D4

In the same way that Day 3 was us doing what we’d been unable to do on Day 2. Day 4 was us doing what we planned to do on Day 3. If you followed that – carry on. If not, ask the person next to you to draw you a diagram.

We got to the noonday Gun

just before noon which as far as I can tell was the right time to get there. The gun is a relic of colonial times and there was a few contrasting stories but basically someone fired off a gun to greet a boat coming in. The guy on the boat was the new Governor and he was unhappy so that he ordered the Jardine family to fire off a gun every day at noon as a way of signalling the time. They recently downgraded the gun size from a 12lb gun to a 6lb gun so we didn’t expect a very loud blast – but we got a very loud blast – so loud in fact that Katy jumped as did the camera and we got a nice shop of the skyscrapers of the Causeway Bay area.






We went from there towards the Causway bay shopping area that we’d noticed of the bus. I was aiming for the ikea and the Wan Chai computer centre. Katy was heading for the Department store Sogo and the countless designer stores. Outside Sogo is apparently the busiest road crossing in HK






Doesn't look any busier that Oxford Street imo

To get towards that area I realised that we could walk through the World Trade Centre. The World Trade Centre in NY had over 500 offices for companies including some of the biggest companies in the World. The World Trade centre in HK is filled with... you guessed it – a shopping mall.

Upstairs in the mall we found a Korean Restaurant and ordered dog. We didn’t really, or at least we didn’t mean to. I ordered some sort of beef thing, which was probably dog (WWPD) and Katy I think had some sort chicken, (WWPD). The food came out in a main bowl with noodles/rice and then 4 smaller bowls with different vegetables – it also came with a bowl of broth. I was strongly of the opinion that you were meant to use the vegetables on the table which were some greens, something else, some noodles and what I thought was a potato. I was so sure that you were meant to add different amounts of each to your broth like a built your own soup. I resisted doing this and ate my beef (WWPD) and we waited for Katy’s chicken (WWPD), Katy’s food arrived in a hot bowl (sort of like the “plates” in the sizzler pub chain) but with a raw egg cracked into it. Katy’s task was to egg fry her food right before eating it in the hot plate it was served it. I thought the food was amazing and would consider moving nearby to eat there again, although getting the train there might be a little less drastic. We picked at the side dishes - except for the potato and ate our food with pleasure. When the waitress came at the end of the meal she removed all of our plates and bowls except for the little potato plate. This Potato turned out to be an apple to eat as a palate cleanser.

We went into Victoria Park this way and were both just baking hot so we had an ice-cream and a sit down. Around the main green was a dedicated jogging track and we actually got told off for simply walking down it. It’s one of the places in HK where loads of people gather either morning to do Tai Chi, but we didn’t make an early morning any day of the holiday let alone an early morning. It was a great park and it had an area called the Laughing Corner. The below are photos of us laughing at the fact that Laughing Corner isn't actually in the corner of the park.




And there were some people raising radio controlled boats in a little pond designated for that specific purpose.




We dived back into Central where I opened a bank account, which was boring. But then we went back to Wan Chai Computer which I’d been looking forward to for most of my life. The only thing I was in the market for was a digital camera (and as I reently discovered a radio control Boat) and we walked around for ages asking prices and poking different camera. I ended up buying a camera for a prices I was happy with but I don’t think I’m going to disclose the model or price just incase I was ripped off – I don’t think I was coz it was a Sony, and surely their worth whatever you pay for them.

I chose for us to go to a bar called the Pawn (imagine my dismay when learnt the spelling), which was the biggest pawn shop in Hong Kong which used to run a thriving trade when many sailors used to pawn their stuff to be able to enjoy what HK had to offer. Its now a bar with a lovely balcony that we didn’t managed to sit on. We ordered something that was basically and English platter on a test tube rack.





I think it included fish and chips, Scotch Eggs (warm and probably the best Scotch Egg ever), and battered Pigs Ear. You’ll see from the photo that we didn’t eat the Pig’s Ear – also the sharper of you will have noticed there’s a cone that I’ve not mentioned the contents of. I cannot remember what it was.

