Hong Kong Phooey!

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Woah! After seven full days of non-stop Hong Kong sightseeing, we are now able to take a break as we travel across to Indonesia. Apologies for the length of this entry but we've been busy...

We had read about Hong Kong being a 'walking city' and our feet will definitely testify to that! It was great to be in the thick of the action as the streets were crowded with people all seemingly on a mission. We couldn't help but quicken our pace around the city as though we had somewhere to be too! We found Hong Kong quite an expensive place, so had a couple of pot noodle nights in to relieve the budget (and also because we were so tired after our excursions that we couldn't be bothered to venture far for food). No need for any concern though, as we still splashed out a few times to make the most of our time there.

We were relieved to arrive during a hot and sunny afternoon, but best of all, it felt much drier than in Borneo and there were no more insects to pester us 😊 We had arranged to stay in Tsim Sha Tsui (in Kowloon) and our guesthouse was spread over a few floors in a mansion called Fook Kiu! Our room was the size of a shoe box, but kept incredibly clean with replacement towels and free toiletries (what luxury!) every day... we even caught a member of staff down on his hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom floor with a bottle of Cif. In a city where space is such an expensive commodity our "cosy" pad was not to be sniffed at!

After checking in our priority was, as ever, eating lunch. This was followed by a few chores, including finding a launderette for our piles of dirty clothes which had built up over two weeks in the jungle. We were down to the last garments in our bags, so we had to walk around in various mis-coordinated outfits. This lead to an impromptu shopping spree as we tried to lift our spirits (especially Mark's, who was wearing a horrendous purple-short-green-tshirt combo) with a visit to Cotton On, the Asian/Australian version of H&M.

Tsim Sha Tsui was a great location for shopping, with hundreds of shops and malls to keep us busy all afternoon. We walked down to Victoria Harbour and past the star ferry terminal to check out the Hong Kong skyline across the water. This became our most photographed view during our stay as, each time we passed by, we would take more shots hoping for the perfect one. Despite the inevitable haze which seems to cloud most Asian cities, the views were great. This was obviously what everyone else thought too... While we were standing there we were asked by a chinese couple to take a photo. Of course, we said, reaching for their camera phone. What it turned out they meant was, could they have their photo taken with us! It took a while though, as they insisted on a shot without Mark laughing or flipping them the peace sign!

Tsim Sha Tsui's East Promenade runs beside the water and along to the Avenue of Stars, which is similar to the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" where celebrities of the Film Industry have their names written in stars and hand prints cast into the pavement. We did a poor job though, as this one focused on the Hong Kong film industry, and we only recognised three of the 'celebrities': Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Lee (who had surprisingly small hands).

The transport in Hong Kong was relatively cheap and we invested in a couple of Octopus cards (similar to London's Oyster) to make our lives easier. We could use these on the ferries, buses and even the funicular tram up to Victoria Peak, but our first Hong Kong transport experience was the classic trip on a star ferry across the harbour to Hong Kong Island and the area imaginatively known as Central.

Mark first navigated us to the iconic HSBC building, guarded by two giant bronze lions. We touched their paws for good luck, although this was quickly followed by a hand sanitisation for extra luck! We took the escalators up to the 3rd floor where we naively expected to see a view, but were instead greeted by a dozen of the bank's cashier desks (imagine that, and in a bank too)! While Mark read the guide book to discover that we were there to see the atrium itself, and not a view, a security guard approached. We took this as the nod to make our way back outside.

As it was a lovely sunny morning, we walked on past the iconic Bank of China building and up the hill to the Peak Tram entrance. It was pretty busy and there was a long queue but, amazingly, each tram carriage holds about 100 people, so we didn't have to wait long. The ride up to Victoria Peak (the highest mountain on the island) had some great views and once at the top we made our way to the roof of a mall to take some skyline photos across to Kowloon. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, there was a haze across skyline, so our photos look a little misty but Kat and James gave us a couple of theirs so we could see what a clear day would have looked like!! Once at the top of the peak, we escaped the crowds by taking a walk up a steep hill to the site of the old governor’s house. There was a small park at the top and a rim trail but, with our legs still feeling the burn from climbing the hill, we opted to wander back and catch the tram down the hill again for some sightseeing down in the city.

