Hong Kong

This week we made a detour to Hong Kong. My favorite thing about Hong Kong is the architecture because all the buildings are different. Some have neon
lights, others are made with no metal and some are made in cool shapes.

There aren’t many cars. We used trains, red taxis and green taxis. The red taxis are for the city and the green taxis go to the countryside.

There are four parts of Hong Kong. The New Territories is the biggest one, Kowloon is the top one shown in orange and Hong Kong Island is the island that has Hong Kong written on it. Also there is the Outlying Islands - they are on the left. Hong Kong is hilly and mountainous and less then 25% is developed and 40% of the land is just natural parks and nature reserves.


Yesterday, we went to Tin Hau Temple. Tin Hau was the Goddess of Seafarers. The temple was built in about 1800 and was enlarged in 1864. It was smokey and smelled like fire. This is a picture of insense burning outside.




This is a picture of coiled insense hanging from rods in the roof. Inside the coil, there were lucky red envelopes with money inside. I think it was money to give to the gods.




This statue looked like a protector to the alter.

This one looked like a villian.

This was some carefully carved decorations on the temple roof.

This picture is zoomed in.

This is dragon fruit. It is a type of fruit that comes from a type of cactus. It tastes like a pineapple but less flavorful and it has seeds like a kiwi. One day they sliced it up for a breakfast buffet and I loved it!

Later, we went out and bought a dragon fruit. The dragon fruit is hot pink with green strips coming out. The white onion looking thing is actually a white pomagranite. Do you see the smooth red
light bulb shaped fruit? It's a Thai pear! It tasted bland but was juicy. It surprised us that it didn't have a core.

This is the cactus species that the dragon fruit grows on. We found this picture on Wikipedia.

When I saw this building on Victoria Peak, I asked my mom, "Do you recognize this?" She said, "No." Then I said, "It's on the 20 dollar bill!" Then we had a mission to find all the things on the Hong Kong money. So far, we found the things on the 10, 20 and 100 dollar bills.

This is a picture from the top of Victoria Peak at sunset. It is also know as Mount Austin or "The Peak" to the locals. Victoria Peak is very tall; it is 1,810 feet tall but it is not the tallest mountain on Hong Kong. We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant called Simplatico at the top of the peak.

That's what we did today and yesterday.

From Allison in China.