A Potpourri of Pictures

posted/titled by josh but written by megan
Before we move into thoughts, experiences, and photos from a new country (Cambodia), we want to make a few comments on Hong Kong. First of all, we had a great time, partly thanks to our hosts (a friend of mine from Columbia and her husband).

I think one thing that surprised us about HongKong was that it was just another city. Unique, fun, beautiful and dirty, most recommendable... but another city none-the-less. I would not be writing that if I hadn't lived in New York for a while. Coming from small towns, cities were enigmas to Josh and I, but now we know what to do and how to handle them, more or less. Compared to New York, Hong Kong certainly felt as though it were squished into the size of Manhattan and then pulled up a dozen or so stories. And most of the side streets felt like Chinatown (go figure), full of people, bright signs in Cantonese, lots of vendors. The most common activities were eating and shopping. Markets are all over the place. This photo is from a night market on Temple Street on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong (the "city" straddles a few islands):What also struck us was that each market, or street, more specifically, sold its own thing. We saw the flower market, bird market (with toucans, parakeets, bird cages and everything), goldfish street, women's market, dried food street (giving us many of the photos from the "name that food" contest), shoe street, bird's nest and ginger street... Below is a photo from the goldfish street.
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Certainly one of the best and most beautiful features of HongKong is that it is made up of a number of green, hilly islands, and water is everywhere. Because the central part of the city is also on its own hilly island, living a bit outside of city center means you have a decent vertical drop to cover... so the city built the longest outside escalator in the world! We thought this was pretty funny. Convenient, but funny.We had a full week to explore the city, so we went to Stanley (on the other side of Hong Kong island), Lamma Island and Lantau Island. Lantau has a great gondola ride up to a big sitting buddha. The photos below are from Lamma Island, a nice place for beaches, fishing villages, and walks along the ridge. It was also our first really hot day, and we were greatly impressed and amazed by the Chinese wearing jeans and even sweaters!
View of the city where we caught a return ferry:

a woman collecting clams (there was an interesting mix of old and new here, much like hong kong itself):
Me and the view back towards where we came from (our hike was called a "family walk" and since it was sunday, it was full of families!):

Night view of hong kong (every night at 8pm the city has a laser light show using all the buildings, which works well since the city is on an island and you can view it from the Kowloon side. It's a little long and cheesy, but we decided that Times Square should definitely try its own version. I can only imagine all those lights turned off and then blindingly coming back on to a nice techno beat...):

That's all we had time to upload/write. We are now in Siem Reap, Cambodia, near Ankor Wat, heading to Pnom Penh tomorrow morning. It was quite the adventure getting here, but we will save that story for another day...