Harrow Hong Kong

2nd May - Arrive Hong Kong

Well we arrived off our last sleeper train into Hong Kong at 11.40 on the 2^nd May. Apart from our brimming excitement at Facebook access being within arms length, we were also instantly hit by the British influence on Hong Kong, making everything so accessible. It’s hard to explain how good this was, but it’s really disconcerting literally not even understanding one shop sign, street sign. So once we arrived into Hong Kong and got the subway with all its lovely English signage we knew we were gonna like this city!

We were all pretty shattered after making it through immigration and making our way to the hotel. Our hotel was in Kowloon, so not “on” Hong Kong island itself, but only a 3min subway ride away. We decided to give ourselves a leisurely 1.5hrs to freshen up (i.e. get on Facebook) and have a shower before getting out into Hong Kong to see what it’s all about! As this was the last “official” night of our trip we had to pack as much stuff in as possible as from tomorrow people would be leaving from our group.  After having lunch at a suitably dodgy looking street food “restaurant” near our hotel (you know when you all decide to avoid looking at the kitchen that it’s not exactly haute cuisine on its way!), we decided to get the subway to Central Station and go to see “The Peak” as it’s known. Basically, to get to The Peak, you take a tram that was built around 1880 that was built to bring food and supplies etc up to people in the hilly area. They have restored this tram and you can now ride it up to The Peak Tower which is this famous building that boasts a 365 degree view of Hong Kong. The tram itself was cool - I mean the trip up is so steep that the skyscrapers beside you look like their leaning over. Also there were a load of Indian's on our tram that were whooping and getting very excited the steeper we went. It was hilarious. Especially at the top where Dan, from our group goes "come on lets start a slow clap, they'll catch on" - what do you know massive round of applause at the top, all of us bricking ourselves laughing.

Dan, Emma and Me on the Tram

Anyway, back to biznizz regarding this "365 degree view", here’s the stipulation…it provides a 365 degree view of Hong Kong when IT’S NOT CLOUDY. Yeah…suffice to say the cloud gods came to play and well our view wasn’t the greatest. But luckily we arrived at the top around 5pm so we decided to stay for over an hour until the sunset so that the lights of all the skyscrapers would be more visible improving the view…hopefully. Well it was slightly better, but in all honesty we didn’t get the best view of HK.

That night we made the short journey across the road to the Temple Street Night Market. Basically a huge night-time market in which you can buy everything from jewellery to art, to knick-nacks, you name it really! So we all had a quick perousal of the items on show. I decided to restrain myself and just bought a pair of earrings for 5 HKD – so €0.50! Myself and Emma decided to have a bit of a walk around since we weren’t interested in buying anything else. Oh what a good idea this was. The further we explored the market we more hilarious the discoveries! We stumbled upon…wait for it…Karaoke Street!

It was brilliant, basically a line of street stalls with people (mostly in their 50s btw) singing their hearts out. The best bit – there was nobody listening – they were basically just singing to the tv screen with nobody evening caring! And they were all beside each other on the street so they were all singing into microphones over each other. Absolutely painful, but gas. After walking past Karaoke St, we came upon the Psychic street! It was lined with palm readers and tarot cards readers with people queuing to see them. Me and Emma gave each other a look of “eeh…don’t suppose ya fancy it…” and well from the glint in her eye I knew she was up for it! So the two of us saddled up to a relatively normal looking guy and after bartering a price (I didn’t leave all my sense at home!!) we braced ourselves for the palm reading of our lives! Now before I go any further – most of you know me well enough to know that I am way too sarky and sceptical to take any of this too seriously. I mean I’ve seen all the Derren Brown specials where he pretty much proves it’s a load of bollox, but still it was a bit of a laugh and well what the guy said to me was kinda on the money!  Anywhoo, Emma went first. Now the only thing he asked her was her age. I won’t go into too much detail as she may not want me to but I know she’ll get a laugh outa this – he basically said she had been having “too much fun” etc with men, that she was “not like typical Chinese woman” that she was always looking for Mr. Right and then deciding they weren’t good enough. Well, the two of us nearly broke our shites laughing – basically he was tellin her she was a bit of a sluh! Ha ha ha ha well by Chinese standards anyway. God it was hilarious, she couldn’t look me in the eye when he was talkin to her as she knew I was on the verge of losing it! After telling her a bit more about her personality he moved onto muggins here.

So he didn’t ask me any questions but just went straight to the palm. So he didn’t know what age I am, the skeptic in my brain thinking this might test him. Well how wrong I was. Basically he described my personality, which was pretty feckin spot on. About what I’m like and how I think. Then he said now this is the bit that sounded pretty on the money for me – he said I’m basically going to have “lots of fun and be crazy” until I’m 28, he kept writing down 28 and circling it, and then at 28 I get serious, about work, about relationships etc. I was like, well my friend that sounds quite probable! Bearing in mind that I’m gonna be travelling and away for at least 2 years he made quite a good prediction. All in all, it was a really fun experience and we enjoyed got a kick out of it!

