Advertisement
Published: April 25th 2008
Harbour Front
3 Engineers with their recently completed projects (yeah right!)!Although it's no longer officially a separate state, getting into Hong Kong from mainland China was one of the most complicated border crossings we've had so far, although perhaps seemed worse due to our tired heads after about 23hours on the road by that stage. There was lots of walking with bags, queueing (some British influence still remains!) and passport stamping going on though!
Once we made it through and had finished the last 2 hour leg of the journey, we quickly found ourselves outside the entrance of the Chungking Mansion - Hong Kong's main backpacker and immigrant hangout on Kowloon Island. Our expectations were low, and the Mansion delivered - a single bed and a double (although you could hardly tell them apart) for a price of HK$200 per night - approx. GBP13.
With little reason to stay in the room, we tidied ourselves up and went straight down Nathan Rd to the Harbour Front and one of the most famous skylines in the world. It was a bright day and with the sun glistening off the water and the polished skyscrapers in front of us, it was far more impressive than the photos we'd seen beforehand.
We must have stood there for a good hour or more - 3 Engineers marvelling at such an attractive vista of concrete, steel and glass. Hopping on one of the regular ferries across the harbour, to Hong Kong Island itself, we were soon lost amongst the hundreds of high-rise buildings and with cricked necks found ourselves at the ticket office for the hillside tram up to Victoria Park. The gradient was signed as 1 in 3, so we 'splashed out' on the GBP3 return ticket to the top, despite promises to cover China 'on a shoestring' as it were. It was money well spent as the views from the top were unbelievable - hopefully our pictures will give some idea of it - and we wondered around on the viewing platform in no particular rush to return to street level.
The evening was spent seeking out reasonably priced bars, although it seems the exorbitant salaries of the resident brokers and traders (take an Engineer's salary and multiply it by 10!) had pushed beer prices above that of Oil, and after just a single bottle of Bud for GBP4 we returned to the room.
Day 2 was again spent
Hong Kong...
...by night! taking in the views, this time from the Harbour Boat Tour, which took us right along the coasts of 2 islands and back to the Ferry Port in time for the evening Light Show, where each tower in turn lights up and a voice-over narrates the history of it. Sadly, we had chosen the 'Mandarin' night, but with our cameras equally at home in either language we snapped away quite happily beyond the end of the show. After dinner, Gill and boyfriend Pete had arrived into Hong Kong so we met up for a few beers (in the obligatory Irish pub) and swapped stories - them about China and us about SE Asia, as we were heading in opposite directions. It was good to catch up and only made us more excited about sights in the rest of China like the Terracotta Army, Forbidden City and the Great Wall. I think they came away with the same feelings about Angkor Wat and Bangkok's Grand Palace.
The next morning was time for some gentle shopping and postcard writing (I hope they made it home by now?!) before catching the 1pm bus back into China proper and the city of Guangzhou.
View from the Top
Photo at the top of the Tram ride - 1200m up!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.036s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.019s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Daddy Dixon
non-member comment
colour
Amazing colour in the night scenes