Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Hong Kong Zoological & Botanical Gardens

So, Hong Kong may be old news by now, but I have just a few more posts to put up!

On one of our last few days in Hong Kong, Camden and I took a trip to the nearby Zoological and Botanical gardens. The minibus doesn't exactly stop there, but it goes right by there, so I stayed on and asked the driver to stop when he got close, even though it was on this really steep hill. He told me in Chinese (translated by a few nice people) that he couldn't stop where we were, but he would stop in a minute. We hopped off and it was only a short walk up the hill to the entrance.

The first thing we saw was the reptile house. Camden enjoyed pointing out the sleeping alligator.

There were a lot of different kinds of monkeys! We enjoyed watching them swing through their exhibits.
Camden wanted to climb up and sit with King George VI. This statue was built in 1941 to commemorate 100 years of British rule in Hong Kong.

There were also many different types of birds, our favorite were the flamingos.

This is what I saw most of the time, Camden running away from me.

We went into the greenhouse and saw all different kinds of carnivorous plants! Crazy!

These ones attract bugs with the bright red on the leaves, then trap them when they fall into the liquid in the center.

There were also all different kinds of orchids. They were so beautiful!



We then walked through a bamboo garden. Camden loved running along the winding paths and sitting on these little benches. Each bench had a different animal holding it up. Look closely in this picture and you'll see Camden disappearing behind the bamboo.



After we left the zoo to find the bus, we had a great view of the huge buildings in Central.


After we saw several #3 minibuses going past us up the hill (they did not stop on the steep hill on the way up), we decided to go into this grocery store to get a snack and regroup. As you can see below, grocery stores here aren't quite the same as in the US. This one had an escalator for your grocery cart because it was on two levels! You really have to look in the right places to find grocery stores, they're just tucked into the lower levels of all types of buildings.

So we got a few buns for a snack, went outside to a little park, ate, played on the playground, then asked a lady who spoke English about the buses. We went down to the road where other buses were coming, and luckily all the bus schedules/routes are in English as well. I found one that said it was going to Hong Kong University, so we got onto that one. Well, it got close to the University, then turned and started heading another direction. By the time we came to a bus stop, we were quite far away, so I just stayed on the bus, and it eventually headed down to Central. Camden was asleep by that time. Luckily, we came to the spot our minibus stopped when we would go down to Central, so I was able to get on that bus, and go back home. It was quite the adventure, but I was pretty happy I was able to figure it out!