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Published: November 25th 2008
Hong Kong Skyline
Best view ever from Kowloon harbour!Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in posting this first real blog. We had a whirlwind couple of days iin Hong Kong and then spent a day travelling to Boracay where we are at the moment sat in the bar at Frendz Resort riding out the rain. Its throwing down buckets but its kind of surreal as its still really warm and apparently it will stop like a tap anytime now (dont feel bad for us its been glorious sunshine so far haha).
So, we arrived in Hong Kong after a long but comfortable 12 hour journey. We decided to try to walk to our hotel from the train station, I don't know why? But it felt right at the time. We soon realised that Hong Kong was bigger than we thought and that our bags were a bit heavier and harder to carry than we had expected, this made the walk pretty tough, but we soon found our hotel.
Hotel Jen is situated in the western part of Hong Kong, the more Chinese part of the town. We got upgraded to a better room..hooray, on the 21st floor, all in all the hotel has 28 floors, the top
View from the hotel pool
Looking out over Hong Kong Central District across the harbor to Kawloon floor has got a bar and a pool. We were both exhausted when we got to our room, I had a migraine and felt really dizzy, not so good when you are on the 21st floor! In my dizziness I managed to use Steve's germaline instead of toothpaste....nice! This made me feel even more sick ha ha.
The hotel was really luxury which was a surprise as thought it was a budget buy. This was good though as the pound has taken a dive since we booked so it was a third more than expected!
Anyway, The first day we took a ferry to Kawloon (for 20 pence!) which is a short 20 minutes ride across the harbour. We spent the day walking around the shopping streets, which were a bit like a Turkish basar, very crowded and full of shops selling strange things like ducks, hung up in the window and pig's snouts, plus every kinf of dried fish you could imagine. After a couple of hours, it felt like we were in a Tom and Jerry cartoon where the same background kept coming around and around.
Then we went a lovely park between the skyscrapers
Skywalk Pavements
These were a great way to get around Central! and saw some turtles, parrots and flamingos. We also went to a buddist temple which was really nice and tranquil compare to the hectic streets of Kawloon! Tube train back to downtown Kawloon and we had a couple of beers in the harbour with an awsome view of Hong Kong across the bay with the skyscrapers all lit up...amazing!
We had dinner that night at Co Co Curry, following the advice of the lonely planet travelling guide. It was a success, they served malaysian currys, with rotis (a type of bread) baked in front of you. The currys were soooo nice.
The second day we took a boat to Lancau, an island 40 min from Hong Kong. We had been told that the island was really nice and that it had one of Hong Kong's top tourist attractions, the big budda.
We took a bus (a too fast bus for my liking) to the other side of the island and arrived at the Big Buddha village. We climbed all the way up to the Buddha statue, it was a very steep climb, but worth it in the end when you saw the views from the top. The
Tram time
Cool old British tram in Central District village was a really traditional Buddhist place....or so we thought, until we saw a big sign for Starbucks and couldn't resist!
In the evening we took a cool little tram to the other side of Hong Kong and had an italian meal at Fat Angelos, very traditional chinese meal ha ha. A couple of drinks in the bars, which were full of American sailers looking for love, as there were three US navy ships docked in the harbour.
The next morning we traveled to the Philippines, which we are loving, but more about that later.
All in all, we thought Hong Kong was amazing, a place of real contrast where East and West sit happily side by side. We were having coffee in the central business district one minute and could have been in New York or London, surrounded by sky scrapers , English and American people and English signs (even an M&S), the next minute we're looking around small noodle huts searching for something that looks familar for lunch, surrounded by Chinese people, signs and smells!
The people were really helpful and friendly and overall it was a really safe, clean (they even mop the
pavements!) and cool place to be. We had a really excellent time and would really like to go back and spend more time there in the future!
Hope your all well at home! Boracay blog next.... x
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Anna
non-member comment
Good to see you're having a great time guys :) Keep off the germaline Maj cant imagine its very good for you even though it may give your teeth a good clean lol Missing you :) xxxxx