Monday, June 18th - Exploring Hong Kong Island and New Territories

• 3 days is enough in Hong Kong
• It would have been great if I was a rich socialite who loved to party and shop (I would have never ran out of stores to go to here if I was like that) but I want to go to a museum and Hong Kong isn’t really built for that type of tourist
• This was especially showcased at “Statue Square” in front of the legislative building and they weren’t lying, it was a square with only one statue of a person
• I was like, “come on, with all of the banks in Hong Kongand the tax revenue they generate you could only afford one statue?”
• In their defense there were other statues like the one below which was pretty cool

• • However it was surrounded by tons of malls in case I felt like indulging in unrestrained capitalism
• I think part of my feeling done with Hong Kong because I visited during monsoon season where it just rains…and rains…and rains
• It has rained since I first arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday morning and I wouldn’t be surprised if it rains tomorrow 
• Luckily the typhoon risk only got to level 1 during my stay here but when I was making my trip itinerary for going to Hong Kong, typhoon watching wasn't on there for a reason
• Hong Kong Park
• I made the silly mistake of thinking that because it hadn’t rained hard in the 50 minutes I was awake before I left for the day I would be fine without my broken umbrella that I bought from a road side merchant two days ago brand new
• Hong Kong weather just likes to surprise you like that
• Hong Kong park is beautiful and you need that so you don’t explode due to the fact that there’s random torrential downpours on you every 15 minutes

• • It’ll be sunny, then a light drizzle, then a *RAWWWW*
  • And Hong Kong likes to trick you too, because sometimes it will be sunny, light drizzle, sunny, light drizzle, etc. so you’re constantly seeking shelter if you don’t have an umbrella
  • I broke down and I bought a good umbrella
  • I walked into this Pacific Coffee place and bought one for 98 HKD so it better last at least 3 days or else I’m going to shove it into their glass case full of over-priced quiches
  • I don’t care that now I’m a corporate pawn advertising this coffee company on an umbrella, I was just glad not to be wet for once
• One thing I do like about Hong Kong is walking through the streets
• The streets have all types of cool shops and it's always cool to look up at buildings that look weird on Hong Kong Island

• Dr. Sun Yat Sen Museum
• I didn’t feel like taking another involuntary shower in Hong Kong’s monsoons so I just decided to look for indoor entertainment and I’m glad I found this museum because this museum was really cool

• • This was my 2nd favorite museum in Hong Kong behind the Hong Kong History Museum because Chinese history is pretty cool
  • I actually felt bad for the guy after the museum even though he was really interesting
  • He was basically the Chinese version of Abraham Lincoln where he just failed over and over and over again until he finally became president of China 
  • But unlike Abraham Lincoln, he actually had to resign his presidency so even his one victory was short-lived so this guy really couldn’t catch a break
  • You did get to learn about how China turned into a republic from a monarchy which was actually really cool
• Man Mo Temple
• This was rated one of the top things you have to see in Hong Kong  by Lonely Planet and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk through it
• I was happy that it was free but kind of mad that I walked all that way and it was basically a one story house with two rooms in it
• I would go see it again though
• Just because of the fact that it was the Hong Kong deity temple made it special and they allow you to take photographs but I wasn’t brazen enough to have some stranger take a photo of me with my arm around the blue woman/god statue 

• I've lost my faith in Lonely Planet China (at least the Hong Kong section)
• So I thought about the fact that I wanted to get my money's worth out of the MTR (subway) tourist pass I had for the day so I decided to go up to the new territories to check out the Lonely Planet recommended Hong Kong Walking Heritage Tour
• So I spent the 45 minutes to get there and I spent 30 minutes out in the pouring rain before I determined that this wasn't quite worth my time
• Yeah it was basically a lot of Chinese style buildings that if you've seen them before they weren't really that special

• Fun trying to find a place to eat tonight
• I befriended this 28 year old Filipino woman and we went out to dinner together
• For some reason I got her confused with this other Filipino girl who I met earlier who was in Hong Kong with her family so I started talking to her like I knew her asking her how’s her family and how’s college
• When she asked me to guess her age I said “20” and she looked at me like I was blind (but the thing was she did look like she was in college in my defense) and then she felt flattered so I avoided that crisis
• I wanted to have her try some dim sum seeing that she was in Hong Kong and I thought I knew where this nice, cheap dim sum restaurant was so we walked for probably a mile up Nathan Rd. trying to find it
• We finally gave up and after 35 minutes of walking we settled on this nice restaurant 
• I had this ostrich meat in tomato sauce which was really good and she had this stone pot mixture with meat we didn't know what was (I told her it was probably dog meat just to freak her out)
• I also realized how bad I was at chopsticks
• When I was eating the waitress came up to me, said “no, no, no”, took them out of my hand, flipped them over, and put them back in my hand
• I was eating with my chopsticks flipped the wrong way *facepalm*
• She gave me a fork and knife shortly after that which I gladly accepted
• My new friend ended up paying for dinner
• I felt really bad because I never actually learned her name but she kept calling me Bruce but I did say thank you many times
•