PICTURES OF OUR HK HOOD

As requested, here are some shots of the streets of Hong Kong and what we see outside our door everyday.

Well what is outside our door? A bakery, karaoke bar, HSBC bank, lingerie shop, breakfast restaurant, and the list goes on. Here is Jenn standing on our street followed by a rainy night shot from a tram pulling into the closest stop to our building.

Below is a shot of a tram pulling into the tram stop. The trams are our favourite way to travel on the island. They have no air con and are rickety and noisy but they only cost $2 HKD which is about 30 cents Canadian and if you climb up to the top deck the higher view gives you a different perspective of the streets.

Here is a shot taken on the Star Ferry which travels from the Mainland or Kowloon side of Hong Kong to the Island side (the Island side is known as, you guessed it Hong Kong Island). Riding the ferry allows you to see just how busy the harbour really is. With barges, cruise liners, fishing boats, luxury cruisers, Chinese junks, house boats, the ferry you're sitting on, ...

To take this shot of Jenn I hung the camera out the window and used the widest angle lens I had at the moment. We were riding the tram just to see how far it went. It turned out to be a pretty relaxing journey and as I said before, dirt cheap!!!

The reason I took the following shots was to show the Hong Kong Island skyline and focus on the Panasonic building. The Panasonic Building is a little too far East of Central, which is where all the Sky Scraping business towers are, to be in most of the published pictures of Hong Kong. But if you get a panoramic shot look for the Panasonic building and you'll be pretty much looking at where we live.

Although it looks as though the sun is setting between these two towers, in reality the bright light is just a reflection of the sun by a third building. I thought is was a cool shoot and it also showed a typical Friday evening traffic jam.

Many people who have uprooted and moved away tend to compare their new environment with where they grew up. This is not untrue where we are concerned but our comparison conversations tend to focus on Japan and HK. And I'm sorry to say it but Japan is losing big time. The HUGE park pictured below on a glorious blue sky day has tennis courts, basketball courts, a roller-blading rink, running and walking paths, soccer fields, benches(where the hell were the benches in Japan????), pool and a polo field. Oh yeah it also has trees ... lots of trees(where the hell were the trees in Japan????).

Now yes there are parks in HK but it is a big city too and longest set of escalators in the world can be found in HK. They start in Central and climb all the way up to the top of the Mid Levels. Now it's not one continuous escalator and in the morning they go down but it is a cruisy ride and I couldn't imagine what it would be like having to climb the hill everyday. It is pretty steep.

And that's where we live. There is so much to HK that I would be uploading photos for ages just to give a small two dimensional impression of the city. To be here is a gift for both Jenn and I and even though we miss our friends and families terribly(and you're all welcome to stay with us) we will be better people because of our experiences.

Much Love

DandJ