22 January 2008: Happy Birthday Brent!

Today we went to sample some of Hong Kong's famous shopping. First stop was Mon Kok to peruse the electronics market. Ryan found a new shaver, and Brent found a case, spare battery, and a memory card for his camera. I was looking for a new USB hard disk to put all my digital photos onto, but had no luck.
Many of the stores were selling electronics at slightly cheaper prices than we could achieve in Australia, but it was not as cheap as I had thought it would be.
After looking through the electronics market, we moved through the fish market. These fish were not for eating, but for use as pets. There were heaps of pet shops with bags of fish hanging out the front. I felt a little sorry for the fish! They were not able to swim around in the tank, just staying in their own bag. I'm sure some of the ones sitting in the sun would have struggled with the temperature change in the water.
Brent and Ryan showed us around the main island of Hong Kong. This is the district where most of the major international banks have their headquarters. The buildings are taller than in Kowloon, which is the district where our hotel is situated.
The island of Hong Kong was quite steep, which surprised me. There were stairs through all of the streets, and one street even had an escalator going from the water's edge to the top-side of the CBD area. After looking around the CBD area for a while, we decided to head up the mountain on the cable car which runs every 12 minutes. The cable car goes up the mountain at an unbelievable angle, and is drawn from the top, where there is also a shopping centre and observatory. This is supposed to be the highest point in Hong Kong.
The sun was still up when we first arrived to the summit. as we were there, the sun slowly began to sink below the mountains, casting a shadow over the city of Hong Kong. We had a look around the shopping centres, and stopped for a drink in one of the cafe's overlooking the other side of the island.
Once the sun had gone down, we took some more photos of the city skyline at night, before heading back down to the bottom in the cable car again.
Brent had made dinner reservations to celebrate his birthday at the only revolving restaurant in Hong Kong. "Happy Birthday Brent" The meal was a buffet, and we were able to walk around the entire restaurant, taking in the beautiful views of Hong Kong at night.