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I MADE IT!

Hong Kong was great. Missy and I managed to meet eachother at the airport (w/o the use of our cell phones - imagine!). I was SO excited to see her I was literally almost in tears. In HK we meandered our way through the throngs of people, saw a very beautiful park in the mountains overlooking the city (which is not HUGE but consists of only skyscrapers), ate some sort of crappy Mexican food (but significantly better than what I have in Yantai, which is nothing), rode the tram for hours looking for a temple, which supposedly was across the street from a giant park, neither of which we found before giving up. However, the ride in the tram was entertaining enough. We also rode the ferry a couple times, which is a nice way to get from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. We also navigatged our way through the subway systerm (which is a much faster way to get from Kowloon to HK). To borrow words from Missy, by the end of our trip, we were masters of Hong Kong public transportation.

We also had to get up early to go to the Vietnam Embassy to complete the saga that is my passport. While I was going in expecting lines and complications, it was surprisingly easy. We were 2nd in line and they told me they would have my passport ready in 15 minutes and get this - THEY DID!!! WHAT!!! Clearly Hong Kong is an entirely different entity than China :) In China I would have had to talk to 6 different people, fill out pages of paperwork that no one would explain to me, leave, come back, wait in more lines, promise my first born child, and offer them a pint of my blood and maybe my dog. This was way easy, a pleasant surprise.

We had a very short time in Hong Kong, but it was enough. We could have managed to find more to do had we stayed longer, but with a limited amount of time to go to all the places we wanted to see, I'm happy with what I experienced in Hong Kong. It's a very modern, diverse, crowded city. To me, it could have been a city pretty much anywhere. I thought I would like not being stared at everywhere I went, but as it turns out, I sort of missed it. Me wanting attention?? Who knew?