3rd May – Hong Kong – Bronze Buddhas and more bastardin' Clouds

So after our relatively early night on the 2^nd May we decided to get up early and head to Lantau Island to go and see the famous Tan Tien Buddha or the “Big Buddha” as it’s known. It a huge bronze statue of the Buddha Amogashiddi – meant to symbolise the relationship between man and nature (or so Wikipedia tells me haha).  You get a tube to the foot of the hill upon which the Buddha is located. Then you can get a bus or a cable car up to the statue itself. We decided to save the cable car for the trip down and got a very windy road bus up to the top. It was half way through this bus journey that we realised that the cloud gods had come to fuck with us again. Yep, as we ascended into thicker and thicker cloud we realised that we weren’t going to be seeing much today. When we got out of the bus at the top, we could hardly see each other through the thick cloud. What was even more hilarious was when somebody, by chance realised that our visibility was improved by actually wearing our sunglasses. So get a good image of that, a group of people engulfed in cloud, wearing sunglasses – ridiculous is not the word. So we decided to make our way up to the Buddha himself. Yep this meant climbing 240 steps – even HIGHER into the bleedin cloud. When we got to the foot of the Buddha, well frankly, that was all we could see – his FEET! This is what the Buddha looks like on a clear day:

This is what our view was:

LOL.

After “viewing” the Buddha, we walked around the surrounding area and went to visit the adjoining Buddhist monastery. Now this was a real treat. Outside the monastery itself there were lots of people burning massive sticks of insense as tribute to the gods. So the air all smelled of insense all around the monstery. Then the monastery itself inside was absolutely beautiful. So serene and the statues were just so impressive.

 After spending some time just soaking up the calm surroundings we all succumbed to our rumbling stomachs and quickly made our way to the cable car ride down. Once again, this was pretty much a wasted journey as there wasn’t much to view except cloud. Until we got to the bottom stretch where we emerged from the cloud. After our descent we treated ourselves to an Italian lunch – was a lovely break from chopsticks!

That evening, myself Emma, Nikki, JJ, Dan and Bethany decided to go and get a night time view of Hong Kong island on the Star ferry. This is basically a dirt cheap mode of transport that crossed the water between Kowloon and Hong Kong island. It only cost $2HK so €0.20 and the views were amazing of the nearby skyscrapers across the river. For the first time we got a decent view. Carol  1, Clouds 0.

Afterwards we treated ourselves to a beer in Causeway Bay – my new home for the next 5 nights. Our tour had now officially finished so I had checked into a really cheapo hostel right in the shopping centre of Hong Kong. I mean my hostel was located in between a Vivienne Westwood and a DKNY shop, on a street actually called “Fashion Walk”. Honey, I’m home.

 

4th May - Hong Kong - Markets & Monsoons

At this stage a few of our group had already left and more people were leaving by the day. We’d already said goodbye to the first of many great Danes (pardon the pun) that I’ve met so far on our travels – the famous Barbie and Ken – Marianne & Kim. And today we said goodbye to Dan who was heading off to Hanoi to join another tour of Vietnam and SE Asia.  After waving him off, myself JJ and Emma walked up to Mongkok market otherwise known as “ladies market”. It was a brilliant market, great stuff like really interesting iPhone covers and laptop bags, and lots of knock-off designer handbags and clothes. Once again, I had to restrain myself as the prospect of making my already heavy rucksack even heavier wasn’t at all tempting! Also, Hong Kong is definitely not the cheapest place, especially when you’re after coming from mainland China where everything is so much cheaper. Hong Kong prices are more similar to home. After perusing the market we treated ourselves to a decent dinner in an Irish bar (stop tutting, they had a great menu!). The bar itself was located in a basement, and much to our surprise when we emerged it was LASHING down. I mean I haven’t seen such a downpour in god knows how long. We HAD planned on going home but we knew if we walked more than a few metres we were going to be soaked. So we made the logical decision to take shelter in well, the nearest bar. We ended up in Castros, a Cuban bar (what gave it away) that was on the first floor with all shuttered windows which were open.  It was rammed with people sheltering from the rain – enjoying the view of people dashing about in the almost flooded streets. Sure enough, as is often said, as quickly as the downpour came, it went again and we joined the hoards of people who left the bar to make the last subway home.

