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Published: September 10th 2010
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Our first full day in the city, and I doubt it’ll come as a shock to find that we started it off with a bit of a lie-in. We did have a LOT of sleep to catch up on! We ended up getting up at 10am, which was a bit later than we wanted, so we quickly got ready and rushed out without any breakfast. We took the MTR to Admirality, and then walked up what I remember to be a bit of a steep hill to the Peak Tram Station. We didn’t have to wait long to get onto the tram, and my main memory is just that I have no idea how it works...it’s insanely steep! At one point, we could only have been a few degrees off completely vertical, which is just mental (but was very fun too!). When we got to the top and stepped off onto Victoria Peak, we found that we were really lucky as the smog over the city wasn’t too bad and we could see pretty far (for Hong Kong, that is!). The views were amazing, and you really got a sense of just how compact Hong Kong Island is. It was also
very, very bright up there and pretty windy (which didn’t seem to bother some people...we passed one man who had his daughter-about two years old- balancing on his shoulders looking over the edge! How dangerous???!), which was rather uncomfortable, but it was worth it for the views! As well as the amazing view, the top of the Peak also contains a lot of shops full of crappy tourist tat, so once we’d seen as much of the island as we were going to see from up there, we didn’t hang around long (though John was getting pretty hungry now, so we did pop into Burger King for some fries for him!). There was much more to see and do!
We got the tram back down to the bottom, encountered a terrifying giant bug, and then dealt with our worst enemy, the Central walkways and bridges in order to get over to the bus stops at Exchange Square. I’ve said it before: pain in the arse. We arrived just in time for the number 6 bus, which took us along the coast to Stanley (we managed to get the primo bus seats at the front of the top deck, and
the views of the city and coastline were stunning). The journey took about twenty minutes, and on arrival at Stanley, we had a quick walk through the market before heading to Main Street...I was starting to get a bit hungry myself at this point! We chose to have lunch at the Seafront Cafe, which, you guessed it, was right on the seafront. Lovely! And finally, it was time for our first real Chinese food of the holiday! Real Chinese food...in China! It’s amazing I didn’t faint from the excitement. We went for an appetiser platter of spring rolls (which came stuffed with giant shrimp), wantons and samosas, and then fried rice with pork, shrimp and satay chicken. Ok, so it wasn’t the most adventurous meal in the world, but still, I was in heaven! We then went for a proper wander around the market, which was filled with far more Stitch and Nintendo stuff than is healthy for two obsessives like us. Amazingly, we managed to be sensible and all we left with was five Stitch figurines and a Kiss tie for John’s brother...we figured there was more to be found later on in the trip and we shouldn’t fill
the suitcase with crap just yet 😉 When we were finished at the market, we caught the bus back (I slept the whole way), getting off at Wan Chai. We had very briefly seen the outskirts of that area the day before and wanted to explore it a little more. Again, it was more what we expected from Hong Kong: very bustling, lots of dead animals in shop windows, and that sort of thing! We loved it 😊 We headed back to the hotel (no major problems finding it this time), where I grabbed a Haagen Dazs, and then had a quick nap as I could barely sit upright by this point, before we left again at about 6:30pm.
Back to the MTR we went, and then off in Central to walk to the Star Ferry port. We were dead on time, the last two people to jump on the ferry, which worked out pretty well. I have to say, the Star Ferry isn’t that exciting from a tourist point of view. It looks pretty cool from the outside, and it’s a very cheap way of getting across the water to Kowloon, but you don’t get much of a
chance to see the island from the boat as it’s very enclosed. The metro is probably easier, to be honest, unless (like us) you just want to be able to say you’ve done it! When we arrived in Kowloon, we headed up a platform so we could see the Symphony of Lights show at 8pm. It was pretty crowded up there so little old me didn’t have the best view, but again, it’s not one of the most exciting things in the world. Basically, the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island light up to the rhythm of a jazzy tune, with a few lasers thrown in for good measure. And usually, a cruise ship drifts across right as it’s reaching its climax, blocking half of the buildings anyway, lol. Still, it’s free and not something you see every day, so it’s worth stopping to take a look at if you’re in the area at that time. From there, we walked up Canton Road, which is full of very exclusive shops, and then onto Nathan Road towards the Temple Street Night Market. This was a long-ish walk (a mile or two) in very humid temperatures, not at all helped by being stopped
literally every two minutes by suit salesmen! We’re experienced enough travellers that we’re pretty good at avoiding stuff like that, but they were persistent! Finally, we reached the market, which was very big, very, very busy, very sticky, very greasy, very clammy...but very awesome too! So many people, so many smells and sensations and just buzzing with energy. Oh, and again, it was full of Stitch and Nintendo stuff! We ended up buying an Elvis Stitch, Luigi slippers, Stitch slippers and a Chairman Mao watch (I’m sorry, we couldn’t resist!), but again, I think we were quite restrained. We had planned on grabbing some food there, but after seeing people sitting around eating fish heads and other rather unattractive offerings, we decided to leave after a couple of hours, and stop off at McDonalds instead (where John proved to be quite terrible at getting across what we wanted, but it worked out nicely for me because I got a quarter pounder!). We got the MTR back at Causeway Bay and flopped back into the hotel at around midnight, completely done in!
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Emilia
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I don't think I've ever asked you - was Chinese food better in China than elsewhere? Or was it the same? A lot of the Chinese places here are owned by Vietnamese people so I've been wondering whether the food is the same...