This past weekend I was in Hong Kong, but really I felt like I was in New York City because that's the best way to describe Hong Kong. It was such an amazing weekend and I was so sad to leave and go back to the reality of school, but the trip didn't start off that well. One of my friends that was coming on the trip, Lekan, needed a visa for Hong Kong but the embassy was so slow and bureaucratic, so long story short, he finally got a call on Thursday morning at 11:30 that his visa was ready. He got to the embassy within half an hour but they told him that it was lunch time already and that he would have to come back at 3:00. The problem with this was that our flight was at 3:45. He had no choice though, so the rest of us went to the airport and talked to the airline reps about it and they said that they would wait until 3:30 for him to check in, but the gates to board the flight would close at 3:35. Unfortunately, he got to the airport at 3:35 and even as the plane was pulling out of the gate, we were still trying to get them to hold the plane, telling the stewardess that are friend was right there, ready to board. The stewardess even phoned the reps at the check-in desk but they said there was nothing they could do about it at that point. We were pretty upset that he wouldn't be able to make it, especially after all the hassles of trying to get a visa but we were excited that we were going to HK and we hoped that he would be able to catch a flight the next day, which is exactly what he ended up doing. When we arrived at our "budget hotel", we realized what the budget part meant. The building was dirty and smelly and it turned out that it was really just a building that was a mix of apartments, tailor shops, and hotel rooms. We were led around dirty hallways by the "hotel" manager to our room, and at that point, I was thinking that I was going to go down to the Holiday Inn down the road, even if it would cost me 4 times more. When he opened our room for us though, I felt better because the room was was nice and looked relatively new, especially compared with the rest of the building. That night we ate dinner and walked around the streets for a while and then went down to the harbour to admire Hong Kong's amazing skyline. There is not much in terms of cultural or historic things to do or see, so most of the weekend was spent shopping and wandering the various street markets and trendy shopping areas. We did go to see the "Big Buddha" one day but we got there around sunset time so the Buddha had closed and we only got to see it from the bottom of the hill and it was getting too dark to take any pictures. The drive on the way up though was beautiful, with untouched waters and hills, very different from the mainstream image of Hong Kong and it's mass of skyscrapers and markets. The highlight of the trip was definitely going up to Victoria's Peak where we could see all of Hong Kong. We did it both during the day and although both were amazing, the night view was mesmerizing. I could have stayed there for an hour just marvelling at the skyline and the harbour, but unfortunately we only had about 15 mintues up there before the observation deck closed. It was just enough time to enjoy the view though and get in some good pictures. I'll stop here in trying to describe the undescribeable and just let you have a look for yourself.