Travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting day three of their Hong Kong visit. They start at a familiar coffee shop, plan a route across the harbor via subway to Causeway Bay (Times Square) intending to picnic on a 13th-floor rooftop garden, discover the site is a smoking area, attempt a hike/bus/tram ascent to Victoria Peak but face full trams/buses and darkness, decide to postpone the peak visit ("we'll revisit this tomorrow"), then visit the Ferris wheel and take the Star Ferry back to their Kowloon hotel. The narration is informal and itinerary-driven.
Chapters
This is day three. Going to the same coffee shop. I'm hopeful today that I can navigate us there without getting us lost without a man. First try the ladies in our seat. The barista's starting to recognize us. Have we been here too many times? Yeah.
She asked how long we were gonna be here.
All alright, I'm going to explain the plans for tonight. This is only a partial map of Hong Kong. This is Hong Kong Island. We're staying somewhere up here in Kowloon. So right now we're about to get on a subway and ride underneath the harbor here to Admiralty, catch another subway over here to Causeway Bay. This is the Times Square of Hong Kong.
There's supposed to be a secret picnic spot here that I read about online. So we're going to have a picnic in Times square on the 13th floor of some random building. Plan is to go to the grocery store in the basement and take the food up to the secret picnic spot.
I think the post that I read on the Internet was kind of old. It was just a lot of people smoking. It wasn't a secret picnic spot. We got a pretty decent view from here anyway.
Can see all of the people in Times Square.
You know.
You know.
You know you do.
Then ride the subway back over here. And then we leave from this park right here. There is a hiking trail that goes up to Victoria Peak which is somewhere like right here. And there's supposed to be amazing views of the Hong Kong Harbor. And after that we will hike back down, come over here to Central Pier and then take the Star Ferry back across the harbor back to our hotel. And that's what we have planned for tonight. Hopefully it goes as smoothly as that quick little drawing. Since our last instructions on the Internet went so well, we're going to follow this map that I found on the Internet.
All the way up there. We should be there about a dark.
Kara's the trooper. I read the map wrong. We walked all the way, way down there and it was the wrong way. So now we're going back up. It's just gotten a lot quieter. Let's say there's a 50% chance we'll end up walking all the way up this mountain. Probably end up catching a bus or something.
It could be us. We've opted to ride one of the buses up to the top. Not because Kara had a bad attitude and not because got us lost, but because we're hoping there's a sliver of daylight left when we get up here. We've been told to wait for a bus with the number one on.
It's coming.
Now. Let's hold our hand down like idiots.
Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. To the peak. It goes without us.
That was disappointing. Plan C. We're riding the expensive peak tram.
Should we just go home according to this side? By pressing this button or this button.
That tram should have stopped. But it didn't. Should we continue our hike in the dark?
It says when it's lit, tram cars are full in the direction indicated and will not stop at this station. I'm thinking they're all going to be full because they all want to get up there before I die.
I did not read the fine print.
This means it's not gonna stop because it's full. Dang it. What's the plan?
Come back tomorrow night. Or we can hike up in the dark. I think those are our two options.
By tram.
New plan. We are abandoning the journey to the peak because it's gonna be dark by the time we get up there. We're gonna revisit it tomorrow. We are going back down to the harbor. We're gonna go see the giant Ferris wheel and then ride the Star Ferry back across the harbor and possibly get some dessert. Let's go.
Our first successful mission of the night. We found the Ferri. Yay.
Are we gonna ride it?
No. It's way too expensive. Just gotta look at it.
Just look at it.
Just look at it.
Would you just look at it? Oh, I can't even fit it all in there from here. You like that though? Might be kind of cool.
Yeah.
Should we try to do the time lapse?
Yeah.
You know.
You know.
You know.
Like I haven't been on a boat in so long.
We're going that way.
You know?
You know?
You know.
And we're back. Let me show you what actually happened. So we started here. We successfully navigated to the first subway. Then the second subway. This is where we were supposed to find the secret picnic garden. Turned out it was just a smoker area. Then we came back over here. And then we hiked to this garden and started our hike. I'd say we made it to about right here. We attempted to catch a bus. That didn't work. Then we hiked back down a little bit to catch the tram up. That didn't work. So we gave up and we hiked all the way back down here to the Ferris wheel. Got some cool shots of the Ferris wheel. And then we rode the ferry boat back across the harbor and walked back to our apartment.
Vlogging with the view.
Oh, yeah.
We're gonna do our best to resist the sushi urge tonight.