From the Pawn to the Habitat Bar which was a high-up expensive bar with views of not all that much. But it looked good and there were some quality cocktails on the menu.


We went back to the Hong Kong Brewhouse which is a becoming my favourite bar in HK, with its peanut floor and specific rules.








A lot of things could’ve gone wrong this day, nearly ate Pig’s Ear, nearly ate dog but in all seriousness thanks god I didn’t try and make Apple soup.

3 Days

This is the day I became an official HK citizen with my ID card. The Bureaucracy was brilliant, a repeated system of take a number and go to the queue, wait for you number to appear, go to the next wueue. Repeat, repeat, repeat

Another failed attempt at an activity was when we tried to get on a bus to the Noon day gun – an old colonial tradition where a naval gun is fired off at noon every day.
The bus we got on showed a stop at the cross Harbour crossing, which it turns out meant the other side of the harbour, we crossed the road hoping to get back in time to see the noon-day gun and ended up god knows where and had to walk back to civilisation. In the sticky sweaty heat it felt like a 6 mile trek back. In hindsight we should’ve just hailed a taxi as the journey we needed to take would’ve cost about $30.

Back for our second bite of the Maxin’s Palace cherry and were successful after a short wait for a table. All the Dim Sum is pushed around by 10+ waitresses on little trolleys, as was the style back in the day, you just stop the trolley and point at what you want (well, I’m guessing you should ask in Cantonese but our fingers were the next best thing, as usual) and they mark your card with how much you’ve eaten. We finished our meal and had the most perfectly presented layered jelly coffee flavoured desert





when all of a sudden I looked up at a shocked face across the room. When I managed to focus I realised it was Christina who I was about to start work with, and not just her but the entire HK Finance Team were out for a leaving lunch for my departing boss who was leaving before I got there. After the shock had worn off I went over for some introductions and met my future work mates. It’s incredible that I could bump into the one person in HK that I had ever met face to face before, Sitting for lunch two tables over.






That's my Finance Team on that table by the window

As we were nearby we took the Ferry across to Victoria Harbour which is on most ‘top 50/100 things to do before you die’ lists. You can see why, it’s such an impressive journey either way, you have all the hugely imposing buildings either side.



The ride one-way is $2.20 for the Upper deck (air-conditioned) or you can drop down to the lower deck for $1.7 which we did by mistake a few days later. The extra 4p for the upstairs is worth it IMO but its worth slumming it once as the downstairs has a completely different vibe. We took the ferry back almost straight away knowing that we had a day in Kowloon (the Peninsular) planned later in the week.

We got on the Big bus company tour around the City to take in some of the sights we might have missed. Due to high winds and jet lag our ticket for the bus blew away forcing us to stay on the hop-on hop-off bus without the ability to hop-off until the end.
Some Stops included

• Sogo - the biggest Dept store in HK,


• Victoria Park (named recently after the film ‘Young Victoria’).


• The Wan Chai computer centre, biggest in HK, which was salivating over from the moment I heard it existed,


• Mid-level escalators, and Soho


• Man Mo Temple,

The Lippo building

After bussing back to the bus station we headed back into Lan Kwai Fong and found the Hong Kong Brewhouse.


Evidence of what happened after this, including food is lost I think – maybe Katy can remember something?

Day 2

On the second day we got up late and tried to go for some Dim Sum in a place recommended as the best Dim Sum place HK has to offer, Maxim’s Palace. We made our way to City Hall where the restaurant is, climbed the two flights of stairs and found it it was closed. Serves us right for not leaving this house till about 2pm. We did successfully have Corn flakes for breakfast and found out the HK milk actually taste ok, and not like cats milk as expected. But it costs about $20 per litre.

We used our Octopus cards for the first time and it made getting around easy and so cheap. A bus is around HKD5.7 (approx 50p), the tube is around the same and the trams are HKD2. We got back into Central and looked around the escalators again for somewhere to get lunch. We settled on a Sushi place with a conveyor belt of wonders. I ate Japanese Eel and some bluefin.
The OctopusCard kills the OysterCard, might’ve mentioned this but you can pay in most shops and places like Starbucks – even my works vending machine uses them.

