Four Nights in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a very cool place.

We had planned on staying in Hong Kong for about 3 days, which used to be enough time to get a Chinese Visa ... before the torch relay protests made China decide to "send a message" to travellers not applying for visas from their home countries. We were very disheartened to find out that the regulations for getting a visa had changed about a week before we arrived - the price tripled and you needed many more documents than you used to.

The torch will travel through Macau, Hong Kong and all over mainland China. Apparently, the Chinese government wants to deter protestors from coming in so they changed all the rules for getting a visa with no warning! Needless to say, along with many other tourists in the same boat, we were pretty frustrated, especially considering we had many chances to arrange a visa for China in southeast Asia, but were told that Hong Kong was the easiest and fastest place to do it. Not anymore!

So...after spending our first day and a half trying to find the cheapest place, and the fewest amount of documents we found a place to help us get our visa. Just one example of how the new rules don't make sense - we were planning on taking the train into Guangzhou (on mainland China), but the Chinese government won't accept the train as a way to enter China (for getting the visa), so we had to book a "dummy ticket" that says we are flying into China. We also had to book a "dummy hotel" because we needed to have that reservation made as well. It was a long and annoying process, but we eventually received our Chinese visas. The new rules are even worse for Americans, who saw the price of their visas increase to five times the original amount. Wow. On the bright side the new rules gave us a few extra days to check out Hong Kong.

We arrived in Kowloon (Hong Kong) and walked the busy streets to our hostel at the Mirador Mansions. The "mansions" along with Chungking Mansions just down the street, are where most backpackers stay and they are definitely not mansions!!! They are one of the sketchiest feeling places we've stayed on our travels. The mansions are basically apartment buildings that have been renovated into guesthouses, tailor shops, cafes, kung fu schools and other establishments. We saw a sign in the stairwell that said "ABSOLUTELY NO URINATING OR STOOLING" and were thinking hmm maybe we should find a different guesthouse?

We thought we'd check out the guesthouse anyways and it was decent. Our room was very tiny...we had a standup shower stall, but there was also a toilet inside, so we had to cram ourselves in for a shower! We were basically straddling the toilet while we showered, it was pretty funny. We later heard some unsavory stories from other travellers staying in Chungking Mansions, about their bags being rummaged through while they were out of their locked rooms among other things. It's sometimes tough to tell which places are reputable and which are not. We just hoped for the best and didn't have a problem.

One odd thing we noticed about Hong Kong is when you're walking along the sidewalk, you can see a puddle of drips in various places in front of you. Sometimes the drips fall on you making you think "huh? what? is it raining?". We realized these drips were from the thousands of exterior A/C units that are mounted on the sides of skyscrapers.

On our first night we were able to catch the "Symphony of the Stars" show from the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade - facing Victoria Harbour, the main harbour on Hong Kong Island. The show is 20-minute sound and light show involving 20 buildings on the Hong Kong Island skyline. The skyline is one of the best we've ever seen. The show starts with a female voice introducing the buildings, after which the music kicks on and the buildings all light up and shoot lasers this way and that! Kind of cheesy, but worth checking out. Lots of tourists and locals flock to see the show.

The next day, after working out what to do with our visas, we did a walking tour of the markets on Kowloon. We walked through a bird park, flower market, goldfish market, ladies market and the night market! We did a bit of shopping and bargaining (fake designer handbag and some Chinese souvenirs) and had a great Chinese meal from one of the streetside vendors. We decided to pass on the palm and face reading, which was really popular at the night market, since we thought Travis' beard might frighten some of the clairvoyants.

After two days in Kowloon, we finally headed over to Hong Kong Island. We took the Star Ferry across to the island (takes about 5 minutes) and arrived in Central - the main business and shopping district. We loved looking at all of the skyscrapers up close and learning their nicknames, given by the locals. The HSBC building is nicknamed the Robot Building, because it does look like a robot! Kind of bizarre architecture on that building! We also had a laugh at the name given to Jardine House - House of 1000 Arseholes, and the name given to Two International Finance Centre - Sir YK Pao's Erection (YK Pao, being the owner of the develpment company that built the tower). The IFC building is now the tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong at 88-storeys tall. Look at our picture of Jardine House and you'll see where that name came from!

We did a walking tour around town and along with seeing all of the modern buildings saw some of the few remaining colonial buildings including the Church of St. John and the former French Mission Building. We walked through Hong Kong Park and visited the free aviary and tea museum.

Of course, being in Hong Kong, we had to go for a meal of Dim Sum! We went to one of the most famous places in Hong Kong for Dim Sum - Maxim's at City Hall. There are no menus, just ladies that walk around with carts filled with dim sum delights! None of the waitresses that served us could speak English, so we had a bit of a challenge figuring out what we were ordering, but some of the other patrons who could speak English helped us out. We chose about 6 different dishes and all were amazing! It was a delicious meal.

To work off the dim sum, we continued our walking tour visiting SoHo, some markets and Man Mo Temple. These areas are on the slope of one of the islands peaks, so there is a pedestrian escalator to take you 800m up, through the area. The escalator is apparently the longest covered escalator in the world. We took the escalator all the way up and then started working our way down. We stopped on the way for some happy hour beers and then continued on for a mini pub crawl! It was a really fun area with lots of bars, trendy restaurants and artsy shops. We made our way back to the Star Ferry and enjoyed the skyline by night on the way back.

The next day we headed over to Hong Kong Island again, but this time to the Wan Chai area. Wan Chai used to be Hong Kong's red light district, but now is more a shopping and business area. We used a walking tour brochure from the tourist centre to explore the area, and it was interesting because it showed how the coastline has expanded since the mid-1800's. It's pretty incredible engineering.

Wan Chai was also interesting because that was where the handover from British rule occurred in 1997. In front ot the Hong Kong Convention Centre is a statue of a golden Bauhinia (flower) to mark the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Also interesting is that the "Special Administrative Region - SAR" status agreed upon between Britain and China only lasts until 2047. At that point no one is really sure what will happen with Hong Kong.

We continued exploring the island by catching a scenic bus ride over the hills to Stanley. It was nice to see the different areas of Hong Kong island - it's not just skyscrapers! We drove by a beautiful beach at Repulse Bay, which is really popular with locals on the weekend. We strolled Stanley Market and the beautiful colonial style facades of Stanley Bay before taking the express bus back to Victoria Harbour. We then caught the star ferry back to Kowloon and called it a night.

We woke up to the clearest day we had in Hong Kong yet, we had an unsmoggy, although not quite blue sky. The pollution in Macau, Hong Kong, and China is among the worst in the world, causing a thick haze on most days. According to our guide book, China is home to 16 of the 20 worst cities in the world for air quality. Yikes! However, Hong Kong is trying to fix the problem. All of their taxis were recently switched from diesel fuel, and it's hoped that their busses will soon follow.

We caught the peak tram up to Victoria peak where we saw the impressive view before we had to pick up our visas and catch our bus to mainland China.

We are currently in China and we are having a great time. Michelle's dad and brother Johnny will soon join us in Beijing for the last part of our trip, so we're excited to see some family members. It's been a long time!

Thanks for reading!

Love, Michelle and Travis

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