We breeze through immigration - permission to stay for 180 days, no questions asked. We make a quick stop at "left luggage" to see if it's viable to leave our big packs at the airport during our 4 days in Hong Kong, but the pricing is per item and is prohibitively expensive! So we head out into the already-sweaty morning and find the bus to the city.
$66 later (those are HK dollars, phew), we hop off outside Chung King Mansions in Kowloon, where we have booked a room in the Canadian Hostel. After wandering around the maze of Indian food establishments on the ground floor of the building for a while, someone helpfully points us to the correct lift for Block E. Only the right-hand lift goes to the even-numbered floors so we squeeze ourselves into it.
The nice folks at the hostel are probably woken up by our early arrival, but they don't show any resentment & get us quickly into our room. By the way, there is nothing remotely Canadian about this hostel except it's name - like everything else in Chung King, it has a distinctly Indian air with a Hong Kong twist - ie. it's clean & quiet! We wedge ourselves & our packs into the tiny room and pronounce it small but perfectly formed. It's hard to do anything but sleep in there...so in fact that's just what we do, to recover from our too-short overnight flight.
We wake up around lunchtime and set out to explore the area. The natural destination is the waterfront, where we gawk at the many skyscrapers and are lucky enough to see the Chinese junk boat with it's beautiful red sails. Unfortunately our camera chose to eat all the photos we took on this first day, so you'll just have to Google some photos ;-)
The Star Ferry terminal is not far away and we wander over to chat to the tourist information office. The information officer whips out an iPad to show us the ferry schedules and other items of interest. She also recommends some free/cheap tours & classes which are organised just for tourists by the Hong Kong Tourist Association. Tea appreciation and cake-making classes sound particularly interesting! We tell her that we'd like to visit a beach (Lisa is dying to see a body of water, after our stretch in land-locked Nepal!) and she recommends Lamma Island - with two beaches, a walking trail, and great seafood it sounds perfect. So we head for the ferry from Kowloon to Central, where we can catch the inter-island ferries.
On the way, we pass a bakery which makes the famous Hong Kong egg tart - perfect for tea time - and we pick up a couple of these & some Chinese doughnuts. Time to use your imagination again - the bakery has a HUGE model of an egg tart which Lisa poses next to for a (missing) photo...
Two ferries later, we are at Lamma, but we can see a big storm coming in so we decide to settle down for a while at a seafood restaurant near the pier. They all have covered terraces so it looks like a great place for storm-watching; and at $218 for a seafood-themed Chinese meal for 2 with drinks, we can just about afford it. The food is delicious and luckily the storm never reaches our island, so we roll out of the restaurant an hour later to make the walk to the beach.
Chris' ankle has been bothering him & he's using his walking stick, so locals recommend that we don't try to make the 2-hour, rather steep walk to the north side of the island. This is good advice as he struggles a little with the 30-minute walk to the beach. But it is beautiful, with exotic plants & huge butterflies everywhere we turn, and we're in no rush so we can really enjoy it. When we reach the beach it is nearly 6pm and everyone is gone (bar the lifeguard and a couple of fishermen) so Lisa takes a quick dip in the lovely warm water. Aaaaahhhhh....
We make our way back to the south pier (Lisa takes a side trip up the hill for some views, and to check out the local Buddhist cemetery) and catch a series of ferries back home. On the way we watch for the "Symphony of Lights" which should take place every evening at 8pm, but we don't really see anything of note - just the neon signs of the many many high-rises!
We stop in a shopping mall (HK has millions - a good way to escape the heat & humidity) and have some conveyor-belt sushi for dinner. We're pleased to discover that the sushi we eat in London is really similar. The true test will be in Japan, of course, but at least London seems to be closer to authenticity than Kiev was! We also have a good giggle at the advertising campaign for a clothing store called Chocoolate, with big posters of Wallace & Gromit (who are apparently wearing Chocoolate in their upcoming film?). And we're a bit puzzled by the prolific "Agnes b" shops (clothing, chocolate, luggage....) - which will actually continue into Thailand, we soon discover - is this being marketed as a popular European brand to unsuspecting Asian people, or have we missed some spike in popularity worldwide?
