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I get into Hong Kong bright and early and head right to the Kerins' house, where my first view of the impressive skyline of Hong Kong came from their living room window, which proved unbeatable from any other angle. The Kerins' apartment is located in the mid-levels, which is high above the innumerable sky-scrapers down by the waterside. SarahJon Kerins (SayJ) was one of my friends in high school and her family moved to Hong Kong some years back. She is now living in New York but one of her brothers and her parents are living in Hong Kong and were kind enough to offer me a place to stay as I explored the island. I quickly realized that they were far kinder than just offering me a place to rest my head. Will, her younger brother, became my guide as he showed me around the city and brought me to places I never would have discovered on my own. His parents treated me as one of their own and made my time in HK unforgettable. 

After enjoying a home-cooked breakfast courtesy of their live-in maid/chef/dog-sitter, Ninette, I set out on a walking tour of the city. I tour the central business district and quickly realize that while these major Asian cities continue to be far ahead of New York based on infrastructure, much of the culture has disappeared in favor of massive sky-scrapers adorned with high-end retail on the first few floors making the city one never-ending luxury mall. Wealth is abundant across the city and westerners are abundant in the CBD (Central Business District).

I make it back to the apartment to meet up with Will who had just taken a final exam in his mandatory English class! We head out to a mall and I pick up a much needed camera after mine went missing in Sydney. Hong Kong began to light up as I went to a nice restaurant in Soho (swanky neighborhood near the CBD) called Wagyu for dinner with Della (friend from NYC) and a bunch of her friends. Naturally, I had the beef and it was pretty darn good. The dinner group was cool and we all went to Lan Kwai Fong for some drinks afterwards. At times I felt like I was back in NYC with the heavily international crowd and swanky venues.

Waking up leisurely to the tune of yet another Ninette breakfast special I can see myself settling in here quite easily. I contemplate heading back to bed for a bit... Apparently New Zealand and Australia took a lot out of me as I feel about as tired as Forest Gump must have after his run across America. I compromise and head out after a hour cat-nap on the couch to walk around another area of the city. After walking what seemed like miles I found myself back in Soho and wound up eating upstairs from Wagyu (last night's restaurant).

Dragon-I was the venue this time and they had an all-you-can-eat dim sum lunch special for about $20. Well, trying out dim sum just happened to be on my Hong Kong checklist so I decided to kill a few birds with one stone. Needless to say I tried one of everything on the menu, which wasn't easy and took me a good 2 hours to polish off and included stomaching such dishes as jellyfish, chicken feet, and a few other things that looked and tasted nothing like I imagined they would. I rolled myself out and decided I needed to stretch my legs if not stomach after a meal fit for a lion.

I leave the CBD and head to the zoological and botanical gardens where I catch up on some blog writing while hanging out with lemurs, apes and various other monkeys they have. I have some lemur calls recorded on my computer from my time in Madagascar and proceed to completely confuse/baffle/excite/scare some of the captive lemurs.

I head up to the HK Peak where I get another view of the impressive expanse of the city, however, I'm not sure that the peak provided a better vantage point than my new living room! 

After taking the tram back down to the bottom, I decide that hiking up to the mid-levels would be a great way to work out and see part of the city at the same time. I had no idea just how steep and far up I was headed as I was dead by the time I got back to the Kerins' place. After a brief rest, Will and I played a few games of squash and he destroyed me, showing me no mercy as I would have done him had the roles been reversed!

A brief rest and Will takes me out for a night on the town with some of his friends. We eat with his 3 airline hostess friends on the streets of Wan Chai at a fish restaurant where we are the only two foreigners. I pick out a few different fishies to try out and wind up with yet another feast as they didn't understand that I wanted to try ONE of each small fish and not a dish of each. We chill in the streets for a few drinks and then head to The Barn to play dice. Dice is a drinking game which is actually quite intellectually involved as far as drinking games (especially with dice or cards) are concerned. We make it to a bar in a park for another drink where I'm harassed by a group of English girls. The night progresses to a few bars in Soho where one of his buddies joins the crew before we head off to a club back in Wan Chai (I think).