Very confusion...: The Peak

Having arrived in Hong Kong in a bit of a whirlwind, it's all finally beginning - only now - to sink in that I don't actually live in Australia anymore & that I have a new home for the moment. With that in mind I decided today that by far my favourite place (having explored a massive 0.5% of the island) is Victoria Peak.

Like almost everywhere in Hong Kong it's prone to crowding & is covered in shops selling all sorts of crap from statuetes of dragons to shoes to novelty stop signs, to the Bubba Gump Shimp Co. monster prawn cocktail. It is however, the greenest part & the quietest part of the city I've been too and for this I love it hugely. Also, the run up there is brutal & so you feel all tough once you're done.

Also: The View. Yes, it's important enough to capitalise & no it nothing to do with Whoopie Goldberg.

As hastily promised weeks & weeks ago, I've strung a bunch of photos together that I took from the peak of the Peak & turned them into a panorama. Well, actually, Autostitch turned them into a panorama, but I had to do all the hard work like pushing buttons & sitting & downloading &, oh it's all very complicated. But anyway, I've done this amazing thing now & it's actually turned out cooler than I thought it would. Check it:

Actually, I would recommend clicking this pic as it's pretty uninspiring just sitting here like this...

Obviously all the crung in the corners is due to my lazy photo snaping technique, but you get this idea. This is the Hong Kong side, so we're looking North across Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour, & Kowloon getting lost in the background in all the smog. This was taken on a really crappy day, so I'm hoping to get a good one hapenning at some point in summer if I can actually bear to haul my arse up 523 stone stairs in the blistering heat.

I really wanted to get the whole 360 degree thing going on, but unfortunately the software keeps crapping out as there's mountain (hill) to the east & west of this shot so it doesn't like the continuity or something. One day, I'll work it out so you guys can print this off at home, roll it up & tape it at the ends then stick your head inside it & then pretend you're in Hong Kong with me. Until then, you'll just have to deal with this.

Looking South across I-don't-even-know-what to Lamma Island.

Lamma incidentally is the home of Hong Kong's only Olympic gold medallist. Some bird who won the windsurfing out of nowhere one year. Clearly I've not done my research on this, but that's how the story goes.

Now that I'm on a roll you're going to get one more panoramic shot, which is the view from my boss' apartment balcony. I posted these photos a week or so ago, but they were all in a big long clog & didn't make a whole lot of sense, but they actually look kind of cool stuck together like this.

See?

Alright, enough of that panoramic business. Today, I obviously went for a run up the Peak again as I keep bloody talking about it. But today was a little bit special in a way. No, not because Ken decided he had stomach flu & ran like a girl, but because it was misty as hell. And not just misty as any normal hell, but I'm talking like clouds that ganged up with some smog & then decided to invite mist along to the party. It was seriously like running through the set of Monkey Magic. So cool. Also, there was some serious Sydney-quality jungle humidity going on. You know the kind that is warm but not hot, & humid but not wet, but still....really humid. Very strange day. Very awesome. So that first photo up there? The panaoramic of Hong Kong side? This is what it looked like today:

Sydney weather. London visibility. Hong Kong, yo.

Actually, that is pretty much the exact same shot as this:

No, really.

The mist was awesome. Growing up in Darwin meant I rarely saw mist, so I'm amazed by this. Photos are evidence of my amazement. I wanted to put up a video as well, but it doesn't work for some stupid reason.