After a good night's sleep, we pack our bags and make our way to the New Territories (a huge area encompassing the north of Hong Kong) where we will be couchsurfing for a couple of nights with lovely Tiina, who is originally from Finland but now lives in HK with her fiance (a Canadian poet who has just gone on tour to promote his latest book!). They live in a traditional "village house", which is very cute and surprisingly spacious by Hong Kong standards! There are 2 bedrooms as well as a large L-shaped living area with a raised seating section (like a little loft). The previous tenants were interior designers and have added lots of clever storage and cute detailing, such as the mini castle tower in one corner of the living room "loft".
We have a nice chat with Tiina over a cup of tea and a tasty vegetarian dish she's prepared. She says it's pretty tough being veggie in HK - there are not many restaurants who understand that chicken & fish - including their stock - are NOT ok for veggies, so they mainly eat at home or at the Indian places in Chung King Mansions.
After spending some time uploading photos (and discovering that a group of them have been corrupted somehow argh), we head out to explore a local park that Tiina has recommended. Enroute, we visit a market where we encounter the world's biggest cucumber! (OK, we later discover that this was in fact a "winter melon" but it certainly looks like a cucumber ;-) ) We have promised to make breakfast on Sunday so we buy some eggs for French toast. These come in a plastic bag like any other food item - ie. no additional packaging - so we carefully wrap them in a t-shirt and place them gently in the daypack, with fingers crossed that at least some of them survive our walk!
The park is beautiful, with lots of different areas of forest, flower gardens and fountains as well as sports pitches and a "kite-flying area". Interestingly it's almost entirely non-smoking, despite being outdoors - there is a designated smoking area and it's forbidden everywhere else. Can't imagine that going over well in many other countries!
That evening is a quiet one - Tiina makes some pasta for dinner and we share a bottle of red wine. She's really interesting and has done a lot of travelling, so we find plenty to talk about!
The next day Tiina is supervising some exams at the school where she is teaching English, so we need to get an early start since she doesn't have a spare key. We set out up the hill to a local country park & nature reserve. It's a steep and steamy walk, even so early in the day, but we meet lots of locals who clearly take this route every morning. At the top, we find a small family picking orange berries from a tree - they give us a small bag of them with clear instructions to wash before eating! We decide to make our way down the other side of the hill but end up in a strange area of town, so we make our walk a bit longer than necessary and Chris' ankle is ready for a break.
We've made plans to meet another local couchsurfer, Carson, for a dim sum lunch. We have a good time exploring the shopping mall while we wait for him - it seems to belong to some organisation that specialises in cute! Carson brings along his current surfer, a French wine connoisseur who was in town for the Wine Expo and is currently living in Bangkok - small world! We have a delicious lunch, surrounded by local families, and we love the customs - putting your hand up periodically to alert the waitress that you'd like to order more food; tapping with two fingers on the table to say thank you to someone for pouring your tea (more on that one here); and of course, sharing all the dishes amongst the table. We finish with some fruity desserts and some tasty marshmallow-coconut bunnies!
On Carson's recommendation, our next stop is Sik Sik Yuen (Wong Tai Sin Temple). It's a large Taoist temple complex with a waterfall & pond, and large statues of Chinese zodiac animals. There is also a long row of fortune-tellers and tarot card readers, and an amazing-sounding underground temple (but we decide not to pay the entrance fee for the latter). The principle aim of the temple is "to act benevolently and to teach benevolence" so they also have several free or reduced-price medical clinics on site. There are plenty of people & stalls selling incense, as you should bring 9 sticks to the temple (3 for each of the 3 worship areas) to show your devotion. Lisa likes the advice "be careful not to burn enormous amounts of incense, which may pollute the environment & nature", but it seems that many people didn't read this - it's hard to see the main altar through the cloud of incense! There are also many elements of Confucianism & Buddhism. A lot of it is over our heads, but we appreciate the beauty and peacefulness in the heart of the city.
