Hong Kong Part 4

We started off day 4 with a visit to the Hong Kong temple. BJ forgot to tell me to bring my recommend so we didn't get to do a session, but they were so excited to see us. The guy at the recommend desk kept giving us two thumbs up and was just grinning ear to ear the whole time we were there.
We were able to ask someone who spoke english if there was a way I could still do a session, but we had to call the bishop. This obviously makes sense, however there were three problems with that. We were still in transition between wards and didn't even know which bishop to call, didn't know the name of our new bishop and it would have been
1:00 AM at home by the time we could go back to the hotel get changed and come back.
So we decided to enjoy the spirit of just being there, which really was so nice, and the recommend desk guy brought us the church news in english for us to read in the waiting room. We spend about 20 minutes there and headed back out. I was so reluctant to leave. I couldn't believe the difference that I felt just being on the grounds. You'd think I'd never been to a temple before.
We went straight to Gotham, er...Hong Kong island after that to go up to Victoria Peak. You may not be able to tell but that's one of the buildings that they always show in Batman. I always thought that was "Gotham Tower" in the movie, but maybe I'm wrong.


So, to me. It's Gotham tower. (BJ says I'm crazy, but I swear it's in all of the batmans) I got a picture taken in Gotham, too. We saw the biggest sky scrapers here. They were absolutely incredible!
This one is the Bank of China. The architecture on this building was amazing and it's the 3rd tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong standing at a whopping 1,000.7 ft with two masts that stand at 1,205.4 ft. BJ couldn't get over this building. So, with that said, we'll move on.
On the way to Victoria Peak a bogus Budhist monk was on the street trying to collect money. He gave us little tokens and had us write our last name in a book and what blessing we wanted him to pray for. Then asked for a donation in US dollars... that tipped off BJ, but I'm still like, "Oh you have two dollars, just give it to him." So BJ pulls it out and the guy sees all the HK money we have and starts pushing us for more, but we only gave him the $2. He was pretty miffed but was cool about it as he saw his next prey marching up the street. I'm dumb, I know, BJ gave me a hard time about it because he loves me and I'm too nice.
That's BJ with wax Jackie Chan above. This is us on the train that takes you to the top of the peak. It is super duper steep. I tried to get some cool pics of that, but it was really hard because the seats were tiny and slippery.
Here's one attempt. This is actually one of the most level places on the mountain, I'd hate to have been one of the guys who built that track. Holy cow. The thing was built in the 20's or somewhere around the turn of the century when England controlled Hong Kong.
We went straight to lunch when we got to the top. They had a window table available and a storm was rolling in while we were waiting for our first course.
These are the pics of that. It was really awesome and creepy looking. You could see the clouds moving around us. Then it started to snow and rain together. We were floored by that because it was so hot outside.
Maybe it cooled super fast and then heated up again super fast, it was weird. Our lunch was quite an experience. I really wanted to try "Real" chinese food while we were there. Knowing that was going to be an adventure we waited till it was a tame place to visit. We just ordered a lunch special for each of us and it had 4 courses. The first course was Dim Sum pork dumplings and chicken feet.
Yes, I said chicken feet. They were deboned, pickled, and chilled. It was... interesting. This is where we ate it, we did eat it and are still alive to tell the tale. I've heard of much much worse things in China--on the mainland especially--so I consider myself very fortunate. :) The rest of the meal was really really good.
The drinks were a little watery until we had our main course which was completely delicious (well, mine was anyway, lol). The only delicious thing we had when eating outside of our hotel, actually. The flavors of the drink and the meal were actually really complimentary, I've never experienced that before so that was cool.
I have to put this in here, too. Our hotel food really was awesome. The first morning we opted for the buffet at one of the restaurants and decided to do that every morning. We were never disappointed.
They had some amazing food there. We were a little disappointed, however when we decided to hit the dinner buffet. It was soooo crowded and the food was very chinese. There were some super yummy things, but they were a little hard to find. I had my fill of King Crab legs (yummy), but they didn't have the classic butter sauce to dip them in...just plain. I tried to eat a crawfish and well, couldn't figure it out. I tried to, but the thing still had a face and as soon as I saw it's mushy little brain... well, I was done. I walked away hungry from that US$40/plate meal. We caught the Sunday Brunch the morning we flew home. That was awesome. The best we had and a great ending to an awesome trip.
Okay, back to the trip. The above photo's are from a wax museum at the top of the peak. Another crazy thing you see a lot there. Random random things. There was a haunted house that had nothing to do with the wax museum right smack in the middle of it. At Disneyland they had food carts that were combo like Popsicles and deep fried squid legs (just one example).
Above, you can see us at the top of the peak--no hiking required :). If you look at the next photo you see part of the ships in the harbor. Pretty amazing.
You can see what I meant on the other post about how the city really lines the shore. The first day we actually saw what looked like a part of the city that was underneath the main part of the city.
This was a cute vendor who was doing these photo ops for tourists. He was super cute and would jump around going, "Hey hey!" He was cute. He even got BJ laughing with his cuteness and anyone who knows him knows that he doesn't just laugh at cute old men. Did I mention he was cute?
This is totally BJ's personality, too with the whole "serve me" pose... hilarious! We gave this guy a pretty big tip. On the way back down the mountain we ran into the only Americans of the whole trip. Two girls from Missouri. One of them asked me what the weather was like in UT so I told her and she said she was surprised because of how we're famous for snow, so I proceeded to explain the north south, hot/cold summer/winter weird desert weather and she turns to her friend and says, "did you know that in UT it can get below 0 in the summer!?" I'm like, "No no, that's in the winter!" hahaha! It was like she thought we have winter all year round. Funny. So, that was the last thing we did on our trip. We headed to the hotel for some sleep and a great buffet in the morning before heading to the airport.
It was a looong flight home and I was anxious to see my babies once again! Someone else was sure looking forward to our homecoming! Ethan grew about 3 inches while we were gone and when I saw him he looked like a little boy with a baby's head and kept looking at me up and down like, "is it really you?"
I love how he's looking at me taking this with this look like, "Are you for real?" So adorable. Livi was anxious to see us (well, me, she didn't really even say hello to BJ) as well but I don't have a pic of that. Another blog worthy story for a later time. Since I'm out of pictures I'll wrap it up. The End.