Hong Kong part 2

After exploring Central and Admiralty, our 2nd full day started off walking around Kowloon. There are two main roads that run north to south and are rammed with electronics stores. We walked north on Nathan road taking in all the sites and sounds. Unfortunately a lot of these were Indians offering me suits and Emma Thai massages. Seriously, every 20 metres another one popped up with an offer. We found another out-of-the-way restaurant downstairs in a random building. Unlike the packed Town Hall dim-sum place, this place was practically empty. Once again, we ended up ordering far too much - the mixed noodles we thought was a side turned out to be a full dish so in total we'd accidentally ordered four full dishes for two of us...



After lunch we carried on before heading across to the Museum of Hong Kong. The fixed exhibit was the traditional "history of..." exhibition charting Hong Kong from perhistoria to modern (well, the 90s) times. As ever, Britain played a large part in Hong Kong's history by breaking down the Chinese by importing drugs to the area and advancing towards to capital until the Chinese capitulated and signed over first Hong Kong island and then Kowloon and the New Territories to Britain.



The second exhibit seemed to be about banking (and HSBC in particular, of course) so we skipped out to go to the adjacent science museum to finally see the National Geographic young wildlife photographer of the year exhibition that we'd missed out on in London last year.

Once we had finished browsing through the impressive collection, we headed back to the docks. As we waited for night to fall we popped into an amusement arcade and went head to head on Mario Kart GP2, which was as fun as ever.

Hong Kong is famous for it's night-time harbour sound and light show a symphony of lights which holds the world record for the longest daily sound and light show. Every day at 8pm music is piped onto the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui and the lights on buildings on the island flash and lasers shine into the sky in time with the music. It's pretty cheesy, but every day crowds line up, people set up camera tripods and everyone waits for the show to start. The mist still hung over the island so the view wasn't as clear as in the pictures. We wandered up the Avenue of Stars - the HK equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and stopped off for a drink in one of the many quayside bars and then wandered back while taking in the light show.



Also on the avenue was a display of the Olympic mascots, which seemed to all be pandas. Some of the sports they were partaking in were obvious, but some were more confusing...



Once the show was over we decided to cross the harbour and take the train up to The Peak. The train runs on a pulley system, but even so the track was seriously steep. Starting at the base of the hill the journey ran uphill at steep angle. We started out at "ground level" and soon were rising above the sky-scrapers towards the summit. The Peak is predictably tourist trap-esque and the centre is full of tacky over-priced souvenir shops and places like Hard Rock Cafe. We went to one of the over priced restaurants which was pretty nice, but seemed to be lacking the live music indicated by the guide book. We got a seat with a view (again foggy) and a menu full of the promise of freshly cooked food. After ordering, the waiter returned to inform us that Emma's choice had run out so a replacement was ordered. After a few minutes, our meals turned up. A few minutes later another waiter arrived with Emma's original choice. He seemed very confused that we both had food, but unfortunately didn't decide to leave the extra meal with us.



After we got back to sea level we decided to go for a walk over the many elevated walkways back to Central, stopping to get some "lines of lights" photos along the way.



The next day we took the MTR out to Lantau island, adjacent to the new airport and took the cable car out to Ngong Ping, home of the world's largest outdoor bronze Buddha. There seem to be so many of these things around that there needs to be multiple categories to have records in. Biggest/smallest, indoors/outdoors, bronze...



The journey takes about 20 minutes and gives an aerial view of the new airport, before going over the hills of Lantau island to Ngong Ping village. If the Peak was a tourist trap, then Ngong Ping is a tourist death-trap. The entire cable car complex has been built to look old, but they did a pretty poor job as everything looks like it's made out of plastic. Overpriced cafes and souvenir shops line the path to the monastery at the foot of the steps up to the Buddha itself.



Apparently Buddha like oranges, so there were plenty of orange bushes around and small piles of offerings in front of the statues. Then we started up the hundreds of stairs. I know I'm not that fit, but daaaaaaaaaaaamn there was a lot of stairs.



