Arriving
in Hong Kong airport was like arriving on a different planet after
India. It is the most impressive airport Ive ever seen, so modern and
efficient looking and absolutely spotless. I think by the time we
were aboard the 3-stop train that took us right to where we needed to
go, wed already decided we loved Hong Kong.
And
things just got better. Wed decided to give ourselves a little treat
and book ourselves a hotel for the few days we were there, but
obviously the budget needed to be taken into consideration so we used
lastminute.com. Well Hotel Jen turned out to be a real find! We had
somehow ended up, quite legitimately, with this Executive deal which
entitled us to free internet in the room and up to 100$HK worth free
from the mini bar. It also included a cooked breakfast up in the
special Sky Lounge – it gives a great view out over the city.
On
top of this, we were invited to spend two hours each evening in said
sky lounge, guzzling delicious free cocktails, made to order! Oh and
little Chinese nibbles too. The waitress would even come up to our
table, ten minutes before the two hours ended, and tell us
to get our last order in before time was up. So there we were,
two slightly weary travellers, with only 2 outfits to our name,
mixing with the execs up in the Sky Lounge.
On
our first night we headed out to the area of Lan Kwai Fong and Soho
for some food. Id like to say we got straight into the new culture
and had a delicious authentic Chinese meal. But that would be a lie
because in actual fact we were both desperate for a bloody burger and
chips, with Mayo! It was a Saturday and the whole area was buzzing
and there was a really good atmosphere, it really wasn't dissimilar
from being out in London. We went to a bar and had a couple of
cocktails and basically just drank in the atmosphere of a really cool
city.
Due
to aforementioned budget, we had to think of ways of exploring this
city without it costing too much. So we armed ourselves with our free
guides and headed out the door and spent the next four days walking
everywhere, or getting the occasional subway (SO efficient).
We
took the subway over to the Island of Kowloon. We did two separate
walks here over the days. One takes you through the old part of the
island and some areas of it are quite run down. Its also full of
markets, and not just for material items – there was a Goldfish
market and a Bird Garden (but really a market selling birds), a
flower market and a jade market. Jade is actually very popular in
Hong Kong and its an old tradition to carry it on your person as they
believe it protects us. Apparently. Basically everybody has now
cottoned on to this and are selling all kinds of bits and bobs made
with jade, or rather different materials masquerading as jade. The
market was full of the stuff but there is a street, Jade Street in
fact, where there are some shops selling legitimate jade for a high
price.
The
second walk we did in Kowloon was in a much more modern part of the
Island. There are some huge, incredible shopping malls and designer
shops (only window shopping for us though!). We saw the clock tower
and also walked down the Avenue of Stars – not many I knew but
still stars. We caught the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong Island.
The
rest of our exploration saw us having a great time on and around Hong
Kong Island. We went up the Worlds longest covered escalator in Soho
and visited the Man Mo Temple, where there were a lot of shrines and
lanterns burning. We went on the Peak tram up to the Peak Tower Sky
Terrace. You can basically look out at the best views of the city.
The Peak tram is a tad hairy as it takes you up an incline so steep
that buildings look like they are leaning at a 45 degree angle.
I
must just talk about the plane check in system in Hong Kong for those
of you that don't know about it. On our last day we checked out of
the hotel and got a short cab ride directly to the central train
station. Here we queued for all of 5 minutes before being very
efficiently checked in for our pm flight. Off went the bags and all
we had to do was spend a leisurely afternoon in Hong Kong before
heading out to the (super cool) airport and calmly going through
security and boarding our flight to Australia. Really, it was that
easy.
Oh
there was just one more stop – to the M&S food market!
Seriously, we were so excited – that will be a bag of American
style chocolate covered peanuts, a packet of chocolate Viennese
biscuits...