The guidebook suggested a shorter walk around the neighbourhood known as the 'mid levels'. We slurped down some wonton noodles in preparation and set off around the temples and market streets. This included us climbing up millions of steps on Pound Street, only to find that our targets, Kwun Yam Temple and Pak Sing Ancestral Hall, were right near the bottom (damn you, VERY large scale map!) We sat at the top and got our breath back before making our way down again. After that, we paid more attention to map reading and successfully found Man Mo Temple just around the corner! Unfortunately, the outside was undergoing renovation but we were still allowed inside to see the huge incense cones burning above our heads as we made our way through the smoke. The final street on our walk was Cat Street Market, where stalls were selling antiques and bric a brac (and, to be honest, a fair amount of unwanted household junk). We added an extra detour to the route to find a recommended coffee shop for an afternoon caffeine kick and to reward our efforts climbing up the needless hill. The cafe, called Barista Jam, was surprisingly expensive for such small coffees but we forgave them as they tasted fantastic!

That evening, we ate at a nearby food court before heading out into the neon lit Temple Street Night Market. The streets of Hong Kong seemed to become even more alive at night, as the shops lit up their glitzy signs and tried to attract shoppers in with promises of cheap tailoring or a bargainous 'Rolex'. The 12 'til 12 opening times mean that the streets are busy well into the evening and, on Temple Street especially, vast numbers of people are funnelled between the stalls. Once we had finished walking past the watches, toys and jewellery, we found a street of fortune tellers who had set up in their little tents, ready to part willing punters from their hard-earned cash. This was followed closely by what we think was a street of karaoke singers...although they might just have been a collection of locals who failed the auditions for Hong Kong has talent?!

After looking at the weather forecast and realising that the outlook had dramatically changed from sunshine to rain showers, we decided to check out Stanley sooner rather than later. Our long bus ride from Kowloon was part of the fun, as it took us through the suburbs and then along the coastline and past the swanky expat area of Repulse Bay. We beat the kids onto the double decker bus to get a seat at the front on top for the best views as we wound our way down to the south of the main island and hopped off at Stanley plaza. To our relief it was warm, which one can easily forget when spending too much time sitting in air-con and seeing grey skies through the window. To our surprise there were a large number of people with dressed-up dogs. Although Stanley is known for having a large number of owners with dogs, this was actually for a Guinness World Record attempt, but we never worked out what exactly it was. We grabbed some chips (as one does when at the seaside) and watched the poodles wearing dresses parade past us. Mark had looked up another place for good coffee (this guy has too much free time and needs to get a job!), so we stopped off for another caffeine kick.

We heard that Stanley Market was worth a look, so we walked down to the water and along before heading over the hill to the main beach. The market was great fun, and Hazel had to control her urge to buy all sorts of pretty earrings and souvenirs. Despite the now cloudy weather and spitting rain, there were many locals spending their Sunday on the beach and lots of windsurfers around the bay. We stood on top of the old leisure centre building and watched them speed around the bay before we caught a bus back to Tsim Sha Tsui.

We had arranged to meet Kat and James (Hazel's uni friends) in Wan Chai that evening. Our external hard drive had also bitten the dust, so we needed a new backup for our photos (currently our most valuable possession!). The Wan Chai Computer Centre was the ideal place to find a replacement USB stick, so we sneaked in before heading down Lockhart Road - trying to keep eyes forward while passing some neon lit "classy" establishments. (Are we back in Thailand?) We met Kat and James in the American Peking restaurant, where we ordered huge portions of shredded beef, sizzling prawns, pak choy and a whole duck. The food was amazing; especially the beef which we all agreed was probably the best dish (and better soon make an appearance on Mrs Peel's food blog!) We drank the first beers we had had in a while and celebrated meeting up by heading to a nearby bar afterwards...

We woke up the next morning (a little worse for wear and later than planned) and headed down to the China ferry terminal. We boarded the turbo boat across to Macau for a day of churches and casinos (quite an interesting mix). Our crossing was a little bumpy, made worse by the coughing and spluttering of the locals, which now seems inevitable when on public transport in Asia (maybe it's time to get that facemask out again?!) As we came out of the Macau ferry terminal we could see a line of casino coaches eagerly awaiting us. These would provide our free transportation around the city for the day. We took a ride to the Grand Lisboa Casino, which is hugely popular for having the best and biggest poker room in Asia, not that we were here to play poker, but it's always impressive to see inside these grand casinos. It is also Macau’s tallest and probably most impressive building which can be seen from all over the city. Opposite is Casino Lisboa, which is Macau’s original and most famous casinos. However, being next to its “grand” brother and from a quick look inside, it seemed a bit worn out.

By now the grey weather had turned to drizzle, so we waited for the rain to break and made our way to the old quarter. As the rain started again, we persevered a little further to an old café which was recommended by our guide book for Portuguese egg tarts. These were a must have while appreciating Macau's heritage and we made regular stops to try different bakeries throughout the day! The historic Portuguese influence in Macau has left some lovely European architecture, which we were pleased to see has been kept in good condition. We walked past Lou Kau’s Mansion, St Dominic's Church and up to the ruins of St Paul's. This is probably Macau’s most famous tourist site. It was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon in 1835 and is now left with just the stone frontage which survived. The Mount Fortress was right next to the ruins so we made our way up for some views across Macau. It's a strange skyline with a mix of rundown housing and grand casino buildings.

