Halloween and Museums!

FYI-Trick-or-treating is a no go here in Hong Kong, but bringing your young children to Lang Kwai Fong is perfectly okay.

For Halloween, I went with a group of American kids wanted to check out Lang Kwai Fong’s famous celebrations. Kat and I dressed up as professional ping-pong players (easy and comfortable- shorts and tank tops). Other costumes included Madi Gras, an angel and cheetahs. Every year they have a huge street performance from 7-10 and then the party continues all night long. But a few years ago people got trampled/maybe even killed-I’m not sure- so the area is patrolled by cops and sectioned off and just crazy overall. We just wanted to check it out.

We grabbed a quick Mexican dinner in Soho and then grabbed a drink at a bar doing Happy Hour before heading over to Lang Kwai Fong. We probably got there around 9:30 or 10 and it was PACKED (think Times Square on New Year’s Eve). The streets were all closed off and the main street in LKF turned into a one-way street. After wandering around for a little while trying to figure out how to actually get into LKF we found the right section and followed the mob of people. When we finally got to LKF about 20 photographers welcomed us. Yep. 

 Smile for the photographers!

Once we were inside LKF, we could barely move. The street was packed, and the cops were strictly enforcing this one-way movement and would barely let groups of people stay together even if they got separated. After about an hour of the craziness a bunch of us were fed-up and headed back to campus.

---

Sunday, Lex and I went to check out the Space and Art museums. The Space museum is on my Hong Kong To See/Do list and the art museum was literally right next to it so we decided to check it out as well. Each museum only cost $5HKD, which is less than $0.70USD so it was a nice cheap afternoon.

The Space Museum was interesting, but rather old. It had a lot of cool information and some interactive things but a lot of the interactive things were broken and there wasn’t much besides some pictures and short captions describing things. Nothing like the Museum of Science or the Planetarium in NYC Luckily, we also got tickets to see a show at the planetarium called ‘Cosmic Collisions.” It was interesting; it talked about cosmic collisions in the past and in the future, stars, how earth was formed, the Milky Way and other space-stuff. 

The outside of the Space Museum

The Art Museum had some cool art pieces and exhibits. It was very different from what I have seen at the MFA in Boston—not too much color in the pieces and more silk-screens and pottery. While we were wandering around Lex and I were talking about how the pieces didn’t seem old at all. A lot of the art pieces were from the 1300s, some were even from B.C.E. but they just didn’t seem old, like they didn’t have the wear and tear I expected.