Hong Kong

Last week, for Chinese New Year, (February 2nd to February 6th, 2011) I went with my girlfriend and some friends to Hong Kong and Macau.

While I’ve lived in Korea, I’ve only ever used it as a springboard for world travel a few times, I’ve been to Japan over a three day weekend last year, and I went to Bali, Indonesia over Christmas/New Years of 2010-2011. To be honest, these sound like super expensive trips, but when you’re so close, costs are cut well below half what it’d be departing from North America.

Tuesday night, I could barely go to sleep. With the early wake up on Wednesday morning, I barely got any sleep. Regardless, my friends and I met at the airport before our flights. We didn’t need coffee to get super excited to be going on this trip.

After two flights, the morning and afternoon gone to travel, we finally arrived at Hong Kong’s airport.

We took a bus from the airport to Tsim Sha Tsui, near our hostel, Hop Inn. 

One of my friends had been to HK before and if I remember it right, had stayed there before. (Ninja Edit: No one had stayed there before.)

We didn’t waste a moment after we put our bags in our rooms. For dinner and a few drinks, we all went out to an Irish pub, Murphy’s. In the course of that evening, we met up with a fellow expat English Teacher from Korea who also happened to be staying in Hong Kong roughly for the length of our trip.

After the bar, we wandered around the Avenue of the Stars, and looked out across the harbor at the skyline.

Thursday, I learned how impatient I am. We went to Tung Chung station to catch a 25 minute cable car ride to the top of a mountain where there’s a bronze Buddha built at the top.

The plan was solid. Standing three and a half hours in a line to catch the cable car was not.

After we got to the top and took some photos, 

we opted for the bus back down to Tung Chung station.

Semi-defeated after standing around all day, we went to a grocery store to get food and beer to eat in our hostel. Having lived in Korea just barely above two years, I miss good western food so much. We got Sara Lee Turkey, real crackers, cheese that isn’t that slimy Velveeta or sliced American, grapes, good chocolate (IE without bean paste added), and beer that has flavor. Hite, Cass, Max, and OB just don’t do it for me anymore. I think the widespread availability of western food has something to do with Hong Kong having been a British trade outpost, whereas Korea has only ever been influenced by other Asian powers.

There was a street parade going on the road right next to our hostel, which we went outside to watch for awhile before I retreated to the hostel for some badly needed rest.

On Friday, most of us went to the top of Victoria Peak to check out the skyline of Hong Kong from the other side of the harbor. We even took a ferry across. 

We ate subpar Chinese food at a food court before making our descent from the peak towards Stanley Market.

At Stanley Market, I was able to pick up a cheap tripod for my camera.

Afterwards, we found ourselves at the ferry terminal at the harbor unable to ride back due to a MASSIVE FIREWORKS show that would start soon after our arrival.

This is where my memory of the evening goes foggy, we went into a 7-11 and discovered a dirt cheap beer that boasts a whopping 8.5% alcohol content, and proceeded to load up while we ate dinner from nearby food stands and waited for the fireworks show.

After that, we went to the subway to get back, and went to the Temple Street Market at night. 

A couple of my friends wanted to see if they could get knock-off goods, and it was hilarious to see them say the “code word” and a vendor would look around and leave and return with a big cardboard box of knock-off goods to be checked out. 

Not having had enough food, we ate a huge meal of Chinese food from a street restaurant that more than made up for the mediocre mall food we’d had earlier in the day.

We rode a taxi back to our hostel.

Saturday, we woke up and headed straight for a different ferry terminal. Our destination this time? Macau. While we waited for our ferry, we went to nearby Kowloon Park.

When we arrived, there was mite of a screw up. There were no return tickets until Sunday 7am… Which, that turned out to be a chance for an all-nighter in Macau. The only problem being by that point all of us were running low on cash.

We bought our tickets and we made the best of it. We hired a pushy tour guide to show us the sights around the island. We saw a monument for the handover when China reclaimed Macau from the Portuguese, a statue left by Portugal, and a number of apparently famous cathedrals and churches. We also saw the downtown area.

That killed a few good hours, and we were dropped off at the Venetian Casino, on the other island. Once there, we stared down the barrel of a good number of hours to go until our ferry would take us back to Hong Kong.

We mused over our plans while we ate dinner at another Irish pub inside the Venetian. Our guidebooks didn’t say much about nightlife outside of the casino environments. A waitress told us to check out the first island for some bars.

After eating, we all went into the casino and played some slot machines. I think I came out 14HK dollars ahead.

Then, we went to the Hard Rock Casino, across the way, where I played craps and promptly lost my winnings. We had the slowest service ever at the restaurant bar. Maybe because we were clearly not hotel guests? Who knows. I wanted to get some things from the gift shop, but I was unsure how much money I’d need to spring for a cab ride back to the ferry terminal. I settled for a photo by a Hard Rock Macau emblem on the wall. 

After we’d had our drinks and scandalous conversation followed, we went back to the first island. At the Hard Rock, we met some people who did work for one of the casino shows, something to do with water, I’m not sure what. They recommended a Chinese Karaoke bar and that would be where we’d try and stay until closing and then go to the ferry terminal.

We were the only non-Asians in the bar, and we pigeoned our way through ordering drinks with the non-English speaking wait staff.

My friends sang a few songs and after awhile, we decided to leave.

On our way to wherever the next place was, we stopped in a restaurant that was still open. My friend ordered by pointing at the pictures and we prayed it would be good. What we thought would be pork, was pork but it was pig’s feet. We got some dumplings in a spicy sauce that was good next. Then, we got a soup that we later discovered was bird’s nest soup. Finally we got some beef and veggies in an oily sauce that was great. The birds nest soup had an almost vinegary taste and is by far the worst tasting thing I’ve ever had. I’m all for people eating whatever they want, and I know if I’d grown up eating it, maybe I’d love it. Not for me.

We paid and left, at this point we’d given up and we went to the ferry terminal to wait out the remaining three-four hours until boarding our ferry.

At the ferry terminal, there was a line that wrapped around the terminal to get tickets. Apparently, we weren’t the only people who didn’t think to get round-trip tickets in advance.

After a purgatorial wait, our time finally came and we got on our boat. We all slept on the ferry, and woke up to choppy waves or when we’d made it to Hong Kong.

We got our things ready and packed our bags. On our way out, I made sure to get a Starbucks mug from Hong Kong with the spare change in my backpack. Then we rode to the airport in the bus.

When we got to the airport, we were told dreadfully that our flight to Beijing would be delayed, so we were going to be transferred to another airline so we could make our connecting flight to Incheon, Korea. None of us had heard of Dragon Air, and at the back of all of our minds was a dingy, sketchy airline with propellers and livestock in the passenger compartment. AND, we'd likely have to flap our arms in Flintsones style as well. 

We were all thankfully surprised. The in-flight meal was real food, which is a rare treat. I’d recommend Dragon Air to anyone flying in or out of Hong Kong. Seriously, it was a good airline.

Once we got to Beijing, we rushed to our transfer flight and flew back to Incheon and I didn’t get back to my apartment until a few minutes shy of midnight.

There were a lot of good memories on this trip, and I really want to go back.

More photos here and here, courtesy of Laura.