After getting the cable car back to Tung Chung, we walked around the shopping centre there taking in another supermarket, complete with more live fish tanks and piles of durian fruits.

That evening we ventured back to Yau Ma Tei to take in a night market. Essentially, it was a market along a street full of stalls selling tat, knocked off toys and clothes. Afterwards we were guided into another random building, up a staircase and into a first floor restaurant, practically invisible from the street (in fact, it took us several attempts to find the building). This was another traditional place, full of Cantonese where very few of the waiters spoke English. We ordered the duck pancakes and a whole sliced duck arrived.



Afterwards we wandered back towards the harbour. As we neared the harbour we passed the Sheraton hotel. After my experiences in Frankfurt and Sheraton Preferred Guest card in my wallet I dragged Emma inside for a drink. The bar was on the top floor with an amazing view over the harbour. Of course, the drinks of choice were cocktails - margaritas, daiquiri and other strong vodka drinks that looked pretty space-age under the mood lighting. Very Lost In Translation

Hong Kong part 1

So this was my 2nd East Asian holiday in as many months following my return to Japan in February. Emma and I had decided that Hong Kong was top of our "cities to visit" list so we'd booked in the post Christmas sale. After getting the parking centre bus to the terminal in Manchester it appeared that we'd walked into a building site. Online check-in promised to remove the queues, but now we simply queue at the "baggage drop" desk instead. Indeed, at Manchester there appeared to be one check-in machine shared between KLM and Air France. The staff manning the machine didn't seem to understandthat we had checked in online, but didn't have boarding passes. Eventually he ushered us towards the queue. Hopefully I'll get to Silver status this year and the business check-in will await.

The next challenge was to pick up our money. After finding the Thomas Cook booth, it turned out that the money simply wasn't there as they had "forgotten" to order it. The girl thought that they may have some in another terminal so she called and informed us that someone was "running" over with it. We still had to get through security and it was getting close to the departure time. Eventually someone came ambling round the corner and we got about half of the money we'd ordered. Thomas Cook seem to be gradually replacing TravelEx in airports so in future we've decided to simply use ATMs to get cash. We rushed through security and had 10 minutes in the shops before we were ushered onto the 737. 40 minutes later we were over the channel and descending into Paris. Of course, we landed on the runway furthest fom the terminal and when we disembarked, there was actually someone to walk us from Terminal 2E where our HKG flight was to go from. CDG is a really badly laid-out airport. Terminal 2 has 6 sub terminals, some of which need a bus to get between and the signage is pretty bad. Half of 2E was still closed after a roof collapsed several years ago. To our absolute disgust, Air France had completely ignored the seats we'd selected and put us into random seats. The very unhelpful desk attendent said - tough, you turned up late so you get what's left, completely ignoring the fact that we'd pre-booked seats. Thankfully, once on board, a much more helpful stewardess arranged for us to sit next to each other - but no window seat:( - The 777 left on time and we set about the IFE system. Unlike KLM with it's AVOD system, the AF planes mostly have multichannel but are limited to about 7 films, 3 of which were French. Once again, the plan was to stay awake all the way through the shortened night and sleep when we arrived. We just about managed it and 12 hours later we were descending through the fog into Hong Kong. The famous old Kowloon airport is closed so there was no flying through the tower blocks. We entered the country, got our bags and emerged into the arrival hall, completely unaware of what to expect. We had been told there would be a bus straight to the hotel, but we couldn't see one. Instead we took the train to Hong Kong island and bought our Octopus cards (equivalent of the Oyster card and the world's first publicly used smart-card). By now it was dark and we were soon into Kowloon going past massive docks and a multitude of tower blocks.

We got off and followed the signs to our hotel bus. We were the only ones on it and it dropped us outside the Metropark in Mongkok. Something didn't feel right, and so it turned out to be as we were actually supposed to be at the Metropark Mongkok near Prince Edward station... That's just confusing. We took a taxi to the right hotel and checked in. Our room was tiny (as most Hong Kong hotel rooms apparently are) so we didn't stay long and set out to walk to a "nearby" set of recommended restaurants. Half an hour later and we were still walking along the main road which separates Kowloon from the New Territories with no end in sight.



