground which was a good four plus sweat each time.
Today I hung out and grabbed some food then met a cool French exchange student who has been staying in China for over 9 months whose name is also Julien but with an e.
Now I'm awaiting for my plane to depart out of Hong Kong and head out to South Africa for a Safari adventure with a good couple of friends, Digby and Jessica Bam who are brother/sister, I met in Ko Samui Thailand.
Stoked.
Some thoughts lately.... In the photos...
Enjoy the pictures!
Some make me go wow and I still feel like I'm there...
Bye for now...
All written by yours truly....
Beautiful view above the clouds. In the sky.
That's what I'm about
The night view of Victoria harbor, amazing.
Which one is better?
Dragon hostels view of the courtyard.
