Hong-Kong-Blogathon

  Hong Kong, China
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Chung King Mansions

Our first stop in Hong Kong, was the infamous Chung King Mansions... although that name is somewhat misleading, as a mansion it ain't! Inside it is filled with every kind of Indian food you could wish for, as well as electrical goods, internet cafes and clothes stalls... All this on the ground and first floors, with countless restaurants and hostels on the other floors. It's split up by blocks (A-E) with two lifts for each one - one for odd and one or even floors... Tom and I found ourselves a room with air-conditioning, a double bed, a TV and a private bath-cupboard for a very reasonable price on the 8th floor of block C. We then bargained it down to an even more reasonable price... so we were pretty pleased with our efforts :) Rush hour for the elevator usually meant that we used the stairs though...

Hong Kong Island from the Star Ferry

The Mansion is in Kowloon, more specifically Tsim Sha Tsui, and a lot of the big stuff in Hong Kong is on HK Island... to get over there you can take the subway or get the star ferry... surprisingly the Star Ferry is actually cheaper and a nice ride and view all the way... so we mostly did that, unless we were in a rush...

Hong Kong was a very lazy place for us... we had a few errands to run, which included visiting the Vietnamese and Thai embassies to arrange visas, and... um... actually that's it... But it was all very straight forward... Unfortunately we were then passportless, which meant we couldn't get the Ferry to Macau, something I really wanted to do... ah well, you win some and lose some!

While we waited for the Vietnamese visa to be done, we went to a trade fair that was going on at the Exhibition centre, and was free and air-conditioned ;) We said we would try to visit some while we're away to get some business ideas, and this was a great one to try out... We registered as 'Portable Princess', a company specialising in portable electronics... random... We got to have a look at some really cool gadgets, including some glasses that you can put on and watch a movie an inch from your face... mad!

We did a LOT of walking around, at the night markets and up and down Nathan Road, which is where Chung King Mansions were... but they were mostly selling all the same stuff, and HK is not the place for backpackers to be shopping really... Quite hilariously, we were waiting on the side of the road to cross at one point, and a massive truck drove over a full, sealed bottle of water, causing it to explode with a loud BANG... I thought for a second I was being shot at, so it ws quite a relief to look down and find a big wet patch down my left side!!

View rfom the Bank of China Tower

We also went up the Bank of China Tower, which had a free observatory to get a good look out at the city, and then went just down the road and took the Peak Tram to the top of the peak, for another spectacular view of the city...

Happy Valley Race Course

On the Sunday we were there, we met up with Ross and Laura, the Scottish couple we met in Yangshuo, and Niklas and Stina, the Swedish couple we also met in Yangshuo, and went to watch some horse races at Happy Valley... I've never been before, so it was really cool to watch... we all put a few bets of $HK10 each (less than £1) to see how we went, but I don't think anyone actually won anything.... it was really exciting to watch though, and of course the beer started to flow and the day couldn't end there! Ross, Laura, Tom and I went back to the Mansion to get a slap up curry... where I stated a bidding war between two restaurant touts, which security eventually came over to break up... Slightly scarily, the next day I was walking downstairs and the guy from the restaurant we didn't go to, came and said, 'you promise me you will come to my restaurant...' blah blah blah... I told him he was weird and walked off, but Tom and I kept an eye out for him after that!!

A flower at the HK Botanical Gardens

On our last day in HK we went to a good second hand book shop we found and stocked up for South East Asia, then had a leisurely walk around the HK zoo and botanical gardens... Most of this zoo was really cool, and is responsible for breeding large numbers of endangered species, so it was a bonus all round :)

Tom at the metro station, 5am

And that's about it... we were very lazy (and poor) and spent a fair amount of time just wondering around, and grabbing snacks from the food stalls at the Mansion to eat in our room, catching up with the US Election news on BBC World... The next day we were up very early to get a metro and a train to the airport and make our way to Vietnam... but obviously, that's another story!