We decided to go for Thai and found the restaurant. Having no knowledge of Cantonese, thankfully the waitresses spoke enough English to take our order. Or so we though. despite ordering chilli prawns what actually turned up was chilli crab claws. We didn't fancy trying to sort out the confusion so just ate what was brought and it was fantastic. We carried on with dessert and bubble tea (tea with tapioca balls) and eventually set about the long walk back with a stop-off at a kwik-E-mart. Our hotel is right next to a flyover and during the walk back I started to get a feel for the area. The British influence is obvious - driving on the left, road names. The Asian "feel" of the place was obvious too and at the same time it reminded me a bit of Bombay with rubbish overflowing underneath the flyover. By this point we'd been up about 30 hours so we finally headed to bed with a full plan for the next day.

We got up (perfectly in sync with Hong Kong time) and headed to the MTR just across the street. The system is light, breezy and clean. The trains are frequent and in no time we arrived at Tsim Sha Tsui which is at the end of Kowloon. From the station we walked the few hundred metres to the docks where we took our first of many journeys across the bay to Hong Kong island on the Star Ferry. We paid the extra HK$0.5 for the top deck. The famous view of the island was diluted due to mist which is very common at this time of year. Amongst the international banks, Calvin Klein are building a new skyscraper and at the moment a giant underwear model is being draped over the building and is possibly the biggest advert I've ever seen. The crossing only takes 10 minutes or so and we were soon walking onto Hong Kong island. Immediately, everything seemed a bit more British than Kowloon. Straight away we were among the skyscrapers: HSBC, the Bank of China and the rest and with the help of our guide book aimed towards Hong Kong park which housed the Tea Museum (in the oldest colonial-style building left in HK), a botanical garden, a Tai Chi garden complete with a tall tower which gave us some great views of the skyscrapers, Kowloon and a flock of cockatoos that happened to land nearby.



Next was the avery that housed a whole host of colourful birds. By this time we were getting pretty hungry so we walked back through Admiralty to the Town Hall, where we eventually found the dim sum restaurant we were looking for.



We had no idea what we were in store for but we knew dim sum is the food Hong Kong is famous for. We were ushered to a table and as soon as we sat down trolleys started appearing, the little old Chinese ladies pushing them were offering us various dishes (that we couldn't see as they had lids on). We didn't have a clue what was going on and just said yes to everything whilst at the same time trying to order our drinks from a menu. Thankfully, all the dishes we had inadvertently chosen proved to be excellent (prawn and chicken gyozas, spring rolls, duck) and we were soon waiting for the trolleys to come around again, but we never had a repeat of the initial double-trolley extravaganza. Soups, more dumplings and the weird and disgusting buns (gooey white puff with a weird yellow paste in the middle) and more kept coming off the trolleys until we were sated. After struggling out of the room we walked back to Admiralty and into a shopping centre. I love looking round foreign supermarkets - especially in Asia and this one was no different. Sections dedicated to areas from all over the continent and the fish counter was amazing - full of tanks and boxes of live fishes - you pick the ones you want and you know it's fresh. After marvelling at the choice, we settled on some on some fresh juice drinks (made in front of us) and wandered around the rest of the shops. We strolled back though the streets to a backstreet bar in Admiralty enjoyed a couple of cocktails in the happy hour.



Wednesdays in Hong Kong are synonymous with horse racing and a trip to the track to take in the floodlit races was high on our list. Sadly as we got there it all seemed a bit quiet and as we walked the length of the stand to find the visitors entrance it began to dawn on us that it was closed. It turned out that racing was having a week off due to the rugby world sevens tournament teams training at the track. We headed back into town looking for another of the recommended restaurants, which turned out to be closed for refurbishment. This wasn't our night so we eventually piled into a kaiten sushi restaurant just before 11. It definitely wasn't our night as they switched off the conveyor at 11 before we'd had a chance to take anything so we ended up ordering from the menu.