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Hong Kong fling
As I sit in the International Hong Kong airport, all I can do is hope I can give Hong Kong a second chance.
Is a beautiful city, and very modern city. Which for me, that means easy mobility around the city, no language barriers, and plenty of options. After spending my last 15 days in Kuala Lumpur (last 6 days due to a minor but nagging injury) I was glad to finally be able to move again, and that my next destination was this little but well known city.
Hong Kong during the day from Avenue of Stars
Unfortunately I knew the downside of coming to HK, is an expensive city. Not overly expensive mind you, but when you are backpacking on a $30 – $35 a day HK is a city that is best to skip. I stretched my budget to about $50 a day, and was just experiencing the very low that this city had to offer.
Hong Kong Central at night
I would walk down the streets, and some of the foods that I would see was just mouth watering. But they were also 120 HKD ($15.50) at least. I was able to find a soup for 25HKD and that was probably the best meal I had. In other instances I went to McDonald’s and other local fast food chains for food. Not because I was craving it, but just because financially was my best choice. Not happy with myself about that.
Hong Kong is better suited with a larger budget, $60 – $75 per day I think would have open more doors for me. But after 2 months of traveling and already being over budget in way cheaper countries, I couldn’t pull the trigger in this one.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not Hong Kong’s fault. If I had my old job, and I was here just as a normal tourist, this would be a great town to feast myself in. I was hoping to try Dim Sum that I love so much. But being an unemployed backpacker, trying to stretch himself to see as many countries as I can, it requires certain sacrifices.
For entertainment I did some urban exploration, Central area of Hong Kong was the best part for me. If you go to the Sheung Wan area, there are some antiques stores and shops that offer unique artifacts and weapons. The other end of the island, near the Chai Wan train station, offers a trail to Big Wave Bay Beach (try saying that 4 times in a row) that is challenging and rewarding. I ran into a Dutch-Spaniard couple, and they convince me to keep going and I’m very glad they did. The first part of the trail is a cemetery going up a mountain. There’s very little shade, and the sun is just beating down on you. I stopped to assess if I wanted to keep going, when the couple catch up to me, we started talking, and decided to keep going. Glad they did, because the cemetery stairs is the hardest part of the trail and I already did it.
Big Wave Bay Beach not living up to its name.
Big Wave Bay Beach is nice little beach, and it doesn’t seem to get too crowded, less than a 100 people when I was there. There’s an ancient rock carving in one of the cliffs, they don’t know much about it, but is believed is about 3,000 years old. Sorry no pics of this, since I explore this cliff without my camera. There’s no resort on the beach, so you have a green forest were the sandy beach ends, a very welcoming sight with all the concrete of the city.
Prayer hanging at Man Mo Temple. Beautiful yet small temple in HK
The only thing I could afford that I didn’t do, was the Tian Tan Buddha, is a giant bronze statue of the sitting Buddha. I ran out of time on my last day, and couldn’t make it there on time. To reach the Buddha there’s a cable car (expensive and with a minimum hour wait) or a bus. It’s supposed to have some great views of the city.
Hong Kong let’s do a re-do. A start over?
PS. Hong Kong is trying to answer the question if one mall per person is enough. How many fucking malls do you need people?
Cope with me for a moment
Back on the horse Robert. People need you. So I say so to myself.
It’s hard sometimes to write, because sometimes you have a blog post that you want to get out there, but you don’t have the time to do the research to do it justice, and such is the case in this blog about Laos.
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- Entrance to COPE
I have left Laos over 10 days ago I think, and still this post has been haunting me since then. Making it harder to move on to more current updates. It has to do with a museum, small little museum in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
As far as capitals in the world goes, Vientiane is very underwhelming, the night market was very repetitive, the food ok. Overall, if someone was to ask me, should I go to Vientiane? My answer would be, not really, however if you do have a few hours of your time in the city I would recommend going into the COPE museum. That is, if you can find it first. Is not really a museum, but more like a room with some exhibitions on it. It’s free and it survives on donations and fundraisers.
So what is COPE? To answer that, I need to give a little of history lesson. One I didn’t know myself until I was in Laos. You see, Laos has the sad record of being the MOST bombed nation in the world. More than Germany in WWII, more than Vietnam, more than Korea. During the Vietnam war, Laos was a neutral country, albeit with communist ties. And they supported the Vietnamese communist movement. The USA in order to stop the influence of Laos in the Vietnam war, they decided to secretly bombed the previously-declared neutral country. And they did, for 9 years, at an average of a bomb being dropped every 8 minutes. Unfortunately, is a black eye in US, since they denied for years that they were doing this, and ultimately it had very little effect in the overall effects in the war. A better person with a history degree can provide a more detailed account of this events and the complexities of them, but after doing some research, it seems that all this facts do add up.
Which brings me to COPE. COPE is an organization that strives to provide prosthetics to the people that TODAY are still being affected by the effects of this bombs. Because not only were this bombs dropped, but a lot of them didn’t explode, so they are still in the ground, and when farmers working on their lands can ignite this bombs, kids trying to find scrap metal will try to dig the bombs for the metal might (have) detonate this old bombs. Many losing limbs or worse lives. COPE helps those affected by this bombs. Is very somber reality and very respectful work this organization does. They don’t receive money from the government (or very little if they do). The exhibition is small but powerful. It makes your heart ache for those affected by events that happened over 40 years ago.
COPE is housed within the Center of Medical Rehabilitation, one of the hospitals in the capital. You don’t see many signs until you are there, so is not easy to find.
Prosthetics have been used, created or outgrown by the kids.
Exhibit of the cluster bombs used during the attacks on Laos, the bigger bomb would relase about 75 small grenade size bombs
Closeup of the bomb inside the cluster bomb
Don't Follow My Lead 