"Hong Kong, for those not so ..." a Hong Kong Travel Page by feline01

Hong Kong is a must for those who crave city travel. Smelled like the New Jersey Turnpike, near Newark Airport,on a summer day. Expensive and so crowded, New York City seemed rural. Yet wonderful. Whenever Kowloon or Hong Kong Island became too overwhelming, I just hopped on one of the many ferrys and hoverboats to one of the outer islands. Lantau Island was my favorite. Climbing to the top of the giant Buddha at the Po-Lin monastery and seeing all the green of the Island. The Buddha is the tallest in south-east Asia at 34m high. Buy a meal coupon at the ticket booth and you will be seated in a large, loud room and served a very satisfying vegetarian meal for less than $10US. You can even stay in there overnight in a dormitormy room with meals included but I skipped it.

One of the great things about Hong Kong is you can be walking along a modern boulevard with skycrapers and chain restaurants and come across a temple that's several hundred years old or a street market selling all sorts of local crafts. It's an amazing experience. All I can say is WOW! Now Hong Kong feels like a dream but I am fortunate to have some photos to remember it by.

Interesting story about how I ended up in Hong Kong. I was working part-time as a travel agent in the US and looked into becoming a courier. I found a courier company, called Jupiter Air Couriers based out of JFK airport in NYC that sounded good. I phoned them and joined for a lifetime fee of $50. I thought aobut taking a short trip to London so I rang them for information. The assistant tells me that they have no London available but they need someone to go to Hong Kong for 11 days and the flight would be $400 return. I thought about it for about 25 seconds and said, "Sure, I'll go to Hong Kong." I then rang my husband, who was then my boyfriend, at his job and told him, "Guess what, I'm going to Hong Kong." He was not too pleased but understood my need to travel. Of course, the telephone bill between HK and New Jersey ended up being close to $400 for the 11 days but the trip was so worth it. The only courier stuff I had to do was to meet a man at JFK who gave me some bank documents in a file folder which I gave to a man that met me at the airport in Tokyo which was the stop-over to HK. On the return flight, a man met me again and gave me a folder which I had to give to a man at JFK. No problems and nothing illegal. The courier company rang me the following month with an offer to go to London in 2 days for FREE!! But I was at university and had a paper due in 4 days that I hadn't started yet so I had to say no :-(