Where has the time gone?! It's hard to believe that reading week is here already. Reading week is essentially a fall break - a week off of school before midterms begin. I'm especially excited for reading week because my friends and I are going to Korea! I've spent most of the past two weeks getting ready for our trip. My friends and I did a lot of last minute planning - while we bought our plane tickets a month in advance, we didn't do anything else to prepare after that until this week. I highly recommend starting much earlier than we did, as by the time that we started looking for places to stay a lot of the places that were low-cost but highly rated were already completely booked. If you plan on going traveling and want to stay at a hostel, I recommend using a site like booking.com instead of Hostelworld, since booking.com usually gives you free cancellation until a week before your planned stay and often doesn't require a deposit. Another useful tool for trip-planning that I recommend is Google Maps's My Maps tool. You can view the map I made for my Korea trip below. I created four different layers and used icons to organize my map, so that I could separate locations based upon our reason for visiting. It's a great way to see where different places you want to visit are in relation to one another so that you can plan out your days.
Aside from planning for our trip, I've also spent the past two weeks working on group projects and assignments. Group projects are extremely common at HKU, especially in their business school. I have group projects in all of my classes. While it's a great way to get to know more people, it can also be really stressful trying to organize times during which everyone can meet. The groups also tend to be fairly large - I have a group of 8 in one class and 5 in another - which makes it hard to keep everyone responsible. I really enjoy the projects that we're working on though since most of them are case studies through which we get to apply what we learn in class to real situations.
If you want to take a break from studying and projects Hong Kong has lots of outdoor adventures that are perfect for unwinding! Last weekend we made our way to Sai Wan beach in Sai Kung. Sai Kung is about an hour and a half from Kennedy Town, where I live. To get to the beginning of the hike to Sai Wan we had to take the MTR with two transfers, a bus, and a taxi. The hike itself was really easy, it was shaded by trees and the path was paved for the entire way. The views from the hike were also stunning, making it well worth the hour-long walk.
The hike ends at an adorable beach town where you can buy food, drinks, and boat tickets back to Sai Kung. If you walk to the end of the beach and hike inland for about 5 min you'll reach an adorable waterfall swimming area. It's really popular amongst college students because you can jump from the rocks into the pool. The water in the stream was really cold though, so I preferred swimming in the ocean. The beach itself was nearly deserted while we were there and seemed a lot cleaner than other Hong Kong beaches. It was one of the most beautiful beaches I had ever seen and so worth the journey to get there.
Arguably the best part of the day was taking the boat back to Sai Kung. While the boat was more expensive than hiking back the way we came and taking a taxi, it was one of the most exciting experiences I've had in Hong Kong. A one-way trip on the boat was about $15 USD, so I was expecting a ferry. What we got was a small 20-person motor boat. The boat ride was not for the faint of heart or for those who easily get seasick. However if one of your favorite rides at Disneyland is splash mountain, then I can guarantee you'll find the boat ride to be worth every dollar. Sai Wan was one of my favorite adventures so far!
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Emily BallBorn and raised in Aiea, HI, traveling to Hong Kong to study Human Resource Administration. Archives
January 2019
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