Next we zip quickly through the famous Goldfish Market (very weird to see so many plastic bags of fish at once!) and the Ladies Market (handbags and hairclips - a bit boring). Lisa manages to pick up a handbag for about 3 pounds - her current one is too small and not waterproof, which is a bad idea in this humid, stormy region! Then we rush to meet our friends Shirish & Dipti from London, who conveniently are also passing through HK this weekend. We quaff a beer in a sudden storm (pity we're at "Beer & Deck", as there's nowhere to hide from the rain & we get soaked!), and then find a Moroccan place which is veggie-friendly for Dipti (we did briefly consider calling Tiina for a recommendation!). The boys enjoy the belly-dancer and the food & wine are delicious. It's always great to share a meal with friends but maybe even more so in an unexpected place! Oh, and we did see a bit of the Symphony of Lights through the raindrops as well =)
The rain has finally stopped so Lisa insists on walking home via the Night Market. It's getting late so a lot of the stalls seem to be closing up, but there are still a few places & people to see including many small restaurants with tables lined up along the pavements, and of course more tarot readers, fortune tellers, and palm readers. Apparently there is even a place where a bird chooses your tarot cards....
We are lucky enough to catch a train before they stop for the evening, but we get back to Tiina's very late and she is asleep. We feel like guilty teenagers as we ring the doorbell, and for a while we think she's not going to wake up so we're staking out places to sleep on her front steps (we'll be in good company with all the local cats & kittens). Luckily she does come to the door and we quietly slink off to bed, feeling like we got good use out of our Metro day passes.
Lisa wakes first on Sunday morning and thinks her Breo watch has gone haywire again when it tells her it's almost 10:30. She pounces on Chris and he groggily confirms that this does seem to be the correct time. So much for the alarm waking us at 8am! We have a quick discussion, as we're meant to be attending the cake-making class at noon, but we decide we'd rather make breakfast for Tiina as promised. Happily we manage to change our class to the one at 3pm, which will be perfectly timed for our flight anyways, and we break out the Jordanian coffee and tasty brown sugar bread to whip up some sustenance.
We say our goodbyes and a massive thank you to Tiina and rush downtown to our class. It's only when we're enroute that Lisa realises she's left the booking reference, map and address at Tiina's house. We're already at risk of being late so we decide that the fastest solution is to ask someone on the Metro train to call the tourist office for us; Lisa has the number in her phone from when she unsuccessfully tried to call them on her UK cell that morning. A very nice woman agrees to make the call, and now that we are armed with directions we make it in the nick of time! We stuff our backpacks in the corner, wash our hands as instructed, and join the others to make "wife cakes".
There are a few different legends as to how they got their name! Here's a nice video of Chris folding the filling into the crust....$66 later (those are HK dollars, phew), we hop off outside Chung King Mansions in Kowloon, where we have booked a room in the Canadian Hostel. After wandering around the maze of Indian food establishments on the ground floor of the building for a while, someone helpfully points us to the correct lift for Block E. Only the right-hand lift goes to the even-numbered floors so we squeeze ourselves into it.
The nice folks at the hostel are probably woken up by our early arrival, but they don't show any resentment & get us quickly into our room. By the way, there is nothing remotely Canadian about this hostel except it's name - like everything else in Chung King, it has a distinctly Indian air with a Hong Kong twist - ie. it's clean & quiet! We wedge ourselves & our packs into the tiny room and pronounce it small but perfectly formed. It's hard to do anything but sleep in there...so in fact that's just what we do, to recover from our too-short overnight flight.
We wake up around lunchtime and set out to explore the area. The natural destination is the waterfront, where we gawk at the many skyscrapers and are lucky enough to see the Chinese junk boat with it's beautiful red sails. Unfortunately our camera chose to eat all the photos we took on this first day, so you'll just have to Google some photos ;-)
The Star Ferry terminal is not far away and we wander over to chat to the tourist information office. The information officer whips out an iPad to show us the ferry schedules and other items of interest. She also recommends some free/cheap tours & classes which are organised just for tourists by the Hong Kong Tourist Association. Tea appreciation and cake-making classes sound particularly interesting! We tell her that we'd like to visit a beach (Lisa is dying to see a body of water, after our stretch in land-locked Nepal!) and she recommends Lamma Island - with two beaches, a walking trail, and great seafood it sounds perfect. So we head for the ferry from Kowloon to Central, where we can catch the inter-island ferries.
On the way, we pass a bakery which makes the famous Hong Kong egg tart - perfect for tea time - and we pick up a couple of these & some Chinese doughnuts. Time to use your imagination again - the bakery has a HUGE model of an egg tart which Lisa poses next to for a (missing) photo...