5th May - Hong Long - Getting Lost

So on the by the 5^th May the last of our group were departing Hong Kong so my solo travelling would really commence. I spent the morning and early afternoon with Emma. We decided to have a stroll around just see what we found. We also planned to take a tram ride. Hong Kong island has these old trams that have been around for ages. They’re two stories but really small, and I was looking forward to taking a spin in one. Firstly the morning was mainly spent getting incredibly lost around Causeway Bay. We did stumble on a few gems like a food market with lots of “fresh” ingredients, I’ll let your imagination take over here. By early afternoon we found a tram to take us in the right direction to Lan Kwai Fong – basically an area of pubs that’s good for socialising in. I must explain, that finding a regular bar / pub just to have  a quiet one in is incredibly hard in Hong Kong, like you genuinely have to look up the streets to go to because it’s not like home, where in any built up area there’ll some kinda bar nearby. So when we found Lan Kwai Fong we were gasping for a drink and some food. We went to a bar in which the floor was covered with monkey nut shells . Basically they serve you monkey nuts with your drinks and it’s just the norm to dump your shells over your shoulder onto the floor. I must admit that the good girl in me felt incredibly guilty dumping the first few shells on the ground, but by the time we’d left a couple of hours later we had accumulated a nice pile of shells around our stools ha ha! After saying my goodbyes to Emma and Nikki who had joined us I made my way back to my hostel. I chilled out for a while then joined a roommate from my dorm Steph, a lovely british girl on her way home from Oz where we headed back to L.K.F for food and then we decided to treat ourselves to a beer and one cocktail (it was more the price that restrained us haha). What ensued was a night where we ended up dancing for hours with about 5 energetic Hong Kong girls, 2 indian women, and Alex this huge black guy from Brazil that was happy to get his dance on. It was hilarious.

Talk about a mish-mash of people – most funny was one HK girl, who literally had the rhythm of a table – she couldn’t keep a beat if she tried and she was so up for dancing she was all elbows and knees – she was literally a danger to dance beside.

Steph in the clutches of most rhythmically challenged girl ever.

We left the bar in time to make the last subway home (not drinking much has its benefits!). Crazy Hong Kong night.

6th - 8th May - Solo Life in Hong Kong

Well I’ve decided to bung these few days together because it was fairly tame. I was now on my own and to be honest I was wrecked after the hectic going of the last three weeks. I was looking forward to some downtime and to just chilling on my own for a while. Luckily I still had Steph who I was sharing with to head out for food with. One place I made sure we went to was this Michelin starred Dim Sum restaurant that had been recommended to me by my Hong Kong guru friend Vicky. Have to give her a serious shout out – Vicky gave me so much practical and useful info for Hong Kong it was great. I found fantastic coffee places (18 Grams for anyone who’s HK-bound), the best value for travelling around (Octupus Card –equivalent of London’s Oyster card), and she also gave me some fab foodie recommendations of which this Dim Sum place was one.

We managed to find it, as its hidden away in the basement of Central Station below this HUGE shopping centre. The best thing about this restaurant is that they have an English menu. This is often a problem with Dim Sum restaurants – as unless you have someone with you who can speak the language (Cantonese in HK), it can be difficult to order. So you basically get a menu or list of foods, on a sheet that are available, and you select a few of them to enjoy. Vicky had mentioned that the BBQ Buns were amazing and their speciality so I had to give them a go – also ordered some dumplings (was at stage 4 dumpling addiction at this stage!).

Food was amazing, as expected and so reasonably priced. Like still seriously cheap – even for such a good restaurant.

Over the next couple of days I mostly wrote this bad boy (I was so behind on blogs I was still writing about Shanghai in Hong Kong). I did take the time out to head down to the Vietnamese embassy in Hong Kong to sort out my Vietnam visa. I was advised to get this in Ireland before I left but it was such a pain in the ass to get from Ireland – never mind how expensive it was to get from home so I researched how difficult it was to get from Hong Kong since I knew I’d be there for a while before going to ‘Nam, and it seemed fairly easy and it was. I got myself down to the consulate for opening and joined the other travellers to queue for a visa. Arrived there at 9.30am, and was out the door with my one-month visa for $500HK – about €50. Talk about stress free – FYI if I was to do this at home it would have cost me about €150 to go through Trailfinders. SORTED.

Apart from this the only other sight-seeing I did over these few days was I went down to the Avenue of the Stars – which is sea front at the base of Kowloon, looking over onto Hong Kong island and each night they put on a light and laser show onto the skyscrapers that takes about 20 mins to background music.

To be honest, it was fairly lame, but it made me feel like I was at least doing something other than drinking coffee and blog writing! The following morning, the 8^th of May, I took myself for one final strong coffee and lovely breakfast of muesli and fruit to my local 18 Grams in Causeway Bay (I’d become quite the regular!) packed up my shizzle and got a bus out to the airport in Hong Kong to catch my flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Upon check-in I had the shits put into me. They asked me, did I have a flight out of Vietnam. I told them I didn’t as I would be travelling over land and wasn’t sure exactly what date I’d be leaving the country. There was lots of whispers between the check-in clerk and then her senior, after which he took me to the side and explained that I may have trouble when I got to immigration in Hanoi since I didn’t have transport out of the country arranged, they may not let me in. In this case, he explained, Hong Kong Airlines would have to guarantee that they would fly me back to Hong Kong. So I had to show him my credit card to prove I could pay for the flight if this happened. Well, the thoughts of that made for a lovely few hours before I got to Vietnam… what happened at immigration in Hanoi, well you’ll just have to wait for the next blog to find out… ;)