22 June 2013
Traveling is always an interesting thing. Our flights on Thursday/Friday (yay time travel) from Honolulu were very long. Not unpleasant, but being in a plane for 8 hours then in an airport for 2.5 and then on another plane for 3 hours takes it out of a girl. However, Korean Air is wonderful. Even if our flight from Korea to Hong Kong was delayed so they could fix something. The flight attendants really made it for me. They were so wonderful. Beyond pleasant. They went out of their way to help people. Just lovely. So when we landed in Hong Kong and had collected out luggage we were so beat we decided just to grab a taxi to our hotel instead of taking the train to Hong Kong island and then transferring to another train and then trying to walk to our hotel in the dark. Money well spent I think.
Cosmo Hotel Mongkok
The Cosmo hotel in Mongkok is just adorable. We had such a cute little room (and I do mean little: 18sq meters). It was just enough for our two nights. Two beds, a big window, wonderful shower that I wanted to take home, and a closet to hang our clothes. Even if my toes hung off the end of the bed I would still stay there again. Reasonably priced, close to Olympic Station, near a Watson’s (Long’s-y), and the staff was very nice. Yining and I got up to our room, unpacked a little, and then crashed. Hard.
On Saturday, our first morning in Hong Kong, we woke up to some decent rain fall. We thought for a moment about changing out plans for the day and Ta-Da the rain stopped! It was wonderful. So we walked our way to Olympic Station, figured out the train system, and popped down to Hong Kong island so we could make our way up to The Peak. The Peak is a high point in Hong Kong that you can see most of Hong Kong and damn near all of Kowloon. It is wonderous. The trolley you take up is a bit concerning. It is steep. Steep steep. Fun though. Once and the top Yining and I took several beautiful photos and made our way inside just as it started to pour. Again we had excellent rain timing. We enjoyed a vanilla latte each and the free wifi in the coffee place while the rain cooled off. It was then time to hop on the trolley back down (Backwards!) so we could get some lunch.
View from The Peak
We walked from The Peak about a mile to a restaurant that is famous for milk tea. Delicious, delicious milk tea. The pork cartilage spicy rice was pretty darn tasty as well. After lunch we took off about 1/2 a mile down the road to visit Man Mo Temple. It was beautiful. I felt a bit strange and out of place taking photos in this place of worship but no one seemed to mind. It is a famous temple so I bet they are used to the tourists walking about and are good at ignoring them. The giant coils of incense in the temple were the most striking. They smelled and looked wonderful.
Man Mo Temple
After saying goodbye to Man Mo Temple we walked back to a bakery we saw that sells egg tarts. Oh the joyous egg tarts. We each got a delicious little gem and went on our way to find a place to stuff our faces with tart. We walked through a cute vegtable and fruit market and found ourselves at one of the MANY malls in Hong Kong. We ended up at a Starbucks and got a small drink and plopped down to nosh on tart. They were a-may-zing, in case you were wondering. While in Starbucks, again taking advantage of free internet, we decided to check out information about the Chinese Opera Festival at the Culture Center on the Kowloon side. We found out tickets would be made available the day of and we had to pick them up at the theatre. So that was the next place we would go!
Victoria Harbor from Kowloon
Dragon Boats!
We made it all the way to the Culture Center and… wah, wah, wah… no tickets left. Very sad. However, we took our sad no Chinese opera lemons and made beautiful lemonade. The Culture Center is right on Victoria Harbor so we walked the promenade and took pictures of the view. We also walked right into the Dragon Boat Carnival! It was very cool. We sat in the bleachers and watched several races. They were quite exciting. Although I’m glad I wasn’t betting on them because I chose wrong every time. Damn you number 6! After a few races we decided to walk and find the San Miguel Beer Festival which was tied to the carnival. We found it. It was great. Yining and I sat down and drank our free beer and had a lovely time. I was also interviewed by many people who were doing projects for school or for the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Apparently I am a non-threatening foreigner. Yay?
We were a bit hungry after the beer so we got up and walked around a bit to find some food. We ended up at the iSquare mall and decided to check it out. It was fun. They had this store FrancFranc which may be the most adorable home store in the entire world and I want to find another one. It was amazing and not horribly priced. I want to go to there.
In the mall there was this one Italian restuarant that smelled amazing! Just heavenly. I know what you are thinking here… you go to China and eat Italian? What? Well, shush! We have had lots of Chinese and Korean food and you have no idea how good this place smelled. Also, it turned out really to be a great choice. My pasta in cream sauce with ham and mushrooms was exceptional. Really just so filling and hit the spot so perfectly. Yining’s pizza was good as well. She let me have a slice.
Hong Kong at Night… blurry this camera apparently hates the night.
After the spectacular food we walked back to Victoria Harbor to take pictures of the night skyline and watch the Symphony Lights. Hong Kong holds this event every night. They play music and the lights of many of the buildings on the Hong Kong side dance to the music. It was neat. Following the classy lights we decided to continue our night time fun by visiting the Ladies Market in Mongkok. We took a train there and walked around the stalls for a while. I ended up getting one small gift and haggling like a pro to toot my own horn. It is fun to haggle. By this point we were getting very tired and chose to head back to the hotel. It didn’t look very far on the map so we decided to hoof it instead of paying for a taxi. Now i’ll admit I was a bit turned around and I think we were both a little confused by the streets. We did figure it out after a bit of confusion and made our way back to the hotel after a long walk. Longer than expected but we survived. Kind of… If you hadn’t noticed I used the word ‘walk’ a lot so far. We walked about 6-7 miles during the day and stood a whole bunch as well. My feet are BARKING. I have blisters on my heels and toes. My fault for breaking in my new shoes on the plane flight and then walking all day. Oh well, nothing bandages can’t handle. Also, my kate spade conference shoes are the ones I work 8 hours a day in and they are comfortable. So hooray for the next few days.
Dumpling!
Being back in the hotel was wonderful. I took a shower in the best shower I’ve ever showered in and then we sat in our beds and looked at our photos, talked, and got ready to sleep. Hooray sleep. It was good sleep too. We slept in till 8:45am because our only plans for Sunday were dim sum! The dim sum place didn’t open till 11:30 so why rush? We took a train down to Canton Road and to, surprise, another mall where the dim sum place Yining likes is located. There was a line at the place, Din Tai Fung, at 10:45 when we arrived. By the time the place opened there was a line long enough to fill the large restaurant and then some. It was really tasty. We ate so many dumplings. So many. I wish I had some right now they were so tasty. I love dumplings. I could eat them every day. We also had some vegetables and a red bean bun for dessert. Mainly, though, we ate dumplings! Which was the plan. So we succeeded in our Sunday plans. Huzzah.
When we left the mall is was pouring. So even though it is a bit pricey we took a cab back to the hotel instead of walking 10 minutes in the rain to take two trains back and walk 5 more minutes in the rain. We had already checked out before leaving for dim sum so we just had to pick up our bags, use the free wifi in the lobby to check ferry times, and then head out to the docks to grab a ferry to Macau. We left at 2pm and arrived in Macau at about 3pm. Which is where I am now. In a coffee shop in Macau and drinking a nice cup of tea before bed. More on the ferry and what we did on our first day in Macau tomorrow after the conference.
Here we go ICAS 8!
A Christmas Tree in Asia 