A group of Northeastern Students (Brittany, Kyle, Jack, Katie) and our German/Italian friend (Marc), set out to enjoy our day off of classes for the Hong Kong "Handover Day" holiday.
We took the ferry across the harbor from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong has three major islands - Kowloon, Lantau, and Hong Kong Island. The central financial and business districts are located on Hong Kong Island. We live on the Kowloon side, in Sha Tin District.
On this day in 1997, Great Britain "handed" Hong Kong over to the Chinese Government, however, Hong Kong still remains a special administrative region (SAR). We were able to see some of the political demonstrations that took place today, but we were not sure what was being rioted.
After taking a walk through central Hong Kong and seeing the demonstrations, we took a time out at the Times Square shopping center and met up with Saj (Marc's room mate from London), who had left earlier in the morning to explore. Part of our group went back to campus, while the rest of us set out to see the Tin Hau Temple and Victoria Park. Tin Hau is the goddess of keeping sailors safe at see.
Victoria Park was beautiful, and we found there to be a lot of Filipino women in the park having picnics. We later found out that all of the Filipino maids in Hong Kong come to the park on holidays to enjoy each others company, but because of their religion, they are not allowed to socialize with men.
The day of exploring Hong Kong ended with a very humid walk along the river back to the ferry! These are some of my favorite pictures of the beautiful harbor....
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