Ian and I spent a few days in Hong Kong and had all kinds of fun. First off, everything is cheap. A welcome change from the seemingly extreme costs of all things Japan. Thursday night we took the boat to Kowloon and watched the laser light show (This clip on YouTube will give you the idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHWmFkpondw). Afterwards we went to a dim sum restaurant where we were seated with and got to know a nice guy from Thailand named Sunny. We had our fill and paid a whopping total of around $65 Hong Kong for the two of us, which is about $8 US. I would sometimes forget about the exchange and on the first day there I got a little thrown when a shop lady told me six buttons were going to cost me $96. Even with the exchange some of you are going to say that it was too much to pay them. Take a look the next time go shopping, buttons are expensive these days. There were large, detailed and dang, I still think about them and wish I would have bought them. As for the rest of our shopping adventures I'll let Ian talk about haggling in the markets a little later, my job at Overstock.com was to haggle with sellers and yet he totally out did me as we shopped in Mong Kok.
The next day we went to the 10,000 Buddha's Monastery which actually now has closer to 13,000 Buddha's. The journey started at the bottom of a hill and we hiked the steps lined on both sides by Golden Buddha's.
I admit that I'm not very familiar with the Religion and hope that we didn't disgrace ourselves or the Buddha's by taking funny pictures with them. We may have been more interested in the fun photo ops. on the way up to the Monastery but in truth it was a great experience. I appreciate the love and devotion the people give to their ancestors. It gave me a greater desire to dig into my own family history and get to know my own ancestors. I'm committing myself to working in the new familysearch.org. Below are few pictures from this part of the trip.
This one is my personal favorite!
Ian's newest friend, the warrior.
One of the places they burned incense around the Grounds
I'm not sure what is meant by this, I think it's interesting