With the rain still pouring down, we made our way to the Wynn, which is Macau's spectacularly posh casino. We watched the hourly fire and water show before using the free casino shuttle buses to take us over to the island, where the newer casinos, including the Venetian Macao, are. This is the largest casino in the world with shops, restaurants, an arena, a mini golf course and replica of the canals of Venice where you can pay for gondola rides. (Welcome to Vegas!) Given the current grey skies of mainland China, we took some time to enjoy the blue skies of Venice and decided we would take a break from rice and order a pizza. When in Rome... (or Venice)!

The next day we took a trip to Lantau, which is west of Kowloon and is the largest island in Hong Kong. Lantau was originally known for its fishing villages and large expanses of greenery, but recent investment has led to many development projects including the Longest Cable Car in Asia, Disneyland and the relocation of the International Airport. (So much for its previous title of being "the lungs of Hong Kong"!) We took the MTR to Tung Chung and rode the cable car across the hill tops to the Ngong Ping Plateau where we could see Tian Tan Buddha on the hill. Apparently it's (wait for it...) the world's largest, seated, outdoor, bronze Buddha statue. It was impressive to see and the views from the top were amazing - especially as we finally had the sunshine back, phew! There was a temple at the bottom as well, where huge incense sticks burned outside. This was a great photo opportunity and a chance for us to try out the under-used macro setting on our camera...with varying success!

The next part of our Lantau round trip was to catch a bus from Ngong Ping to Tai O. As we are now seasoned Octopus card users, this was a breeze and we soon arrived at the small fishing village in the midst of a crowd of Asian tourists. Since the erecting of the Tian Tan Buddha, Tai O has received many more tourists, but is a well preserved fishing village showing what Lantau used to be like. The market streets were packed with people and all the stalls were selling fishy produce. Most had a range of live fish kept in buckets where you could select the one you wanted and take it live or have it gutted on the pavement in font of you. Among the fish being gruesomely hacked apart on the street, there were also BBQ fish-ball stalls and fish, squid and salted egg yolks being dried out in the sun. We made our way out of the main streets and along the water edge. As we turned a corner, a very pungent fish smell greeted our nostrils. This was the area where they dried and processed large amounts of shrimp paste - phooey!

Back in Kowloon that evening we watched the "Symphony of Lights" show from the harbour. The show happens every night with the buildings over on Hong Kong Island lighting up to music for about 20 minutes. It was the end of a long holiday weekend for the locals, so there were lots of people watching which meant there was a good atmosphere. Sadly there were no images projected on the water and no bubbles or flames in the show. I think Singapore and Sydney have spoilt us!

On Wednesday morning, we were very pleased to wake up to another day of blue sky and sunshine - hurrah! And what luck, as we had been hoping for clear skies for the evening especially... We started the morning by meeting Kat and James for brunch at Tim Ho Wan's Michelin Starred dim sum restaurant (this is apparently the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant, perfect). We had read about the excessive queues at the main restaurant, but at 10am on a Wednesday morning we walked straight into the Mong Kok branch. There were a few dubious sounding options on the menu but after ruling out chicken feet and anything containing offal, we were good to go! The first dish that came was Tim Ho Wan's pièce de résistance, Cha siu baau (pork buns) - which are different from the usual steamed variety in that they are deep fried and seemingly sprinkled with sugar for extra deliciousness! We also tried some glutinous rice with chicken and mushroom, prawn and pork steamed dumplings and some beef balls wrapped in tofu. All the while we were kept topped up with a constant flow of tea from China's Yunnan province, known as pu-erh. We didn't order quite as much as the four guys opposite us who disappeared behind a mountain of bamboo steamers but we were still stuffed at the end...and our bill only came to HKD 150 for the four of us (~£15), what a bargain!

As we had matching Lonely Planet guidebooks, we decided to try and navigate ourselves around the markets of Kowloon using their walking tour. We walked past the old men of bird street, who were feeding grasshoppers and enormous maggots to their colourful but slightly cramped looking feathered friends; along flower street, where we saw all sorts of strange flowers and plants, including some bright purple chillis; and finally along fish street, where all kinds of fish from pretty standard goldfish to massive tropical fish were bagged up ready to go, funfair style. They also had some super cute terrapins and tortoises for sale, which gave Kat a pang of nostalgia for her childhood pets!

