Weekend of April 15-17

Bird Market

The weekend of April 15-17, I also wanted to continue to explore the parts of Hong Kong I had missed. Friday I woke up rather late, but eventually headed to see the Goldfish and Bird Markets in Mong Kok with another exchange student. Both markets were very cool, just because of the number of different stores selling almost the same thing. The prices were also very cheap. The bird market as cool because of all the different colorful birds that were available. The Goldfish market, had lots of stores selling many types of tropical fish, as well as dog and cat stores, and restaurants. 

Bird Market 

Goldfish Market

The next afternoon I went on a boat trip that was set up by the International Student Association.  We rented out two big boats and spent the day floating in an area across the bay from campus. The boats also included two speedboats, so some people, including me, got to go wakeboarding and banana boating. It was a lot of fun. Another cool aspect was that since we had two boats it was possible to swim between the boats and visit the people on each boat. Diving/jumping off the upper deck of the boat was a lot of fun, and I got to use my skils learned in my springboard diving class, to not bellyflop every time. This trip was made even more interesting by the consumption of large amounts of alcohol. The Americans introduced the concept of a beer bong to the foreign students, and some of them I think were trying to make up for their years lost without a beer bong, and as a result got pretty drunk. As the level of drunkenness went up, so did the level of slipperiness of the boat, and as a result people kept falling over on the boats, but thankfully no one fell overboard, or was seriously hurt. It was pretty funny to watch though. Overall the trip was just a day of relaxing in the ocean with the other exchange students and was a lot of fun.  If possible I hope to go boating again before leaving.

Punchoi

 On Sunday I went on an organized trip to the New Territories that was set up by an organization on campus. Sadly it was pouring almost the entire day, but the trip was still somewhat interesting. We got to see some temples and religious buildings in one of the oldest parts of Hong Kong. We finished the day off with eating a traditional dish of Punchoi. Punchoi is basically every type of meat cooked together in one dish. It did not taste bad, but it was till weird to eat.

After dinner we went for dessert, and I got to try for the first time the smelliest fruit in the world. It is called Durian, and smells kind of like garlic but much worse. It tasted like garlic, but unfortunately it was impossible to remove the taste from my mouth for the rest of the night. Right as I thought it was gone, it would pop into my mouth again. This was a once in a lifetime experience for me I think. Durian is so smelly, that in some cities there are signs banning it from being brought into hotels or the metro systems.

Durian