Two ferries later, we are at Lamma, but we can see a big storm coming in so we decide to settle down for a while at a seafood restaurant near the pier. They all have covered terraces so it looks like a great place for storm-watching; and at $218 for a seafood-themed Chinese meal for 2 with drinks, we can just about afford it. The food is delicious and luckily the storm never reaches our island, so we roll out of the restaurant an hour later to make the walk to the beach.
Chris' ankle has been bothering him & he's using his walking stick, so locals recommend that we don't try to make the 2-hour, rather steep walk to the north side of the island. This is good advice as he struggles a little with the 30-minute walk to the beach. But it is beautiful, with exotic plants & huge butterflies everywhere we turn, and we're in no rush so we can really enjoy it. When we reach the beach it is nearly 6pm and everyone is gone (bar the lifeguard and a couple of fishermen) so Lisa takes a quick dip in the lovely warm water. Aaaaahhhhh....
We make our way back to the south pier (Lisa takes a side trip up the hill for some views, and to check out the local Buddhist cemetery) and catch a series of ferries back home. On the way we watch for the "Symphony of Lights" which should take place every evening at 8pm, but we don't really see anything of note - just the neon signs of the many many high-rises!
We stop in a shopping mall (HK has millions - a good way to escape the heat & humidity) and have some conveyor-belt sushi for dinner. We're pleased to discover that the sushi we eat in London is really similar. The true test will be in Japan, of course, but at least London seems to be closer to authenticity than Kiev was! We also have a good giggle at the advertising campaign for a clothing store called Chocoolate, with big posters of Wallace & Gromit (who are apparently wearing Chocoolate in their upcoming film?). And we're a bit puzzled by the prolific "Agnes b" shops (clothing, chocolate, luggage....) - which will actually continue into Thailand, we soon discover - is this being marketed as a popular European brand to unsuspecting Asian people, or have we missed some spike in popularity worldwide?
After a good night's sleep, we pack our bags and make our way to the New Territories (a huge area encompassing the north of Hong Kong) where we will be couchsurfing for a couple of nights with lovely Tiina, who is originally from Finland but now lives in HK with her fiance (a Canadian poet who has just gone on tour to promote his latest book!). They live in a traditional "village house", which is very cute and surprisingly spacious by Hong Kong standards! There are 2 bedrooms as well as a large L-shaped living area with a raised seating section (like a little loft). The previous tenants were interior designers and have added lots of clever storage and cute detailing, such as the mini castle tower in one corner of the living room "loft".
We have a nice chat with Tiina over a cup of tea and a tasty vegetarian dish she's prepared. She says it's pretty tough being veggie in HK - there are not many restaurants who understand that chicken & fish - including their stock - are NOT ok for veggies, so they mainly eat at home or at the Indian places in Chung King Mansions.
After spending some time uploading photos (and discovering that a group of them have been corrupted somehow argh), we head out to explore a local park that Tiina has recommended. Enroute, we visit a market where we encounter the world's biggest cucumber! (OK, we later discover that this was in fact a "winter melon" but it certainly looks like a cucumber ;-) ) We have promised to make breakfast on Sunday so we buy some eggs for French toast. These come in a plastic bag like any other food item - ie. no additional packaging - so we carefully wrap them in a t-shirt and place them gently in the daypack, with fingers crossed that at least some of them survive our walk!The park is beautiful, with lots of different areas of forest, flower gardens and fountains as well as sports pitches and a "kite-flying area". Interestingly it's almost entirely non-smoking, despite being outdoors - there is a designated smoking area and it's forbidden everywhere else. Can't imagine that going over well in many other countries!
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| Recycled plastic running track. Run in your socks to feel the most benefit...while maintaining hygiene! |
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| Viewpoint |
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| View (of skyscrapers of course) |
That evening is a quiet one - Tiina makes some pasta for dinner and we share a bottle of red wine. She's really interesting and has done a lot of travelling, so we find plenty to talk about!
The next day Tiina is supervising some exams at the school where she is teaching English, so we need to get an early start since she doesn't have a spare key. We set out up the hill to a local country park & nature reserve. It's a steep and steamy walk, even so early in the day, but we meet lots of locals who clearly take this route every morning. At the top, we find a small family picking orange berries from a tree - they give us a small bag of them with clear instructions to wash before eating! We decide to make our way down the other side of the hill but end up in a strange area of town, so we make our walk a bit longer than necessary and Chris' ankle is ready for a break.
