Hong Kong Part 1...

Here is a step by step picture guide of our trip to Hong Kong. I hope you all enjoy!
This is me at the airport in San Francisco as we are boarding our flight to China. The plane behind me is an example of the plane we were on. One of those 747's with an upstairs portion.

This is our first glimpse of Hong Kong as were were being "shuttled" by the airport line of the city transit train.
The Hong Kong MTR goes approx 80 km/hr. You can make it from one side of Hong Kong to the other in a matter of minutes. It's made up of a series of islands and is very spread apart, so I would think this is quite a feat of accomplishment. We were very impressed by how organized it is and how easy it is to navigate. It carries approximately 2.3 million passengars a day. This is me, so excited to be in Hong Kong! We both were. It totally blew our minds that we were there. It was awesome! Although we were extremely exhausted from our 13 1/2 hour flight. :)
They offer a free bus to your hotel when you get off of the train so we took advantage of that. By the time we got on the bus it was completely dark outside. I, at least was surprised by this. This is a picture of our driver, who it was unlawful to speak to.
It was also unlawful to do these things as well. Throughout the city there were signs that spitting spreads disease and the fine is up to HK$5,000 which would be approx. US$700 or so. You couldn't spit in the garbage either.
Here we are again, totally stoked to be in Hong Kong! I love this picture. It's the first one we have had together in a looong time. Isn't he cute?
Here we are on the pier by the harbor after a good night's sleep. Hong Kong (obviously) has one of the biggest trading harbors in the world. This is almost right in front of our hotel.
BJ looking good in the hot sun and humidity. This was almost exactly the view we had from our hotel room.



This is the first pic with a smaller sky scraper. When we got back we were almost surprised by how small everything looks here.

This is us just before boarding the "Crystal Cabin", a gondola ride that takes you to the Ngong Ping. The biggest Budha in the world sits at the top.
There were a couple of places we rode things like this. The views were spectacular. Some of the best on our whole trip.
This is one of my favorites. You'll have to click on it to enlargen it. Because we were located by the airport (you can see part of it in the bottom of the pic) when this was taken, it looks like the city goes back into the mountains. From other views you see how it lines the shore. I love how it sits back in the mist.
Here comes "Big Budha" (there is a sign that actually calls it that), the biggest Budha statue in the world. Once we got off of the ride, we hiked up to it and visited the monestary that sits just below it.
This is just before we hike up the 268 steps to see Budha face to face. It was a lot harder than it looked. Especially in all of that humidity.
We made it to the top. BJ got some good video footage of me just after panting like a hot wet dog. :) I don't know how to get that stuff on the computer from our dvd camcorder, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
Here I am--after my breath returned to normal, that is. The peace sign is a big thing in China. So here is my due.
This is the view we had from Budha. I think that there is a beach just below us that is the most popular in Hong Kong called, "Repulse Bay". We wanted to go there, but we just had so much other stuff to see, plus we kind of lost a day, but I'm getting to that.
Here is BJ on the literal road to enlightenment on "Wisdom Path". I don't know if we actually saw it because there was a lot of construction there. At least we got a fun picture of the sign, though :).
This is where patrons come to burn incense to Budha. These areas were all around the monestary. It was interesting to see how they worshipped.
Here we are in front of the Monestary. We were surprised they didn't require us to take off our shoes like the one in Hawaii. Maybe it was Japanese there..?
This was amazing. I had to stop and take a picture. The first thing I noticed about the people there was that they were always running or walking really fast. Everyone was constantly going and this was the first chinese man I saw sleeping on the job! We actually saw it again when we went to Ocean Park (same scenario, digger with chinese man's feet up). Maybe it was the same guy. We watched him for awhile and noticed that he had a guy working with him that was constantly working. He didn't seem to be bothered by his sleeping partner.
This picture was actually taken on the way up the mountain. I wanted to wait to put it up because well, this is looking down on me inside the "Crystal Cabin".

Yep, it has a glass floor. It didn't cost that much more so we thought we'd give it a shot. I don't know how far below it is, but it takes you across the ocean and over a couple of mountains--about a 15 min ride if my estimations are correct.
It was especially tummy flopping if you looked at it the way BJ is doing in the above pic. We both tried it. Soooo crazy.

The "Crystal Cabin at Ngong Ping 360" is the first and only cable car in the world with a completely glass floor. It's also got just a hint of a tint to make the colors below more lush. I didn't actually know that about the floor until I looked it up just now :). I forgot to mention that if you want a private cabin, it costs like over US$250. We lucked out and happened to get our own on the way back down... SWEET!