The exchange student community at HKU is quite large! There are a lot of students studying in British universities, as well as many other European students. So far, I have also seen quite a lot of American students, especially ones from the West coast. As a result, for the first couple of weeks I have mainly been hanging out with other exchange students. A place I really wanted to visit is Victoria’s Peak! This is Hong Kong island’s highest point from where I heard that you can see most of the Hong Kong skyline. It is considered to be one of the most popular tourist destinations. So, I met a couple of other exchange students and we decided to go up Victoria’s Peak. Well, there are multiple ways to go up there. You could take a minibus for a 15-minute ride or perhaps you could take the mountain tram which travels through some of the greatest scenery in Hong Kong island. (Fun fact: even though Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, 75% percent of the land is still total green!). My friends and I decided to take it the hard (and perhaps most rewarding) way by hiking up the hill.
At first the hike seemed quite intimidating. It involves walking through a lot of small paths filled with different types of plant life. The fauna in Hong Kong is very interesting as well. It has a very tropical feel to it, and I guarantee that a walk in the woods of Hong Kong would look completely different than hiking through the Pennsylvania forests. After about 40 minutes, we reached something that appeared to be some sort of resort. It was the peak! Even though we were almost 2000 feet above the ground and on a very steep hill too, we were surprised to see that most of the area up there was filled with restaurants and Hotels. The summit was incredible! It was night and the city was lit up to the very last building. More than 300 skyscrapers were lying there in front of us and the view was breathtaking! Surprisingly enough there weren’t too many tourists there at the time, and we were able to just sit there and enjoy the view. This was by far one of the best experiences for me in Hong Kong yet.
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