We then got the tram up Victoria Peak which could still be paid for on Octopus card. It was HKD47 to get up and down. It's so steep






At the top was... more places to shop, A 3 story mall at the highest point of HK. Hong Kongers just love to shop, you can’t believe the scale of it – its one designer shop after another and when you move onto the next district its the same again. We must’ve seen more than 5 Louis Vutton shops without even trying. From the actually peak there were some spectacular views and really worth the trip up there.











We took a wander into Lan Kwai Fong which is the trendy super cool Bar area started in the 70s. We quickly stumbled across a Bar called Al’s Dinner that Katy’s boss used to work at and got some photos to document the discovery for her. Please note that this place serves a basket of crispy bacon for HKD48, I can’t believe I managed to not order but I don’t think long will pass before I do. (10th May and I’m still resisting)









Happy hour runs in Hong Kong from about 3-9 although we did spot one or two that ran from 12pm-10pm. As Happy hour at Al’s diner closed at 8 we moved onto some sort of Latin bar with a HH till 9pm and continued the cheaper drinking. HH makes the drinks roughly affordable coming in at around HKD38 so about £3.50. Not cheap but better than the full price.

Dinner was a late night affair which took us to a Chinese fast food place. It was a fairly earthy place and you weren’t quite sure what you were eating at any one point but it filled the hole. I’ll gloss over the slightly pink chicken.
We passed over Ebenezer Kebab which was a tough one







We then moved onto a bar and spent a good amount of time looking at a sign saying Tribal Car Pet Cave. We debated for ages what this place might be. Some sort of old fashioned Car that takes animals to a troglobitic venue. We then worked out it said Tribal Carpet Cave. And that it was simply a Carpet shop. Earlier on in the evening we’d had a conversation about how many members the Boy Band 5ive (4 apparently) had so I think the Happy Hour drinks were taking their toll.

1st Day in Hong Kong

I’m here on the first morning of HK, Katy’s asleep again after sleeping for pretty much the whole plane journey. Trying to book an appointment to get my Hong Kong ID card (Free to register – UK government take note). The appointments are every 15 mins till 4:30pm but I can’t guarantee Katy will be awake by then.

I’m staying here for a month, http://www.manhattanheights.com.hk/ http://is.gd/bRGOC Also worth noting that as well as street view and Google Earth, Hong Kong has Google 3D earth – why not?

Here’s a recap of getting here and the first day.

After a late Pizza express lunch in London, Katy and I got into a taxi from Charring Cross to the Airport (work were paying = WWP). Wearing my newly gifted St. Christopher, I hoped this extra luck would aid our travels to HK but as we stopped to get cash out to pay the driver, the cash machine was out of order. Things were plane (link) sailing after that as we got to the airport. The security check gave us our next problem as the stupid electric tray runners in T5 managed to throw out Katy’s watch somehow. Once we realised our mistake we enlisted the help of a lady called Barbara₁ and she retrieved the watch from under the machine.

Travel problems 1 – 1 St Christopher.

We then managed to just avoid spending GBP300 on a pair of sunglasses each, Prada and Serengeti. It was a close run thing.

We got on the plane and boarded our seats in premium economy (WWP). The seats were a bit bigger and we had 1 steward between the 30ish seats so whenever you needed anything you got it straight away. I was offered more wine so many times that I was embarrassed when I had to stop accepting. Taunting me with copious amounts of wine when I’ve got a cold is unfair (wouldn’t happen in first class).

I scrolled through the films and saw one thing that shocked me. The screens on planes aren’t the best quality, you need to be facing them directly or you can’t see them, and the screens are also only 6” big. This seems to lend itself well to low action films with a lot of good dialogue as you’ll not have to watch special effects on this tiny screen. With this in mind, why oh why would they put on Avatar on the plane? James Cameron would be turning in his Director’s Chair if he knew his HD 3D “masterpiece” was being shown on a 6” screen.

While Katy slept I watched Invictus, which was a decent film. It does show that rugby is not that cinematic but that apartheid is cinematic gold. Matt Damon’s character doesn’t really do much in the film and I spent the whole time watching Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of Mandela thinking “Is he really a prick in real life?” (Freeman, not Mandela).