After all that walking, we were ready for a snack and a cold drink, so we popped into McDonald's for a sugar fix. We were in a fairly built up area, so were pretty pleased with ourselves when we stumbled across a 'resting park'. It seemed to be the spot for elderly local men to kick back on a bench and chillax for half an hour, but we joined them anyway and they didn't seem to mind! Next up on the agenda was Shanghai Street, aka Kitchen street, as Kat (our resident food blogger) was keen to stock up on 'Kitchenalia'...there were hundreds of lovely teapots, egg cups and Chinese-style bowls on offer, as well as more cookie-cutters than we've ever seen in one place. Hazel had to shop vicariously through Kat though, as our backpacks are getting more and more full of random souvenirs (a toy orang-utan and proboscis monkey being the latest additions to the collection)!

After all that shopping, it was time for some culture and we headed to the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin temple, which we reached by MTR. We took it in turns to pose in front of the statue for our Chinese year of birth, which were lined up at the top of the temple steps. In front of the temple itself were rows of people shaking jars of bamboo sticks out on the floor, which is a way of fortune telling, and plenty of people lighting sticks of incense too. It was an attractive temple, set in some lovely gardens, so we took a break in the shade and watched some little terrapins swimming in the lake.

From the temple it was a short walk down the road, past a depot for hundreds and hundreds of the local 'green-top' minibuses, to the Chi Lin nunnery and Nan Lian Gardens. The nunnery is a huge wooden structure perched on a hill, which apparently is built entirely without nails. It was lovely and quiet, with some peaceful Buddhist shrines inside and made an oasis of calm next to the busy roads and high-rise flats of the city. From the nunnery, there was a bridge across the road into the gardens, which provided great views down to the golden pagoda...we'd been on our feet all afternoon in the hot sun by this point, so we decided it was time for another little rest on a bench, old-man-style.

After a quick pick-me-up in the form of some food court noodles and fried rice, we headed back to our tiny room to glam up a bit for our evening's entertainment... Then we jumped in a cab and headed over to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for drinks at 'Ozone', which is the highest bar in the world! From the 118th floor the view was amazing, and we were so lucky that there was no haze. We had almost perfect views across the harbour and could even see the top of Victoria peak, fantastic! The drinks didn't disappoint either and, a champagne mojito, a dragontini, an old fashioned and a glass of Malbec later (we'll let you figure who had what), we succumbed to a second round before cab-ing it over to the Avenue of Stars to take another round of photos of the Harbour and the Hong Kong skyline, which was all lit up for the evening and looked better than ever on such a lovely clear night.

On our final day in Hong Kong, we decided to take it easy and spent the morning stocking up on essentials before we headed on to Indonesia. Unsure as to when we might next see some of the chain stores (the answer being 24 hours later, in Singapore airport!), 'stocking up' included having a meatball Subway for lunch, followed by a couple of Starbucks' Lattes. We had made afternoon plans with Kat and James to visit Lamma Island, so we then caught the Star Ferry for one last time in order to catch the 20 minute island ferry from Central Pier.

Lamma Island is known for its gentle walks, sandy beaches and busy seafood restaurants. As we pulled into Yung Shue Wan, there was a huge monstrosity of a power station towering over the side of the island, which looked pretty out of place compared to the small village complete with cafes and bars. We started along the 4km "Family Trail" which leads across the island to Sok Kwu Wan village. We came across a beach packed with a surprising number of people for a Thursday afternoon and a shocking number of pairs of Speedos! We couldn't really blame them (for being on the beach, not wearing speedos) as we were having much better luck with the weather and we had glorious sunshine all afternoon.

The trail made its way up a steep hill and so we rested at the top with some water and a packet of chocolate Koalas (one of Kat's favourite snacks from her childhood spent in Hong Kong). Once we made it over the hill, we had some great views across the greenery and the water to Sok Kwu Wan and could see the floating fish farms and colourful boats bobbing up and down in the bay. With the end in sight, we made our way along the main street and through the dozens of fish restaurants, where they kept everything in tanks, from supersized prawns to pulsating cuttlefish, ready to whip you up a super fresh dinner. We decided to eat in Rainbow Restaurant, which Kat and James had visited before, and grabbed a table by the waterfront. We ordered a couple of beers to keep us going while we pondered the menu and its impressive list of options. The evening haze turned the sun to a deep orange colour and, while it set behind the hill, we enjoyed a feast of salt'n'pepper prawns, sweet & sour prawns, steamed snapper and blackbean clams.

It was absolutely delicious, and a perfect end to our time in Hong Kong. It was made even better when we got a ride back to Tsim Sha Tsui on the restaurant's boat, so we saw the neon skyline one last time!

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