Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_International_Airport
http://www.hongkongairport.com/eng/index.html
http://www.12hk.com/misc/top10_HongKong_Sights_Attractions.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Peak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Tram
http://www.thepeak.com.hk/en/home.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing
http://www.hkatlas.com/hk/sightseeing/new-territories/tian-tan-buddha
http://gohongkong.about.com/od/travelplanner/a/englishinhk.htm
http://www.tv2.no/nyheter/utenriks/iphonehysteri-i-hong-kong-3612210.html

Goodbye Hong Kong

After several great days in Hong Kong theres time to go back to Norway. It was a lot of fun staying here and I will be remembering it for the rest of my life. I have learned a lot about the history and culture, and experienced even more, but there's still very much that i would like to see and do. Right now we're at the huge airport in hong kong waiting for our plane. The airport itself is placed on a pretty big island and is propably the biggest airport i've seen and theres incredibly many people here. The trip back to Norway takes about 12 hours so I' m going to sleep on the plane or else i'm going to get bored.
Bye bye Hong Kong I will come  some day, I promise.
Hong Kong international airport:

A new day

Dear blog

Today we have been trying to combine sightseeing and just enjoying the city. We have been going to several districts to feel the atmosphere and see where the locals go. The “ladies market” for example was crowded with locals that needed some new clothes, there were also a lot of tourists there of course. We also went to some famous streets to go for a walk and a new apple store apparently had just opened. There was an enormous queue because everybody wanted their hands on the new Iphone. It has been an enormous success down here and in the news it stood about a man that actually had bought 82 phones to sell them to others.

The sudden iphone explosion probably has something to do with the economic growth in Hong Kong. The rich people want to show off their money with a Smartphone. They want to distance themselves from the poor people in the city/state that really have problems since there’s hard to find a place to live because it costs a lot. Hong Kong like China has gotten a system where the rich people are really rich and the poor people on the other hand are really poor. Li Ka-Shing for instance is one of the really rich in Hong Kong; actually he is one of the richest men in the world. He’s probably the richest man to drop out of high school with his 26 billion dollars. Even his name sounds like money (ka-shing- ka-ching). Hopefully the economic development will change so everybody will get something out of it.

Sights

Hey everybody, after just walking around in the city two days ago we found out that it was just about time to actually find out something about the sights in Hong Kong. So yesterday we went to Victoria peak which is a mountain located in Hong Kong. We took a train up to the peak tower, it was pretty cool to just sit down and relax and enjoy the view while the train was carrying us several hundred meters up the mountain.  The train’s route was approximately just 1.4 kilometers, but we spared a lot of time because the train goes both down to the Victoria gap and then up to the Peak Tower which is located about 400 meters above the gap. A trip like that would have been pretty exhausting. When we arrived at the tower we went up to the upper floors and looked out over the extraordinary city, it was even more beautiful than being there. This is how the city looked from the Victoria Peak:

 

Today we went to see the giant Buddha in Hong Kong and as the name says: it is huge! The Tian Tan Buddha as its actually called is 34 meters tall and made out of Bronze.  90% of the population in Hong Kong is Buddhists so the statue is not made as a tourist attraction, but for the religious. The reason the religion is so big here is because Hong Kong was a part of china before and china is famous for Buddhism. You don’t really notice that much of a difference from china, the food is pretty spicy and rice is used a lot. The language is also mainly Chinese and the people look exactly the same, but Hong Kong is a sovereign state with a Sovereign government and flag, and Hong Kong is not a communist country like China. The flag Hong Kong is red with a white orchid tree in the middle. It symbolizes that Hong Kong and China is one Country with two systems because it is similar to the chinese flag with the red background, but it still is completely different.. 

The Tian Tan Buddha:

English in Hong Kong

As I mentioned in my last post, there's a lot of people in Hong Kong. The people here are generally really friendly and pretty short. Even though english is one of the official languages in Hong Kong there's just 1/3 of the population who can speak English. Just 200.000 have English as a mother language. The reason English actually is recognized as an official language comes from the time Hong Kong was an English colony and the population had to learn English.
From 1997 when Hong Kong got its sovereignity, the focus on english has turned weaker, and it gets weaker as time goes by. You can say that since 1997 Hong Kong has gotten more and more Chinese. It really came to me as a surprise that most people did not speak English when Hong Kong is an English speaking country. Ordering food and shopping in the tourist streets goes fine, but taking cabs is pretty difficult.

Finally here

Hi ecerybody, after weeks of waiting i have finally arrived here in Hong Kong. My first impression is that everything except the people is way bigger than us norwegians. The scyscrapers, the crowded streets and the food feels pretty strange when youre from a norwegian city where the tallest tower is about 80 metres tall and there is room for gardens outside of people's houses. The ex colony of Britain have 2 million habitants more than norway, but the country itself is 380 times smaller than Norway. I am looking forward to some memorable days here in Hong Kong.