Blogs from Hong Kong, Asia - page 360

I made it to Hong Kong and awaited the arrival of my first traveling partner from home....Joe Cov. We were only in Hong Kong for a quick night and left the next afternoon for Beijing. I will be back in Hong Kong later this month and will explore it then. It was a bit cloudy and thus my photos are a bit grey. We did manage to venture up to The Peak which overlooks the Harbor. You cant help but be amazed at the tremendous buildings in Hong Kong (even though I hail from NYC). To get to the peak, we took a double-decker bus and sat on top of the driver. He must have forgotten it was a huge bus as he drove like a formula one driver. While I usually like fast driving, I ... read more

Headed out to Macau on 2nd May, the point was to take advantage of the cheap flight on AirAsia to Macau and then take the ferry across to H.K. First sight of Macau from the air was cool, the plane circled around the city giving us a great view of casinos, the tower and the double humped bridge. Macau international airport seemed deserted. Caught a taxi to the ferry terminal (50HK$) and had no trouble getting a ticket to HK (Kawloon) for 150HK$ each. Ferries depart every 15 min. We caught the ‘First Ferry’ line which was ok. Went through immigration and down to the boat. We were asked to store our bags in the luggage area (in this case in the front) and got to our seats. Noticed that the ticketers would give couples and ... read more

Summing up April - Part 1 April 5 Finally got the Internet access up and running! Had the usual Language Barrier when it was installed the previous Saturday - I asked if my other connection via SBC needed to be removed, but that did not compute with the tech. The install tech didn’t know much about Macs, but then I don’t know much about Macs either. Signed off on his installation and it worked fine till he left, then kaput. I fiddled with it all weekend, then relented and called the un-helpdesk at PCCW. Very nice & polite, but clueless. They set up a tech appointment (as if this would solve the issue). In my fiddling I found my way to the correct screen and removed the SBC connection. Gee, it worked. Now I have loads ... read more

Hong Kong is a city of contradictions, from bird's nest shops in one street to Pizza Express in the next. It is possible to walk from the hustle and bustle of Soho and find oneself in front of the Man Mo temple, an oasis of incense. Some of the most interesting streets are those near Hollywood and Possesion streets where shops sell herbs and spices in canvas bags, fish lie drying on the pavement and antiques stores sell vast quantities of jade. We saw skyscrapers being built using scaffolding made of bamboo which went all the way to the top of these huge buildings. On our first day in Hong Kong, we took a trip on the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator, apparently the longest in the world. For me, it was a bit of a disappointment, it was ... read more

Our last day in Hong Kong didn’t go as planned. We planned to go to Ocean Park, but when we awoke this morning it was pouring rain which means, shopping again. POOR DAD! One great thing about this city is being able to get from place to place without ever going outside. The subway is so perfectly connected that we can go from shopping mall to shopping mall for days on end without getting wet. How long Dad can hold up is another question! Yesterday we took the tram to Causeway Bay. We were missing “good old” American food so we were excited to eat lunch at Outback Restaurant. You might be thinking… that’s Australian food not American., but it was our favorite restaurant in Orlando so we felt like we were back home. We ... read more