A few more adventures in Asia- Kelsey

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So I accomplished a life goal today. I was in two places at once! (AND I time travelled) Me and Scott boarded our airplane from Hong Kong to Tokyo at 9:45 am on Sunday, August 9, 2012. Then we traveled for about 18 hours and arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii at 7:30 am on Sunday, August 9, 2012. We were in two completely different countries at the same time the same day!- Two places at once! Anyways, me and Scottie are now back in our beach bungalow safe and sound. I was so excited about this idea that I was a time traveler that I decided to post it with my fellow bloggers, and once I decided to do a blog post I figured I should wrap up the last of our adventures in Hong Kong, so here goes!
These are a bit out of order, but fun things nonetheless. 
1. The Thursday before me and Scott went to Macau me and my sister Sunnee went adventuring in Kowloon. Kowloon in on the mainland, so it's not an island like Lantau where Sunnee lives, or Hong Kong island, but it is connected to the others by bridges, the MTR train, and ferry. And best of all you don't need a visa because it is part of the special Hong Kong district! We took the MTR to Kowloon and then asked a taxi driver to take us to "The Walled City Park", which I had read about in a Hong Kong tourist book and wanted to see. He said he knew the place, and promptly dropped us off at the back door of a temple. Thanks dude, thanks. We were a bit confused, but decided to go inside the temple anyways. It was beautiful, with all of the intricate carvings, statues, paint, ect. The best part about it though was that it was very much still functional. Most of the temples in China and Thailand that I have been to have some pilgrimage visitors that came to worship, but most are busy taking pictures with peace sign fingers and posing like the statues. Here it was quite the reverse. The tourist was the minority, while the worshippers bought incense, clanged it together, knelt praying on pillows on the ground, and then lit the incense and offered it up. It was really a beautiful place. But after a while we had had our fill of the place, walked past the many fortune tellers on the way out, and decided to try one more taxi driver. 

This is part of the skyline when taking the ferry to Hong Kong island, which we did before taking the MTR to Kowloon. 

More of Hong Kong island skyline. This one is closer so you aren't as distracted by the gross smog. 

At the temple we took pictures with our zodiac signs! I am a horse- if you couldn't tell by my pose- "Popular and attractive to the opposite sex"- Yeah I am! 

Sunnee is a snake. Her zodiac sign is I mean.

The temple, the more empty middle section is for worshipers only. 

Some of the intricate carvings and paintings. 

A young boy offering up incense. 

It smelled fantastic! 



2. This taxi driver seemed to know where we wanted to go, drove us about three blocks, and happily collected the easiest money he had made all day. The Kowloon Walled City Park used to be a walled city, in the area of about 6 acres of land. It was at first a military fortress, and then deteriorated into a ghetto. It got so bad neither the British nor China wanted to claim it, and so the ghetto little city got worse and worse because no one was policing it. Prostitutes, gambling drugs, and I believe the pamphlet even mentioned something about giant rats (or, for those Princess Bride fans out there, "rodents of unusual size). Anyways, it was supposed to be knocked down several times but there was resistance because so many people lived there. In fact, by the time the Hong Kong government officially declared they were knocking it down in 1987 there were over 33,000 people living there! My parents live on five acres. The most people we ever had living there was about 11 and it felt crowded!!! Now the Walled City is a beautiful park with a few memorials, photographs, and the remains of some of the outside wall. 


A window into the Walled City Park in Kowloon. 

One of the many gazebos by a pond in the gorgeous park. 

Excitement! 


Sunnee is even more exciting! 

An aerial photograph of the walled city park taken in 1972. The super close, shorter buildings are it. 

Sunnee at the original gate to the walled city, flashing some peace signs. 

3. The Tuesday before me and Scott went to Thailand me and Sunnee took her children, Kale and Hazel to Noah's Ark. You read it right! Two ferry rides away from Sunnee's apartment is a full scale replica of Noah's Ark that is a museum. Apparently there is a group of Christian researchers based out of Hong Kong that built the museum. It was... not quite what we were expecting. We paid to enter and then spent almost an hour wondering around this huge full scale model of the ark (built how they interpreted the instructions from the Bible) and couldn't find a single worker or any of the museum rooms on the map! Eventually we did find most of what we were looking for, but it was rough going. The exhibits had a huge range from children's education on music, language, art, water, and just about everything, to 3-d movies on saving the environment, to exhibits and movies about Christ, and the modern day search for the ark. I'm sure many of you read the articles in 2010 about a possible large wooden boat found up in the icy mountains of Mount Ararat. Little research has been done because it is so hard to reach, and it is so frozen into the mountain and ice. But it was interesting! I loved the giant life size sculptures of animals they had in the garden coming out of the ark doors. But my personal favorite will be shown below... (you will know it when you see it...)
Entering!! 


THIS IS IT. They set up a life size 'Last Supper' painting with mannequins as the apostles and Jesus, then the guide proceeded to tell us, in broken english, that "some of the Apostres stepped out to bathroom, so you can make a picture"(Apostres= Apostles). I couldn't believe it! This would NEVER happen in America! I'm not sure if it was blasphemous or not, but we took some GREAT pics, and I've never laughed so much in a museum. 

Hazel actually has her feet up behind her, laying on her belly. 

A toast! 

Just another biblical day with an ark and a huge industrial bridge next to it. 

Just so you can see how huge this thing was, all of those animals are life size statues, and this is only 7/8 of the boat pictured! 

Family pictures. 

Can you tell five differences between this and the last one?

Me and Hazel, with our completely matching outfits (white tops, white hair flower she took out, gray bottoms, white shoes). 
These are the last reports of our adventures in Hong Kong- at least for this summer! We want to give a special shout out to the entire Bishop family for doing so much for us over the past month. Especially Kale for letting us use his bedroom ;). We are going to miss them! 


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