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Published: February 24th 2012
Hong Kong is definitely one of our favourite cities, so we have decided to blog about this visit as we haven’t published a blog for years on Hong Kong and we have quite a few pictures from our different visits which we have added to this blog.
As much as we love HK, we don’t love the fact that at certain times of the year it gets really, really cold. Apologies to those of you in the UK and Europe suffering close to zero or sub-zero temperatures, but for us, 15 degrees is the new zero! When you become used to living in a tropical plus-30 degrees, 15 degrees is damn cold and pretty much close to the coldest we can now tolerate. So we were prepared with layers to wear and thick hoodies and off we went to brave the cold just before Chinese New Year (CNY).
CNY is the biggest celebration in SE/NE Asia and has something known as the Chunyun period which is the 15 days before CNY (and 25 days after) where the mass migration of people starts so they can reunite with families or to take the opportunity of extended holidays. The number of
people travelling exceeded 3.2 billion this year! The run up to CNY in HK was particularly busy with mainland Chinese, taking advantage of the cheaper shopping in HK and they were going crazy for the designer brands with long queues forming outside the likes of Louis Vuitton and Chanel…kudos to the security guards of the stores for keeping order, as (surprisingly) there was no queue jumping going on!
Although HK has become ‘more Chinese’ since the handover in 1997, after observing over quite a few visits during the last 4-5 years, the difference between Hong Kongers and the mainland Chinese is striking. We are going to generalise a little bit here but the Hong Kongers are a lot more polite than their mainland counterparts and this is also something we commented on while we were in China too. Observations about the mainland Chinese - the concept of waiting for people to exit a train before ploughing on board is completely lost – why wait? We’ll just shove and push en masse until we get where we want to go, sod the people trying to get off the train! Instead of walking in twos and threes and moving out of
the way of other people walking towards you, let’s walk in a big gaggle of twenty and shoulder barge anyone who gets in the way! Why talk in nice ‘indoor voices’ when you can scare the shit out of people in your general vicinity when you decide to shout at the top of your voice to the person who is less than an arms-length away…yes, completely lost on the mainlanders! The Hong Kongers in comparison are hugely polite people who grasp the concept of queuing, allowing people off a train first and talking quietly, really they couldn’t be more different to their mainland counterparts. We find it fascinating to see the differences between two populations of people which really should be quite similar, then again you would think the same about the British and the French wouldn’t you but we are very different?!
One particular thing we love about HK is the public transport, it is so easy and cheap to get around – buses, ferries, trams, MRT you name it, HK has it. If it’s possible to have a favourite form of transport it’s definitely the ferries and the trams. The ferries because it reminds Donna of the
ferry across the Mersey from the Wirral to Liverpool (although it’s a hell of a lot cheaper at HK$2.50 or 20p a ride!) and no matter how many times we have been to HK, the view from the promenade next to the Star Ferry terminal on the Kowloon side over to the skyscrapers on Hong Kong island still takes our breath away whether we are looking at it during the day or all lit up at night. The tram is a fantastic double decker old wooden style tram…it rumbles along Hong Kong island and is a bargain of HK$2.30 a ride, no matter how far you go and of course, it’s one of the easiest cities to get from the airport into the centre by bus. Although one word of warning about the buses in HK…the drivers are crazy and seem to take great delight in throwing the buses around corners and roundabouts every chance they get!
HK is a very technologically advanced city, unfortunately though this means that our visits there are always plagued by the dreaded zig zag walk. The zig zag walk is when people are engrossed in their mobile phones, either playing games or texting.
Shhhh...remember the neighbours!
A friendly reminder there in case we get boisterous after the cocktailsOccasionally we would see people reading a book or paper but not very often. The zig zag walk is something that really, really annoys us. Honestly, is it really necessary to text/play a game/read a book while you are walking? Can’t people just concentrate on walking or standing on the train…why do they need to be constantly stimulated by technology? Even more annoying is when the said zig zag walkers suddenly stop dead right in front of you…arrggggh, makes you want to punch people in the back of the head (well it does with Donna)! So…the technology...buildings and shopping centres are decked out with big flashing screens, neon lights – sometimes it’s just sensory overload. A little tacky but well-orchestrated is the nightly light show at the harbour…although they should have got Jean-Michel Jarre to do the music rather than a poor copy, now that would add a bit of class to the show 😉
We have come to view HK as a home away from home (although that doesn’t mean that Donna can find her way around without following Neil), we know it so well now and we have our favourite things to do and places to eat.
Not surprisingly really, always take great delight with the food in HK, what can we say, we love food! We treat ourselves at our regular Indian restaurant which reminds us of all the fantastic food we had while in India, the staff are great and the beer is always cold and relatively cheap. We also have found a great pizza place where, after finishing a pizza between us, always feel a little piggy (but we don’t get pizza very often!). We have our favourite bars for cocktails – happy hours in the SoHo area can’t be beaten and let’s just say we are zig sagging after a couple of these cocktails. Our surprising find has to be the restaurant chain Café de Coral (or Cirque du Soleil as we like to call it). Café de Coral is technically a fast food chain, but honestly if fast food was like this all over the world we would be happy bunnies; it sells cheap dishes with rice, the portions are huge and everything is freshly cooked. We have already mentioned the ferry reminding Donna of her hometown, but we have to give a special mention to one part of HK in the
Tsim Sha Tsui area which reminds Neil of a Chinese version of Billingham (which isn’t too far away from his hometown of Hartlepool). The similarities are striking and we just couldn’t resist taking pictures.
HK is also well known for its race courses, notably the Happy Valley racecourse and the amount of money which is bet in these races is phenomenal. Happy Valley has races every Wednesday night during the racing season and on this visit, we did brave the cold (which helped keep the crowds away) and go to the races. The entrance fee is only HK$10 (80p!) and the minimum bet is HK$10. Being the last of the big spenders, we limit ourselves to a whopping HK$20 bet each per race – we haven’t managed to stay away for so long by gambling big sums of money! It’s amazing though to see the totals increasing on the big screen for how much has been bet on the race…phew, those kind of totals, as you can see from the picture, are crazy money. We won and we won big, well we came out of the night £16 up which isn’t all bad…Donna’s crazy way of picking horses by
their pretty names or the fact they are named after a band from the 80’s (Spandau Ballet!) seems to work about half of the time!
Our time in HK with the zig zaggers, technology and that damn cold weather was soon at an end. We had enjoyed eating, window shopping and riding on as many forms of transport we could manage. One of the weirdest things was managing to walk so much and so far in actual proper shoes and boots…we are used to walking in flip flops, so our legs got a double workout!
In a week's time, we have more visitors from the UK – Donna’s parents for their much deserved holiday away. We are excited to see them and also excited for the chocolate goodies they are bringing (yes, we have already finished the supplies our friend Dave brought at Christmas)! Our next blog will have Donna’s parents as guest stars and on our part, there will be a little bit less tight-arse travelling and a little bit of luxury!
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AlDu
Allan
My feeling is that you've toned this down - it is far worse than this in mainland cities those people are so very uncivil - you left out that even single walkers will snap their heads sideways to pretend they do not see you. You're supposed to think, oh my god, they are gonna run into me! I better move! Nope. I carried my bag in front of me and let them smack into it. The bag also helped me get off the Line One subway in Beijing.