Being in a new city the first things we had to do was to our usual housekeeping things, but not until we’d had breakfast which is served on the 41st floor in the main restaurant. There a breakfast buffet and some set menu options, one of which was Eggs Benedict on Lobster. I’ll try most things once and I found it to be quite an acceptable variation to the normal ham or bacon. The views from the restaurant are quite stunning.
Anyway, back to those housekeeping duties. We needed some cash, so I went to the ATM – 100 Hong Dollars is about $20 Aussie dollars, so that’s pretty easy. In the meantime Debbie organised our next Metro Card, called the Octopus card here. Once again the technology is still the same, but the card is different. The technology optimist in me remains hopeful that the NFC functionality in mobile phones will soon be able to be used with some common App, to make this experience a little smoother in the future.
Our main object of the morning was to go to Victoria Peak which towers over the island. We planned a couple of stops along the way including the Arts Centre which had another exhibition of contemporary art, so probably not too much more needs to be said. From there we walked up through Hong Kong Park to the Victoria Peak Tram station. The ticket queue was about an hour long, however we soon worked out that if we bought a ticket for the ‘Hop on / Hop off Bus’ we could cut the waiting down to 15 mins. So soon enough we were on top of the island.
The views are stunning and we stopped for lunch and the I asked Debbie to take a photo of me outside in a very high place, just to ensure that those who ridicule my high anxiety can see I was actually there… and that I didn’t just get Debbie to sell me her photos. I think I’m looking quite relaxed.
From Victoria Peak we jumped on the Hop on Hop off bus and went to an antique shopping area on Hollywood Road, which bears no relationship to Hollywood in the USA which was named some 90 years after this road. Most of the shops sell ‘antiques’ which can be anything from ornate hand painted vases, stone carvings to Bruce Lee movie posters and Mao statuettes.
From there we decided to head to Kowloon where we were meeting our tour guide later for a food tour. We navigated the metro easily and thought (foolishly) that we would just find a coffee shop and have a nice sit to pass the the time. Unfortunately, not knowing the area all that well, we passed through the fruit markets and a lot of kitchenware shops, but no coffee shops. Hong Kong also has a number of parks, but being Sunday it was impossible to get a seat in the park. Sunday is the day all the housemaids get off, so they head to the parks and have day-long picnics. These women mostly come from the Phillipines.
We then joined our food tour and made up a group of 5. We walked through the fruit markets and tried some street foods along the way, such as fish balls and egg tarts before going to a wanton and noodle place. We did however walk past the old Hong Kong Police Station that was used in the Jackie Chan movie ‘Rush Hour 2’…. for the quality movie buffs out there!
The real highlight for me was a barbecue restaurant where we shared 3 dishes – Roast Goose, Marinated Pork and Suckling Pig, which were all delicious.
We finished off the tour by going to a Dessert Soup place. This is apparently a most Cantonese tradition and the queue was quite long by the time we left. There were lots of things to choose from, but once I eliminated the ones with walnuts, mangoes and papaya in them I was left with a ginger soup with sesame balls. It was quite nice, but I won’t be giving up on Creme Brûlée anytime soon.
With that we jumped back on the metro and we were back at the hotel with about twenty minutes.
Until tomorrow!
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