Friday, August 29, 2008

Hostel Living, Hong Kong Style

I stayed at the Dragon Hostel in Mong Kok my first two nights. From the website, it looked pretty decent. Once I got there, I can only describe it as interesting. It was very old, it reminded me of the type of buildings you see in old Hong Kong movies. The hostel was on the 7th floor of a 14 floor building, but the rooms took up a few levels. The rooms depicted on the website look pretty nice, don't they? My room was SUPER small, about 6X6, with no windows. Thank God it had air conditioning and a television. The bathroom was super tiny, maybe 2.5 ft X 3 ft, and get this—the shower was a hand-held shower head above the toilet. I totally forgot about this, but in Asia, a lot of bathrooms have showers that are basically a hand held shower head and you just shower in the middle of the bathroom and there's a drain on the floor for the water to go down. I wanted to block all this from my memory, so I just took photos of the building. Thank goodness it was clean!!!

Does Coke Own Everything?


I know, you can't really see from this pic, but even these random Asian drinks have the Coca Cola logo on them.

My First Hong Kong Breakfast


Woke up pretty early on Thursday and had my first breakfast: shrimp dumpling noodles.

Mong Kok Night Walk

All the comforts of home.

My First Supper


Taiwanese minced pork and rice, sautéed broccoli and garlic and my favorite, bubble tea!!

Finally: Hong Kong!

After a 16 hour flight, I finally landed in Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon.

First Stop: Toronto

After about two hours in the plane, I landed in Toronto where I would sleep overnight. Mary, someone who I met via couchsurfing.com picked me up from the shuttle stop and helped me lug my belongings to her apartment. She then took me on a night tour of Toronto, where she showed me a really cool restaurant, Richtree, but unfortunately, we didn't get to eat there! She also showed me the old City Hall and the new City Hall, and then we stopped into Fran's (I know, how fitting :P), a restaurant that's been in Toronto since 1940. I tossed and turned and she brought me to the shuttle stop early the next morning. Another good couchsurfing.com experience!