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Published: February 21st 2009
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Shabana and Bruce
Shabana is not following the first rule. Always Look Eye! Hong Kong the land of the Anglo Chinese, big buildings, Bruce Lee and a surprising amount of hills.
The first thing we noticed that was a little strange were how the buildings were occupied. Each high rise block would contain a mixture of stuff within, shops were often not on the ground floor so you would have to decide you really wanted to see into a shop and get the lift to the right floor in order to actually look. The same for restaurants, no being able to browse the menu to decide you liked it or even to see the prices.
We stayed at a hotel on Hong Kong island for the first few days, the hotel was based in what i guess could be called a terraced tower block, the 5th floor had a restaurant on, the 9-12th floor was the hotel, there were also offices and apartments and even a night club. V weird. The hotel was cool though with a snazzy glass bathroom, and finally after weeks of rock hard asian mattresses, a soft comfortable bed. Luxary, almost worth the price of the room on its own.
With bags dropped off and shower taken
City from Victoria Peak
Many building, much glass we took to the streets at about 10pm to look for some dinner, luckily HK doesn't really shut for food as far as we are concerned. We passed a Mc Ds and a few other fast food places before spotting some more authentic cafes. Ensconsed (sp?) safely inside with an English menu we had some pretty tasty won ton soup and blackbean ribs with noodles.
The next day we head up to Victoria Peak on the tram, stopping to take pictures with Jacky Chan at the bottom and then with Mighty Bruce Lee at the top. The view from there is amazing. We wandered along the pathways at the top and thought it might be a good idea to walk part of the way back down. Unfortunately we kind of went the wrong way and ended up having to walk for about an hour before eventually finding our way back to the tram stop most of the way down the peak.
After our long wander about we once again went out in search of sustainence, in the spirit of finding somewhere new we headed for Causeway Bay a couple of stops on the mtr. Now this place was
Hong Kong Island
During the evening light show HK to the max. Giant neon signs, huge shopping malls, throngs of people and the smell of barbecued pork hanging in the air. Now to this day i don't know what this stuff is called but if you imagine a shop that only sold thick cut, char grilled, juicy slices of pork flavoured with exotic yet subtle spices and had them piled up taller than the little chinese ladies selling them. then tnis is the shop we found first. You are meant to buy by the 1/2 kilo but that sure is a lot of meat so we got the woman to give us a few slices which she cut up with a pair of scissors into bite sized pieces. This stuff was like the best bacon you ever ate. We both thought that a stall selling this stuff in Leicester Square would make a packet.
A little way from there we ran into another interesting stall selling lightly battered goodies shaped like fish, kind of like toasted sandwiches but with a batter for the cage instead of bread. Now i don't know where the fish bit came from but the "French" filling of custard, apple and cinnimon came a close second to the "German" filling of potato, cheese and onion which was well seasoned and hit the taste of home food which we didn't realise we had been missing. Delicious!
The next day was spent trying to sort out adjusting our flights as when we had booked months earlier the system wouldn't allow us to space them out properly. We got sent from Cathy to BA's old building to BA's new building which ended up taking us hours. We managed to take a timeout to eat some dim sum in City Hall overlooking the bay during our travels which is so popular we had to wait 20 mins before we could enter tne huge dining room.
After all that we had a shower before seeing the nightly light show where a huge number of buildings on both sides of the bay change colour and shoot lasers about to the sound of music.
The expence of HK island meant we couldn't stay there the whole time so we retreated to the mainland or the Kwaloon side. In a real cheap hotel where we encountered our first cockroach incident, unfortunately or maybe fortunately not until a few hours before we left 2 days later. That sure got us out of bed in a hurry, maybe snooze buttons should release roaches instead of just shutting up for 5 minutes.
That side of town had loads of markets including a fish market, flower market and a bird market as well as the usual clothes, watches and assorted junk markets. We also got out of town to visit the old walled villages of the Tang clan which were a far cry from HK as we had seen so far. I wonder if my old secondary school mate David Tang was related to them at all?
Also after much research, looking about, and finally bargaining i got myself a new compact camera with a better zoom and a much wider angle which should give some better pics. The first of which should be the panaramic shot i took of HK Island at the top of this post. Let me know what you think.
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