We actually made it to Hong Kong today! The day started in Shenzhen where we got up and had a breakfast of fried bread sticks (youtiao), rice porridge (zhou), and some green vegetable that I don’t really remember the name of. We then took a taxi to the border crossing and proceeded through customs.
My wife and I had thought we’d have to go through separate processes and would be separated during the customs procedures since I am an American and she is Chinese, but we actually went through all the same lines. The only difference was at the second inspection (there was one for leaving mainland China then another one a hundred meters or so later for entering Hong Kong) I had to get out of line to fill out a form and then make my way back through to turn it in.
Actually I thought that I would have a little trouble because the form asked for my flight number (which I didn’t have, and besides that we had flown in three days ago so we were technically walking into Hong Kong), and it asked me for my address in Hong Kong, I didn’t even know the name of the hotel we’d be staying at and my wife was already on the other side! Luckily they didn’t give us any issues.
Once we made it into Hong Kong we exchanged some money for Hong Kong dollars and then got some Hong Kong transportation cards, putting down a $50 Hong Kong dollar deposit and adding an additional $150 Hong Kong dollars to each, assuming that would be more than enough. In Beijing a bus ride is about 0.40 RMB if you have a transportation card, this is definitely not the case in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong our train ride from the customs station to our hotel (switching a few times) cost us 40 Hong Kong dollars! Our subway trips after that ranged from 5 Hong Kong dollars to 10 Hong Kong dollars! Bus rides were from 3 Hong Kong Dollars to 6 Hong Kong dollars. In Beijing the subway was 2 RMB per trip no matter the distance, so this increase in cost definitely took some getting used to!
Our first stop after getting out of the subway was my father-in-law’s friend’s business. We went there and chatted with him for a while, then we went to lunch where I inadvertently ate shark fin soup! Let me tell you, I am not fond of sea food, and I am not really a very adventurous eater. Say what you will, but that is just how it is. I am very comfortable with what I like, which is lots of Mexican food, Italian food, good ol’ American food, and still many types of Chinese food among other foods. I like beef, pork, chicken, lamb, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, breads, and all sorts of foods. I’ve tried octopus, shrimp, squid, sushi, and lots of different foods including cows’ tongue, tripe and other random parts of animals, but I don’t care for them. I like my good old fashioned normal meat parts of familiar land animals.
So on this first day in Hong Kong I ate different foods, let’s start with lunch: So I had this soup with white things in it that looked like noodles, but when I started eating it I noticed the texture wasn’t quite right, I decided not to ask my wife what it was until after lunch. That was when she told me that it was shark fin soup, so there you go, I ate shark fin soup.
Now onto the rest of our day. We are staying at the IBIS hotel, you can see the ocean from the hotel, it is quite nice. We also went to my father-in-law’s friend’s home over in a different part of town, a very up-scale area. It had quite the view.
So later, after we went out on our own we first went to look around at the markets. There are tons of areas to shop in Hong Kong, neither my wife nor I are big shoppers, so that wasn’t of too much interest to us, but we still did walk around a bit. Now after all the seafood my stomach was a little upset so for dinner I just had some nuggets from McDonald’s (speaking of random animal parts again, but at least they are blended so much as to be unrecognizable). The McDonald’s did have quite the desert selection as you can see in the following picture.
So also we rushed from McDonald’s down to the walkway by the ocean so we could see the light show across the water at Victoria Harbor. We apparently chose the wrong seats because we just saw the International Financial Center change their lights a bit and that was it. It rained on us also as we were watching, so though that was a bit of a let down at least we saw some pretty sites as you can see in the pictures below. That was our first day in Hong Kong, the next day (yes I am talking to you from the future 
) we found better places to go thanks to a friend of my wife’s who has lived in Hong Kong for more than 10 years. So until I get around to writing that post!
