Spinning: The Cardigans - Hanging Around
Hello, hello, hello. I know it's been awhile since I last updated; the updates just get more sporadic don't they. I don't actually know why, but from now on, I think I'll make a concerted effort to write more like I used to. Writing is always therapeutic; it's been a favourite activity of mine for ages now. So then I guess I'll take this opportunity to blog about Hong Kong before I drag it on any further, especially since I'm finally done with my first round of the dreaded cors system (for those who don't know it's my college's system of obtaining the modules we want for each semester).
Speaking of cors, I did get what I wanted, but I've run into a couple of problems regarding cors and my (hopefully upcoming) exchange which have made me very distraught indeed - to the point of toying with the idea of dropping the entire exchange itself - but that's a worry for another time.
I've posted before about my 1st trip to Hong Kong, and this time I went again with a different group of friends, at a different time (i.e. different weather and that is a very, very important part of the vacation for me).
The budget this time was tighter, because the three of us who went together were pretty much broke. So we stayed in Mongkok's Stanford Hotel, which was pretty clean and comfortable. Overall we were satisfied with the hotel room; save for an exceedingly noisy neighbour who, er, made many embarrassing noises for all the 3 nights we were there. Being the kaypohs we are we practically stuck our ears to the wall separating our rooms to hear what was going on! Hilarious experience.
This was the view from our hotel room. Not exactly the most glamourous landscape but I think it showed Mongkok for what it really was; and I liked it that way. As I said before HK is very non-clinical, and I think this picture shows you why. There are a LOT of old buildings in Mongkok, some look like they've seen better days and some look like there have been fires that have broken out before. But scattered amongst this old buildings are these shiny new skyscrapers.
So we went to Ocean Park on the 2nd day of our visit. We figured it was the last year we could ride kiddy rides and get away with it, you see. Honestly, the sole rollercoaster in Disneyland is not as thrilling as those found in Ocean Park. Of course Ocean Park doesn't really have all that Disney magic, but I'll admit their rollercoasters make up for it. The blue one you see is the scarier one with loop-a-loops and steep, steep drops, but! We didn't get to ride in it. It seemed as if it was destined that we wouldn't get to ride on it because EVERY SINGLE TIME we queued for the darn ride, it would rain, and the operators would close the ride. What the heck, right. We did however get to sit on another coaster which was pretty fun as well, with the downward spiralling helixes. I was screaming all the way, and I think at some point I was yelling "shitshitshit!" because I felt like I would explode if I didn't.
We also tried the freefall tower. And to sum up that experience? Exhilarating. We were raised pretty high up, so much so we could see outlying islands in HK. And the best (or worst, depending on how you see it) part was that it started raining whilst we were at the highest point of the tower. It was surreal; and a part of me enjoyed that because, how often do you get to do this? When we finally plunged down, I felt like my organs left my body first, and it was so fast, I had to close my eyes and scream. When we got off though we were drenched and cold, so I guess that's not the fun part of it...
Then we went to do some touristy things. We had our caricatures drawn! It's something I normally won't do in SG; but I thought it'd be nice to have a memento of my time in Ocean Park so I just went ahead with it. It was a bit funny because when the old guy whipped out his pen and started drawing us, people would walk by and stare, and you can't help but feel very self conscious since you have to pose a certain angle for the artist. I was smiling for mine, so basically my jaw muscles felt like they were going to snap after smiling for so long. I thought Marilyn's (the middle friend) caricature was most in her likeness; mine not so much heh.
