It's Fun To Stay at the Y.M.C.A...

That's right everybody...with arm motions this time...It's Fun To Stay at the Y.M.C.A....

Well it is....if the one in question is The Salisbury YMCA in Kowloon! It is a beautiful hotel right on the harbor across from Hong Kong. Next door is The Peninsula and the Sheraton at triple and double the price we paid. I think we did just fine. It is actually a nice hotel, only 2 stars but clean and the harbor view makes up for no bellhop or room service. The picture above is the view from our room during the evening light show.
Kim and I were lucky enough to arrive on Valentines Day (our anniversary too) and even though the desk said the dining room was fully booked we stopped by and they had a table for us. The Valentines buffet dinner was delightful . Between the view and the fact that they took anyone who wanted to go, up on the roof to watch the nightly award winning harbor light show, we had a lovely evening. The light show is made up of lot of buildings on both sides of the harbor displaying colorful lights on their sides and lasers and white lights from their rooftops. The whole thing is set to music so you can tune your radio to a certain band and it is choreographed to match. We really lucked out that night as they don't take people up to the roof every night(although it was a nice roof garden) to watch and it had to be the best view anywhere to watch the show. We could see the massed crowds down on the harbor walk from up there and were grateful for the elbow room and vantage we had.

Although we both ended up working quite a bit from Hong Kong...me on the phone to shrimp customers and Kim putting out programming fires for his boss, we still managed to see some of the sights in the 5 days we had.

I think the best way I can describe Hong Kong is that it is like San Francisco TIMES TEN and Chinatown TIMES A THOUSAND!! The similarities are many with the foggy weather, cable cars, bridges, ferries, hills, harbor, shopping, crowds and great food!
We did a couple of the city-hikes around town, went up to "The Peak" on the funicular cable car tram thing, rode the Star Ferry across the harbor and took buses and the subway all over. We had High Tea at both the Conrad hotel (fabulous buffet tea) and at The Peninsula. Enjoyed dim sum and some of the best noodle dishes ever. I am afraid that even having spent a great deal of time in SF and Chinatown, Hong Kong's lowliest dim sum kicks butt over anything in SF.

And yes we did try foot massages there and although good (how can you not say that with someone rubbing your feet after a long day of walking/sightseeing?) they were not of the caliber to be found in Thailand.

Here are some pics of us hamming it up with the statue of Bruce Lee and the star for Jackie Chan on the Harbor Hollywood walk.


It feels weird to be heading home with everyone talking about all the snow on the ground. I am sure my thin blood is not going to like it. However, we already have plans for the next leg of our grand adventure and it is only 5 weeks away so I should be able to handle the cold for that long.

More details on that soon...