HK Bird Market

The bird market in Hong Kong was one of my favorite pieces of the city. One quiet street in the midst of all the city traffic is dedicated to birds. The colorful birds fill dozens of beautiful cages, and next door is bird accessory heaven. The chirping on this street is never-ending. You'd think it would be annoying (especially if you've ever had a pesky pet bird), but when coming from all directions, it was beautiful and harmonious.  One woman who was feeding her parrot was clapping her hands and talking to the bird with a big smile on her face as if the bird was a kid (photo below). It was nice to see the birds getting treated well.

I saw a post on the blog of Cherry Blossom Girl (one of my favorite places to get photography eye candy) about her visit to the Hong Kong bird market a while back and was so giddy that I had the opportunity to go as well. I loved it.

- Julia

HK Flower Market

If you've been following for awhile you know we spent Christmas Day in Hong Kong because we posted a little snip-it of our Christmas a while back. It was rather lonely without our family and friends, especially when I remembered that my family was all together having dinner and opening presents. I pitied myself a little bit. We had no Christmas tree and no presents. To make up for it, we decided to treat ourselves to a Starbucks coffee on Christmas morning (which was strictly forbidden on our travels since we have it at home in Seattle).

After our Starbucks treat, we headed to the Hong Kong Flower Market and the Bird Market. That's when I decided our Christmas was probably a whole lot cooler than anyone's back home. This was probably my favorite part of our Hong Kong visit.

The flower market had plants of every variety-- potted plants, fresh cut bouquets, barely sprouting bulbs, little trees, bamboo plants, and peculiar little figurines that live on the soil in potted plants. I saw more orchids than I've ever seen in one place. Everything was so beautiful, fragrant, and full of life-- hard to believe that this was in December (the dead of winter back home).

We'll share the Bird Market in the next few days--  it was even better than the Flower Market.

- Julia

P.S.

We got interviewed! And you can read it on the cool travel blog, From India With Love. Kay is a  girl who is living in India for a year and blogging about it.