Hong Kong with my Parents

  Hong Kong, China
Monday, November 20, 2006

Victoria Harbor

This was my first trip back to Hong Kong with my Parents. I had worked in Hong Kong back in the early 90s and have returned a couple times since, but never with my parents. They had lived in Hong Kong for many years back in the good ol' days in the 40s, 50s and 60s when the Brits were still in control. I have always heard about how it was when my family lived there. Lucky for them, my brothers were born there and can get Hong Kong ID cards allwoing them access into China any time they want w/o needing a visa. It was great hearing my dad talk about all the places as they were back when he lived there as we visited each place. He had great stories about the history of Hong Kong including little tidbits of information like why one of the biggest electronics markets in Mong Kok is called Sai Yeung Choi (watercress) Street. When he used to live on that street it really was nothing more than a watercress field surrounded by a village. The address where he used to live is now a huge multi-storey building housing a mall selling everything from laptop computers to mobile phones and everything in between. One night we went to dinner with some of my mom's old friends, my dad and I drove passed the church they got married in 49 years ago to the day. The guy that chauffeured my parents around on their wedding day was at dinner too. The funny thing was that it was all just by coincidence. No one except me seemed to know about it. When I mentioned it to my dad, he just said, "oh...yeah" and sorta motioned me to be quiet in the same kind of hand gesture that they use to stop a taxi in Lao. Every one of their friends was always asking me when I'm gonna get married. Let's just say I'm not qutie sure that its for me or not. When we passed the church, it seemed more like returning to the scene of a crime vs. any kind of celebration. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad? I have to hand it to them though, 49 years together is no small feat without killing each other. Although I have had some relationships that have seemed that long in retrospect. (no I'm not talking about you) LOL

I love Hong Kong mostly for it's food. The shopping has already had it's day and that day has passed. Shenzhen is the new marketplace with the best deals if you know how to bargain. HK has to have the best Chinese food in the world for it's fresh ingredients and master chefs. Which is one of the reasons why I'm so glad that I met Anna and Dennis while we were in China. Anna seems to know where just about all the best restaurants are in Macau, Hong Kong and the New Territories for each particular dish. You'd think that with all the places they took us last time, we'd probably exhausted her list of must dos. Well, we didn't even come close as this time we went to a bunch more including a place with a great roasted goose, a hot pot restaurant, and a famous spicy fried crab restaurant that had pictures of apparently famous people eating there. Of course, I didn't recognize any of them except for maybe Jackie Chan. The crab was AWSOME, but so spicy that Dennis couldn't even eat it. Sweat seemed to pour out the top of his head after eating just one piece. Good thing I've been practicing in Thailand for a few months with other spicy foods. It may sound like all I did was eat in Hong Kong, well that's probably because that's mostly what I did. I did go to the horse races in Happy Valley and won $100.

Happy Valley Race Track

Unfortunately, that's only in HKD. We also tried to go hiking in the mountains of Hong Kong, but it rained us out and we didn't get very far. Next time I'm in Hong Kong I'm gonna have to explore some of it's extensive nature trails. A former governor of Hong Kong loved to hike so he protected huge sections of land as non-development reserves. He even has a 100 Km trail named after him in the New Territories, MacLehose Trail.

Traveler's Tips

If any of you are thinking of taking a R/T Air Asia flight into Macau just because it's cheaper than flying into Hong Kong, don't bother. The R/T ferry tickets will eat up most of that advantage at $20USD each way. But for me it worked out great except for the long commute back to Bangkok. I left Hong Kong at 5pm and didn't get back home until 2am (3am HKT).

Don't do a Thailand Visa run to Hong Kong. The Thai Embassy there seems to be very strict about the rule interpretations and only gave me 1 60 day Tourist Visa because I had already been in Thailand for 30 days. I asked for 2 or 3. Apparently it's still possible to get 3 60 day visas in England and Australia.