I should first start by apologizing for the several month
gap between this post and the last. In
my defense, I had been taking a writing intensive course this fall semester
(which just finished) so my writing was allocated to that and we’ve also been
taking advantage of our location with some really fun travel experiences, beginning
first with Hong Kong!
Mark and I left Singapore for Hong Kong on early on Friday,
July 13th. After a short
3.5-4 hour flight (yes, we now refer to anything under 6-8 hours as short but
becoming somewhat accustomed to 24 hours of flight home will do that to you) we
arrived in the Lantau district of Hong Kong.
Our hotel, The Langham, was located in the Kowloon district. To get there we decided to take a taxi
instead of trying the mass public transportation route since we had two large
suitcases to deal with. However, when
taking taxis in HK you have to be careful to get the appropriate color taxi as
each color is for a designated island (districts) and cannot go to the other
districts. Once we found the line for
our red taxi, there was a short wait and then we were on our way.
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| View of HK from taxi, on the way to our hotel |
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| The Langham lobby |
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| Mark catching a breather before our sight-seeing |
The drive to the hotel was stunning! I’m a little bit embarrassed, but also in
hindsight happy, to say that we really didn’t do much research before deciding
to travel to Hong Kong. We had both
paged through a borrowed Travel Guide (thanks again Sarah!) but it didn’t
contain many pictures and having not done any online browsing I didn’t really
know what to expect in terms of looks, but had built Hong Kong up in my mind as
just being a large Asian city, pretty similar to Singapore. Before even landing at the airport I realized
just how wrong I was. It’s so
mountainous! I realized having read about a cable car that there must be some
elevation changes but it was a lot more than what I was expecting. And the skyscrapers! The mass of buildings dwarfed the Singapore
skyline - and for those who have seen my Singapore pictures, you know that’s no
small feat!
After taking in the awesome landscapes during our 30 minute
drive from the airport, we arrived at our hotel. We got the recommendation from friends who
had stayed there previously and we were not disappointed. Aside from the beautiful lobby and cozy
rooms, other perks were: a Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton, and
more stores ALL within a few blocks walk!
Hey, a girl can window shop! And
after settling in the room, that’s exactly what we did! When we were finished perusing some of the
stores, we walked to the water front ferry terminal to take a boat ride over to
Central Hong Kong Island. Before departing we took advantage of the opportunity
for a photo op with the Central Hong Kong skyline and the Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon
Clock Tower.
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| Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon
Clock Tower |
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| Portion of the city Skyline of Central HK |
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| Picture against the skyline, the clouds made for a beautiful day |
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| The ferry boats which take you from island to island |
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| I'm on a boat |
The ferry ride was quick and painless, not at all what we
were expecting in such a crowded city.
While in Central Hong Kong we mostly roamed. This was a unique trip in that we didn’t have
many things we felt like we had to do so we went without an itinerary and just
walked and enjoyed sight-seeing – although the one thing on our “must-do” list
was to get Mark’s Hard Rock pilsner glass (check!). During our roaming we stumbled upon kids jump
roping but in a very unique way (see video)!
Roaming complete, for Friday anyway, we made our way back to the ferry
terminal to head back to Kowloon for dinner.
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| Not even the most crowded part |
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| Made it to Hard Rock just in time to escape the rain! |
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| Planning our route |
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| I've never been to New York but I image this to be very similar |
We did dinner at a restaurant in the hotel, The
Bostonian. It was delicious and a lot
more reasonably priced than we were used to in Singapore. The service started off with a complimentary
glass of champagne followed by a trip to an oyster bar. I really wish I would have taken a picture
because it was really neat – we were able to pick from a variety of different types
of oysters and a variety of ways to have them prepared. We each had three different types from
different places, some cooked and some raw.
After dinner we retired to the room to get a good night’s sleep to
prepare us for the next day. On the agenda: Day trip to Macau!
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| Mark enjoying the complimentary Champers |
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| Me too! |
The trip to Macau started off with a little over an hour
boat ride. Our first catamaran ride to
be exact. After docking, we had to wait
in a fairly long line to get a day visa but after that we were off on our
way! While in Macau we roamed the city, saw
a panda bear reserve, and gambled a bit at the casinos. Early evening we made our way back to the ferry
terminal to catch a catamaran back to Hong Kong and enjoy on last night of “cheap”
dining and to see the skyline light show which made for some of our favorite
pictures from Hong Kong.
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| Mark outside the panda reserve |
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| Adorable pandas - I want one! |
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| Asian air-fresheners |
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| City art |
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| Casino where we gambling - don't worry, we had a strict $20 limit! |
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| Waiting for the ferry back to Kowloon after a long day at Macau |
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| Skyline light show = pretty impressive! |
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| View 2 of the Skyline light show |
Flying out earlier afternoon on Sunday only left us a few
hours to sight-see before we needed to be at the airport but we made the most of
them. If I had to sum up Hong Kong in a
few words, they would be: lots of walking, lots of boating, and lots of
buildings!
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