They also had the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game on the plane and despite the disappointment of bottling the 500k question early on in the flight in the last hour, we managed to win the million pounds with a question I didn’t understand but the answer was Marcel Marceau (good old 50/50).

Arriving into Hong Kong I had my work Visa validated without much trouble. I had 4 rubber stamps plus another sticker, plus he wrote on it. Some good bureaucracy at work there.

Getting onto the train into central is really easy – tickets were GBP8 each (Stansted Express, take note). The trains are fast, quiet and clean. There’s no food allowed on them. Katy offered me a chewing gum not realising they’re not allowed, and I was looking around for someone to arrest her. Taxi from there to the hotel was about GBP6 for 2 people and 3 cases which took us right outside our apartment.

The apartment building seems like a classy affair. The place is 60 fricking stories high. There’s separate lifts to take you up to either floors 1-35 or 36-60. And it takes about 20 seconds to get us up to the 31^st floor where the apartment is. 31 floors is high, we have a mountain view apartment which means we don’t have a view of the sea. This is the view out of my lounge and below that is the view out of my bedroom window of the tallest and thinnest block of flats I’ve ever seen.

The Lounge is a decent size with a table and chairs and a flatscreen TV. The kitchen is tiny - about half the size of what we'd consider to be a small kitchen. Bathroom is fine with a very low bath but a good shower. The bedroom is a good size but has the hardest mattress I’ve ever sat down on. It feels like it’s just a wooden plank but sleeping on it was really comfortable and had a good night’s sleep. How much of that was jet-lag and how much was tolerance of the bed time will tell.

There seems to be a bit going on in Kennedy Town where our apartment is. We found a decent supermarket and there's a wet fish shop a couple of doors down where all the fish are still swimming around and the shellfish are still clinging to their rocks (think it'll take me a while to buy from there). Next to that there's a real expat shop. Load of imported meats and cheeses (blue Cheese was GBP6). They have a really good wine selection and not shockingly expensive as I thought. You can get a few different bottles for under a fiver. Picked up a 12 pack of San Migeuls (330ml cans) for 56HKD which is roughly GBP5 which is actually a bit of a bargain in the UK, let alone for what I thought it would cost here. It still seems that beers out and bottled beers are expensive.

In the evening we decided to head into central as it was our first night. We tracked down the local bus depot, discovered which bus took us into central (the number 18) and got on. After flashing a HKD20 note at the driver we realised we’d encountered our first non-English speaker. He was explaining to us that without an Octopus card (read: Oyster Card) we weren’t able to travel on the bus... so we set of on our walk into town not realising our exact location on the island. After a minute of walking it became apparent that we weren’t within walking distance of the centre. We hailed a cab instantly and got a quick HKD42 taxi into Central. Central was crazy busy, so many people on every street and every corner, a lot just hanging around or taking a rest from their early evening shopping. We picked up our Octopus card at the station and checked the map for where to go. We headed towards BoHo and we found the Central and Mid-levels Escalator,




which I believe is the biggest escalator network (or something) in the world. You get on and off the escalators occasionally and can go down stairs at each point to find a little section of restaurants and bars. We thought that the best thing to do would be to travel all the way to the top of the escalator, seeing as we’d started. And passing Robinson Road this seemed like a good idea. However, it turns out that all the good bars are at the middle section (Soho and Boho...and probably Noho, although we’re not quite sure where that is yet) and that there’s basically nothing of interest at the top. That was a real shame.

After discovering the escalator and triumphing in reaching the top, we decided we’d earned a beer. We then discovered that if you miss the 5 hour long happy hours, drinks are really expensive! But we found somewhere in Soho to have some good Asian tapas and some expensive drinks, so we were fairly happy. 9.30pm hit and we realised just how long we’d been travelling and that we actually were jet-lagged after all, so decided to head home and think about what Day 2 would offer.

Footnotes ₁. She may not have been called Barbara.
₂. The exchange rate we got was 10.8842 or somewhere close to that. Divide any HKD by ten and you can’t go far wrong.

₃. You get about 1-1 on potato wedges too, but only if you eat them with chopsticks

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