We've made plans to meet another local couchsurfer, Carson, for a dim sum lunch. We have a good time exploring the shopping mall while we wait for him - it seems to belong to some organisation that specialises in cute! Carson brings along his current surfer, a French wine connoisseur who was in town for the Wine Expo and is currently living in Bangkok - small world! We have a delicious lunch, surrounded by local families, and we love the customs - putting your hand up periodically to alert the waitress that you'd like to order more food; tapping with two fingers on the table to say thank you to someone for pouring your tea (more on that one here); and of course, sharing all the dishes amongst the table. We finish with some fruity desserts and some tasty marshmallow-coconut bunnies!On Carson's recommendation, our next stop is Sik Sik Yuen (Wong Tai Sin Temple). It's a large Taoist temple complex with a waterfall & pond, and large statues of Chinese zodiac animals. There is also a long row of fortune-tellers and tarot card readers, and an amazing-sounding underground temple (but we decide not to pay the entrance fee for the latter). The principle aim of the temple is "to act benevolently and to teach benevolence" so they also have several free or reduced-price medical clinics on site. There are plenty of people & stalls selling incense, as you should bring 9 sticks to the temple (3 for each of the 3 worship areas) to show your devotion. Lisa likes the advice "be careful not to burn enormous amounts of incense, which may pollute the environment & nature", but it seems that many people didn't read this - it's hard to see the main altar through the cloud of incense! There are also many elements of Confucianism & Buddhism. A lot of it is over our heads, but we appreciate the beauty and peacefulness in the heart of the city.
Next we zip quickly through the famous Goldfish Market (very weird to see so many plastic bags of fish at once!) and the Ladies Market (handbags and hairclips - a bit boring). Lisa manages to pick up a handbag for about 3 pounds - her current one is too small and not waterproof, which is a bad idea in this humid, stormy region! Then we rush to meet our friends Shirish & Dipti from London, who conveniently are also passing through HK this weekend. We quaff a beer in a sudden storm (pity we're at "Beer & Deck", as there's nowhere to hide from the rain & we get soaked!), and then find a Moroccan place which is veggie-friendly for Dipti (we did briefly consider calling Tiina for a recommendation!). The boys enjoy the belly-dancer and the food & wine are delicious. It's always great to share a meal with friends but maybe even more so in an unexpected place! Oh, and we did see a bit of the Symphony of Lights through the raindrops as well =)
The rain has finally stopped so Lisa insists on walking home via the Night Market. It's getting late so a lot of the stalls seem to be closing up, but there are still a few places & people to see including many small restaurants with tables lined up along the pavements, and of course more tarot readers, fortune tellers, and palm readers. Apparently there is even a place where a bird chooses your tarot cards....
We are lucky enough to catch a train before they stop for the evening, but we get back to Tiina's very late and she is asleep. We feel like guilty teenagers as we ring the doorbell, and for a while we think she's not going to wake up so we're staking out places to sleep on her front steps (we'll be in good company with all the local cats & kittens). Luckily she does come to the door and we quietly slink off to bed, feeling like we got good use out of our Metro day passes.
Lisa wakes first on Sunday morning and thinks her Breo watch has gone haywire again when it tells her it's almost 10:30. She pounces on Chris and he groggily confirms that this does seem to be the correct time. So much for the alarm waking us at 8am! We have a quick discussion, as we're meant to be attending the cake-making class at noon, but we decide we'd rather make breakfast for Tiina as promised. Happily we manage to change our class to the one at 3pm, which will be perfectly timed for our flight anyways, and we break out the Jordanian coffee and tasty brown sugar bread to whip up some sustenance.
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| Wife cakes are the big ones |
The filling is made from that giant cucumber - oops I mean winter melon ;-) They come out as a flaky, sweet, delicious layered cookie!The teacher served us lots of different kinds of cookies as well as our own creations, with a cup of tea of course. The weirdest was the pork cookie - better than it sounds, but still kind of odd...
We rounded off our adventures in Hong Kong by giggling at some signs in the bus windows (one of our favourites below - you could buy these at the night market with all kinds of different sayings!), visiting the Arts & Crafts market at the cultural center, and buying some Japanese sweets that we'd been coveting since our first day. The latter were actually kind of doughy and weird, oh well! We still had lots of cookie gifts from our class to enjoy while we waited for our flight!
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| Mochis - Japanese sweets |
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