A bit of shopping to wrap it all up

With only a flight home tomorrow left on this holiday, we thought we’d check out a bit of the shopping that is often referred to as a reason to come to Hong Kong. We needed to get across the harbour to Kowloon so decided to take the traditional Star Ferry.

These iconic ferries have been part of Hong Kong since the late 1800s. The became a regular service in 1888 when Dorabjee Naorojee Mithaiwala, an Indian businessman, who had initially built a business importing opium from Bombay, bought a boat that had been running trips cross the harbour and eventually added another 4 boats to the fleet. He sold the company in 1898 and at that time each of the boats were doing 147 trips per day. The Star Ferries we commandeered by the Japanese during the WW2 occupation and 2 of them were sunk by American bombing raids. After the war both of these ferries were recovered and put back into service.

From there we went to a big shopping mall in the Langham Hotel which boasts about 200 shops including a lego shop. Once again my experience was the same as yesterday. If you want to dress like an asian boy band member, have small feet and a thin waist, you may like the shopping here. I also noticed that nothing is any cheaper than I would buy at home, so I was left feeling that I wouldn’t be coming back for the shopping, however  there was though a very long escalator…

Lastly, I dropped into the DJI Store at Causeway Bay, to drool over the latest drones that I can’t really afford prior to making our way back to the hotel. We had lunch at a Japanese pancake place, where we had to cook for ourselves… but they did have some sound advice…

In winding down the trip, I would firstly like to thank every one that has followed along with us. I enjoy putting the blog together and seeing that you all seem to like reading it. That makes it work worth doing.

The big highlights for both of us have been experiencing the foods of the three different countries. We ate a lot of different foods and with the food tour in each place it really gave us some great ideas about the local foods that we should really should try more of.

The walking tour in each city was also a great way to get an understanding about the history of each place. I usually do a top 3, but upon discussion we thought because of the diversity of the locations we could do a top 5 instead (in no particular order).

Rob’s top five things:

1. Taroko Gorge in Taiwan
2. The Palaces in Seoul (particularly with Autumn colours)
3. The DMZ trip (It was quite moving seeing a country divided by ideology)
4. The day trip to Stanley on Hong Kong
5. Dinner at level 102 of the ICC in Hong Kong

Debbie’s top five things:

1. Secret Garden in Seoul
2. Food Tour in Taipei
3. The Macau experience
4. Ease of getting around using the metro in each city
5. Variety of food

The things that worked well for us on this trip were the food tour in each city, the walking tour in each city, the club rooms at the hotels and premium economy seat for the long haul flights. In hindsight, we could have done with a mid-trip break to rest our feet from all the walking,

Lastly, a big thank you to Debbie for planning out all the things we needed to see and for expertly navigating all the metros across all the cities.

Looking forward to your company on the next trip, which at this stage looks like being Costa Rica and Cuba this time next year!

Until then … thank you and goodbye!