Escalators and Margaritas

Make you too buzzed to hike up Victoria Peak. So you ride instead. This makes you a complete loser, but fortunately, the same margaritas that turned you into a loser who can't hike also render you unable to conjure up even the smallest amount of shame about it. This is one of the more attractive things about drinking margaritas, and also why I so rarely do it.

This is the Central Mid-Levels escalator, one of the more creative modes of public transportation I've ever encountered. Riddled as this city is with hills and steep inclines, using an escalator as public transportation is really a touch of genius. The "Mid-Levels" are so called because the area is midway up the peak. The escalator runs down in the morning, up in the afternoon and evening. The entire system of escalators is 800 meters long. You can get off at regular intervals and explore shops and such on either side.



We stopped off the escalator at a Tex-Mex restaurant, Caramba (excellent food, by the way). This was where my friend J taught our mainland Chinese friends how to do shots of tequila -- you know, licking the salt off your hand, doing the shot, and immediately sucking on a lime. There is no drink that these gentlemen are unwilling to sample, and so we all had a great deal of fun that afternoon. Fortunately, we had a driver. Unfortunately, this means I never made it to the trails on the peak. [Hangs head in shame. Kind of.]

Bonus pictures of a random Hong Kong street:



Victoria Peak pics later.