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To start off my Australian adventures, I had a 19 hour layover in Hong Kong. I arrived at the airport at 7 in the evening. I then shortly realized how it felt to be the foreigner. I had my first, lets take advantage of tourist, experience. The Hong Kong airport uses Hong Kong dollars, and not USD. The Hong Kong dollar is about 8 to every 1 USD. So I went to food place and ordered an entree that tasted just like romen with fresh meat, it was fantastic! I asked the guy at the counter, which by the way was wearing a face mask, Do you take american dollar? He said yes so i gave him a ten dollar bill. A ten dollar bill is 80 Hong Kong Dollars or HKD. The entree was 28 HKD. He gave me back 20 HKD and I didnt think anything of it. It wasn't until later I realized he still owed me 32 HKD. I guess you live you learn.
I then took a 5 hour nap in the airport after checking my bags into a locker, I purchased a round trip train ticket to Kowloon. I ended up taking the very first train at 5:45 in the morning. First of all to people reading this, I would recommend knowing exactly where to go and how to get there when your on a trip, especially in a country you can't speak or read the language. I really didn't have anything planned or wanted to see anything so it wasn't a big deal for me. I ended asking every american I could find or officer were Mong Kok was. Mong Kok is a street in Kowloon, and this is were a lot of markets such as the goldfish markets, flower markets, and fish markets. As I walked towards Mong Kok I stumbled across various gardens and parks. The best part about this was it was 7 in the morning so there was all the locals running, and stretching in the parks. Also there was always a group of 5 or more elderly people practicing Tae Chi. Americans the next time you think you live in a "dirty" city or "dirty" apartment you should visit kowloon. Grant it there were some very clean places, but a lot of the places had trash in the streets, and the apartment buildings looked filthy. I finally found some little goldfish stores that were open, and boy were the men proud of there fish. They kept on asking "american?", "american?" one very proud owner tried to sell me his "flower" goldfish. It had a color pattern on the side of the fish that looked like a flower. After the markets i then rested in one of the Mcdonalds on every block and ate my breakfast.
My best experience was the live fish market. I was walking back to go to the train, and my nose noticed a whiff of something fresh and fishy. I then followed and discovered the fish market. It was a smaller market, then i guess what the movies portray, but it was still an experience. It was still pretty early and not that many people were there, but they had everything you could think of. They had tropical parrot fish, live toads, live turtles, massive carps, eels, mussels, stuff that was moving but looked like it shouldn't. After that I realized i have been walking for four hours non stop and needed to get back for some rest. All in all I had a great experience. I wish I could have seen Hong Kong island and experienced more of the Hong Kong culture. My next adventure will include a little bit of Perth and Karratha all wrapped up in one.
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