Following the stickied itinerary, which is great BTW, the SO and I went over to the Wishing Tree for a free day in Hong Kong last week, wanting to participate in a part of Hong Kong culture. Couple of notes for those who may be considering making the journey from those who only speak English/Japanese.

1. It appears that it's a little harder to find people in the New Territories who can speak English. We had quite some trouble finding a cab driver at the Tai Wo Station who knew what the Wishing Tree was. We finally were able to tell one of the cab drivers where we wanted to go by showing him a picture of it on my iPhone which I had downloaded over a Wifi connection. Don't make the same mistake we did--have your hotel write out something to assist the cab driver.

2. When we arrived at the Wishing Tree (mid-day on a Thursday), we were the only ones there. There wasn't any signage in English, except where the Wishing Tree once was, explaining what it was. There was a teen to mid-twenties looking man and an old lady selling joss paper and joss sticks. After we walked around a bit exploring the area, the old lady came up to us and sold us two joss papers for $20HKD. Had no idea what to do because they didn't speak any English, nor were there any signs on what to do, so we were at a loss.

3. At one point, I pulled out my wallet to pay for the joss sticks and had a $100HKD bill, which I saw that the woman clearly saw, who then called over the teenage son. He then wanted me to pay additional monies for I believe incense, at which point I started to wonder whether this was all a scam (our scam alerts were running high, especially since we were the only two there).

So at that point, we just left. I'm sure the area has great cultural significance, but the whole experience of it all made me feel rather uncomfortable, especially not being able to speak a lick of Cantonese or Mandarin. Just sharing my experiences for people with similar background who might be thinking about making a trip out there. Either really read up on it or speak to someone who knows a lot about it, but don't go in there blind like we did, especially since it does take a few hours to make the trip out there and back.