Hong Kong, Day 4

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Our last day in Hong Kong began with a lie in (two lazy mornings in three days...I guess jetlag and exhaustion from the wedding was still very much set in!) and a panicked “Argh, we slept in and there’s still so much to do!”, before rushing out of the hotel with no breakfast and heading to the MTR (have I mentioned yet how good the metro system in Hong Kong is? So clean and efficient!). We took the metro to Tung Chung and on arrival there headed to the cable car which would take us to Ngong Ping. We had seen the cable cars the day before on the metro to Disneyland, yet amazingly I hadn’t been put off, and was still very happy to use them as our transport to see the Big Buddha. And I’d just like to remind you, this is the girl that cried on the Disneyland ferris wheel in California because I was so scared, so this really was a surprising turn of events! It took about fifteen minutes to get to the front of the queue, and still I was fine, and then we got on and started moving...and I was still really, really fine! If I’d eaten anything that morning, I would have been convinced John had snuck some sort of drug in there to keep me calm. I admit, I got very, very slightly freaked out when the cable car stopped for no apparent reason while we were incredibly high up, but even then there was no tears or panic attacks. I’m all growed-up!! 😉 I will say, I was quite relieved that we didn’t go for the crystal cabin with the glass bottomed floor...not only because I might have been a little more freaked in that, but also because the prices were just extortionate! The views are impressive enough from the regular car-it is such an unnecessary expense. We were sharing our car with four really annoying, loud American girls, which ruined the experience slightly, but still, it was a cool trip through the hills and mountains of Lantau Island...and the views we got of the Big Buddha as we got nearer to Ngong Ping were amazing.

When we arrived (it was a 20-25 minute trip, I believe), we were starving so we headed straight to the Ngong Ping village to get some food. Again, we went for a true Chinese experience, grabbing some spaghetti bolognese & garlic bread at Euro Go Go...but in our defence, we were going to a Chinese restaurant that night! It was a ‘fast food’ place (I saw fast food, but it actually took about twenty minutes to get our food!), but surprisingly tasty. As for the rest of the village, it’s really very touristy, as you’d probably expect, despite the website’s claims that it’s a true, traditional, cultural village. We didn’t care, because we were only there to see the Buddha and Po Lin Monastery, but hopefully no-one will be taken in and actually believe that it’s anything more than geared towards tourists. We dropped into one of the souvenir shops to buy a little dragon to add to our collection, but that was the extent of our exploration before we headed towards the Buddha (which is the largest, outdoor Buddha in the world, no less). It was a very, very hot day and the Buddha has a lot of steps, so I’m ashamed to admit we were too lazy and didn’t climb all the way up lol, but it was still damn impressive from halfway! After taking a lot of photos, we moved onto the Monastery, with our route there being sadly disturbed by a lot of barriers and roadworks. Let’s just say it took away any real atmosphere that there was to be found around the area! Still, once we got quite close, and the smell of burning incense surrounded us, it was easy to let all that go and take in the building, which really was very impressive. We wandered around for about half an hour, taking in all the colourful and dramatic, yet very peaceful rooms of the monastery and absolutely loved it! John was especially impressed, which makes sense, as he was very much looking forward to experiencing some Asian culture during the honeymoon (not that he wasn’t just as excited about Disneyland too, lol!). It’s definitely worth a trip off Hong Kong Island to see.

When we were done, we had been planning on getting a ferry to Cheung Chau Island. Thanks to our lie-in, however, we were already getting deep into the afternoon and we weren’t entirely sure we’d have time to fit it in when we had a posh restaurant reservation that night....so we had to give that idea up and head back to Causeway Bay instead. Shame. The cable car was a lot quieter on the way back, with no weird stoppages this time, and so it wasn’t too long before we were back on the MTR. We had a free couple of hours, so we decided to take the time to do some shopping in Times Square and SOGO. I was on the hunt for some Anta trainers as worn by my favourite tennis player Jelena Jankovic, but Anta were absolutely nowhere to be found in any shop, anywhere...turns out JJ’s sponsor is a random, unknown company even in its home country! My hunt ended up taking the whole of our shopping time (taking into account our tendency to get lost in Causeway Bay too, of course), and all too soon we had to head back to the hotel to get ready.

We had booked a table at Yung Kee restaurant near the Wan Chai area of the city, and I was extremely excited, because the restaurant has a Michelin Star! Michelin Star Chinese food! Does it get any better than that?! So I got myself all dolled up in one of the many new dresses I had bought especially for the honeymoon, got my heels on (this is very rare for me) and out we went. Within about ten seconds, I was regretting the heels, especially when we got off the metro at Central and had to walk down some very steep, uneven hills to get to the restaurant. The PAIN! We arrived dead on 8pm and got taken straight to our table, which was on the second floor of the restaurant, looking out on the street below...nice 😊 Honeymoon trips do have their perks! We kept our order fairly simple, ordering wantons and ribs to start, along with lemon chicken, beef in black bean sauce and pork/shrimp fried rice, all washed down with white wine. It may be Michelin star, but we know our tastes, lol. Rather embarrassingly, it all arrived at once (apart from the lemon chicken), so we had a table FULL of food, while being surrounded by Chinese people sharing one dish and some rice lol. Well, as they say, you can take us out of Newcastle... 😉 We were also a little surprised to see that the ribs we had ordered didn’t really look like ribs. From a distance, we weren’t entirely sure, thinking maybe they were just very battered and gristly...until I brought them close and realised from a very obvious tentacle that we had actually been given deep fried squid. Well, ‘ribs’, ‘squid’...you can see where they might be a little confusion! I’m not really one for seafood, and especially not tentacle-based seafood, but John told me he’d think I was a legend if I ate it, and I’m not going to turn that opportunity down lol, so I tried some-and it wasn’t so bad! A bit salty and rubbery, but it was ok. In the meantime, we were still waiting for our lemon chicken, and after about twenty minutes were starting to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t coming. So we merrily stuffed our faces with everything else on the table, and then of course, once we were almost finished and feeling pretty full, the waiter popped up with the chicken! Ah well. We have big bellies...there was still a bit of room left, and it was pretty darn delicious 😉 The state of the table once we were finished was even more embarrassing than before we’d started, but I prefer to just see it as a sign of respect to the restaurant that their food was very tasty! Whether it was the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten, I wasn’t sure, but then we didn’t try the restaurant’s most famous dishes, so maybe the Michelin star came from something other than the pretty standard, simple stuff we tried. It was still delicious by any standards 😊 After the meal, it was time to get back onto my unsteady feet, head back to the MTR, and then back to the hotel (where I had to pick up some Haagen Dazs on the way back to the room, of course!) to pack. Our Hong Kong time was up 😞 We had a fantastic time in the city, and it was exactly how I imagined it. It’s very western (especially on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon), but the heat and the chaos make it feel like a completely different world. I would love to go back there and explore it more one day, but for now, it was time to say goodbye and get ready for Bangkok!

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