11-23
Day 2 in Hong Kong.  I met Jo and Luke, grabbed a Starbucks and exchanged some money.  I like Hong Kong dollars--they have cool pictures and they list the bank who printed them, and the different banks use different art.  The Lion on the Heng Seng bank notes is the best!  We caught the tube to Hong Kong island and got a bus to an area called Stanley Market.  It was like a 45 minute ride, which took us outside the boundaries of the pavement and into beautiful wilderness.   Nobody told me how much nature was still left on Hong Kong island--it was awesome.  Stanley market was a small beach area with a famous market.  The market was just junk, but the beach was great.  After hanging out there for a while we went back to the land of pavement.

It was getting close to dark so we followed the signs to the sky tram--a cable car to the tops of the peaks, to see the great views of the city.  The cable car dumped us out in the belly of a shopping center--8 floors of shops with only an escalator for ascension to the top, where the views are.  Sadly the ascension took too long and by the time we got to the top it was dark.  It was still cool, but if we could have embodied the spirit that planned that building into a stuffed doll, we could have twisted its head off and torched the torso.  Still questing for Macau style egg tarts!

11-24
I got up determined to find a gym today and my quest was another one of those 50 percent success or failures, depending on how you look at it.  I found the gym--same company as was in Shanghai, but they had different rules here in Hong Kong, namely required a passport and don't provide locks, so I left in hopes of returning better prepared another day--like tomorrow.  I went back to check on Jo and Luke to see what they were up to.  Jo was ill, but Luke wanted to go to a fishing village so I tagged along with him.  We caught a ferry to the main Island, then a super ferry to the fishing village island.  I love the ferry system in Hong Kong.  You can use a preloaded card for them (same on subways) and the ferries are frequent, cheap, and comfortable.  The only knock on them really is that the voice that announces things talks Brittish and not Pirate.
We didn't realize how long it would take to get to the villiage--45 minute ferry, then another 45 minute bus, so by the time we got there we only had an hour until we needed to head back.  Luckily the village wasn't that big and we speed walked the thing.  On our way back I bought a translucent squid.  It looked like it was candy but it was squid.  It had that Crystal Pepsi thing going on, where the visual and tastes are a mismatch.  Flavor failure.

Got back in time, but so hungry, so we grabbed a Turkish wrap.  The guy working the restaraunt looked exactly like my friend George, but Turkish and not Mexican.  We went out for some Hong Kong nightlife that evening.  It was pretty similar to the Shanghai nightlife but fit to the hours of Korean nightlife.  Overall it was good fun with good people.  One guy, not in our group, but looked kinda like Billy Mays from a Popeye cartoon, got very shirtless and danced all night on the bar--I couldn't resist taking a picture of that.