Holiday!

The Chinese are great at many things, but there are two things they do better than anyone else: shopping malls and fireworks. Wednesday I chose to celebrate National Day by sampling these specialities. Early in the afternoon I headed out MegaBox with some friends. MegaBox is this giant mall shaped like a red cube with a clear circular window in the middle. I has different types of stores than you find in a typical mall. There was even a large Bed, Bath and Beyond / Michaels hybrid. The amazing thing is that this store was huge and only on one floor. You never see that here! The bigger a store the more levels it has, not the wider it stretches. You could almost pretend you were in the US. MegaBox also has an international sized ice skating rink and an Imax theater. This mall is ridiculous! And as an added bonus I heard a JET song while shopping. Its such a nice break from the typical stuff they play in most stores.

After shopping for a while and watching the ice skaters we headed over to TST to meet up with some more people and grab dinner. The Indian food we had was great, but spicy and the workers couldn't seem to keep up with our water usage. It was a fun restaurant because it is in this building with all of these Indian men inviting you to their restaurant (at least that's what I think was happening). We were led up this back stair case and taken into a restaurant that had a "members only" sign posted up. I was really clueless as to what was happening, but I think that's for the best.

Once dinner was finished we walked over to the harbor to watch the fireworks along with every other person in Hong Kong. I had just read a news article about this stampede in India that left 160 people dead. I suddenly understood how this was possible and began to feel claustrophobic. We were packed in so tightly and had to just shove people to get up closer. Fortunately we had a 6'3" blond guy with us. He served as a beacon that we could follow. I got separated from the group at one point and he had to grab my hand and literally reel me into the rest of the group; I couldn't budge on my own. It was insane. We then had to stand in this crowd for about two hours until the fireworks started. But the wait and the crowd was worth it! The fireworks were incredible!They shot them up from barges in the middle of the harbor. We were on the Kowloon side so we got to watch them with the cool skyline in the background. The buildings were all lit up from the light show and the fireworks reflected off the glass. You would have to be a robot not to be filled with some measure of national pride after that display!

I know the pics are blurry, but there was no way I was going to hold my hand up long enough to accommodate the shutter speed (it takes forever at night).