Today I went up to the Peak to take in the view. I travelled up the mid-level escaltors and the walked to the Botanical Gardens. The Botanical gardens were a great place to take a rest, the Gibbons were great !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Zoological_and_Botanical_Gardens
The gardens are split in half by a road, so if you are walking on to the peak, you have to cross the road and walk through the second half. There were quite a few Filipino housekeepers on their day off in the gardens. These housekeepers are economic migrants, they come over to KK to make good money working as housekeepers for the wealthy of HK (Chinese and foreigners). On their days off they all meet up in various locations throughout HK and "set up camp", they sit on picnic style blankets and have amazing spreads of food, some even cook food on small stoves. They all seem pretty friendly and seem to be having a fun time meeting up with their friends.
( http://www.andycarvin.com/photos/amahs1.jpg )
Leaving the botanical gardens, I headed down the hill for a hundred metres and got to the tram station.
http://www.thepeak.com.hk/full/en/peak_tram.php
The queue was huge (45 minute wait in the heat apparently), so I jumped in a taxi and for $2 was taken to the peak. The peak is a great place to see, it has all the usual tourist shops and some nice restaurants. It is like a small shopping mall on the top of the hill, but is has rooftop viewing areas where you can see a great view of Honk Kong harbour and across to the south also. I waited there until sundown so that I could get some nightime snaps also.
I eat in a restaurant called Art Deco, it had a fantastic view, but the staff were complacent and relied heavily on the view as the attraction of this place; I would recommend it.
( http://images.agoda.com/images/1719/OTHERS/OTHERS_1719_08.jpg )
The nightime view was just as amazing as the day view, there was a huge queue for the tram again, so I took a taxi back down to Central again. The taxi driver was one of the friendliest people I had met in HK.
