October 9, 2018
Good morning Hong Kong! Looks like we might have a nice day out there. Just opened the curtains to peek out at our view from 17th floor of our hotel in the heart of old HK and were met with a sight we’ve never seen before.....nothing but towering buildings in every direction as far as we can see. Even between the buildings there are more buildings in the distance! I wonder what this day will bring? Better get up and moving so we can see what is in store for us.
Well.....quite a few hours have passed since writing that first paragraph this morning and holy smokes! It’s been a full day!
We started out by Lynda and Gail volunteering to go find a coffee to bring back to the room while Darlene and I took advantage of the shower which I described this morning as “better than sliced bread!” Gail and Lynda took forever to return though and when they did they were full of stories and laughter. It seems that there was a market right outside our hotel door and as soon as they exited the lobby they were in the middle of fresh fish and hanging meat! Gail’s sensibilities were taxed and so Lynda had to explain right there in the market that “no Gail....you can’t walk down the street plugging your nose and saying ewwwww!” Trooper that she is Gail rose to the occasion and by the time they were hiking back to the hotel through the market she was chatting up the vendors like a local. However, once back in the hotel elevator there was a young man who entered the elevator with them. He had no idea what he’d gotten himself into! He was carrying a bag of takeout noodles and Gail was hungry so she was all over him in the elevator wanting to know where he’d gotten them. Problem is that he speaks no English and she just kept getting louder wanting him to understand. By the time they got to his floor he veritably ran from the elevator to escape the inquisition! LOL! In the end, we enjoyed 7-11 style breakfast of coffee and really awful muffins. Oh ya....Gail tried to teach the 7-11 clerk how to say “muffins” during their few minutes there. He too had no idea what had hit him!
But enough about their little excursion (other than to say they also got caught in the rain). Once we were all showered and 7-11 breakfasted the group of us were off and exploring the streets around our hotel here in the North Point of old Hong Kong. Markets were still everywhere but many of them had changed their focus since the girls were out earlier this morning. We still managed to find more than enough fresh fish stalls for Gail to begin to wrinkle her nose once again.
Eventually we located a place for lunch. The noodles on the menu and the fact that it was full of locals drew us in. In the end it was pretty good but I’m sure the staff and other customers there will be talking for months to come about the four grandmas who came in that day and actually wrestled with their noodles! In fact, I posted a video on FB where you can see Gail and Darlene having a race to fill their little bowl from the big one. We decided Darlene was the winner as Gail resorted to using her hands which was deemed as an unfair disadvantage! LOL!
After lunch we found our way onto a westbound tram where we were able to ride on the open top deck to get great views of the city. It was fantastic until we got off and one of our group realized they’d left their back pack on top of that tram! OH NO! This was not good but we talked to a local and discovered that the trams on that track all go through a station called Happy Valley and so we hailed a cab and for a mere $25 HKD (about $5 CAD) we attempted to chased the tram down at Happy Valley. Unfortunately by the time we arrived there the tram was already gone and no one had turned in a backpack. Mr Chui (the attendant at Happy Valley) was fantastic and he actually gave up his lunch hour to help us track down the errant back pack. In the end....the day was saved and the back pack found it’s way to us at Happy Valley. So yes....this is great news however the rest of the story is “interesting” to say the least. The rest of my group waited outside the tram masters shack but I had to go in as I’d filed the report. Once I was in there Mr Chui didn’t want me to leave so I had to sit in there with every driver that stopped at Happy Valley! Not that they came into the shack to sit....but rather they came in there to use the washroom and to smoke. AND not a single one of them closed the bathroom door! Jeez! And ALL of them smoked! It was a smoking hot box! I literally smoked at least a pack of cigarettes in the 40 minutes I had to sit in that little room! Oh ya, and there was another guy in that little room. I call him sleeping dude. He was sitting in the corner leaned up against the side of the fridge and the whole time I was in there he never moved a muscle of blinked open an eye. He just slept until it was time for Mr Chui to go for lunch. When he discovered Mr Chui had decided to skip his lunch and continue to help us find the missing bag....Sleeping Dude just “hmphed” and left the building. It was the weirdest thing! Well, actually maybe the open door washroom was the weirdest thing....well actually it was all pretty weird. And then there was the shaved head guy who came in to relieve Mr Chui for his lunch (even though he never left). Shaved head guy got that name as one side of his head was shaved and the other side of it had longish hair.....that too was weird. Yep....other than the bag being recovered....it was an interesting adventure! One other positive that came out of all of this is that Lynda discovered a great place for coffee and a treat called Feather and Bone so once the lost bag was back in hand and I was free to leave the “hot box” we all enjoyed a wonderful stop at that lovely little place.
From Feather and Bone we were off and exploring again. The guys working the kitchen at F & B had given us great directions to use the trams to get to Central Station and the Star Ferry so we could cross over to Kowloon side. The trams here are great! They are electric, there are tons of them, and they cost just $2.60 for me and $1.20 for the rest of the group (sr rate). I never have the right change though so just throw in $3 which is crazy cheap! (About .60 cents CAD for me and about .25 for the others)
We hopped off at the Heng Sang Bank Headquarters in the hub of the financial district and found ourselves surrounded by designer shops! You could literally smell the money! From the HS Bank HQ it was along a series of pedestrian overpasses that eventually led us to the plaza that is home to the main ferry ports. There are soooo many people here and ALL of them walk! I’ve never seen so many people walking so far and today we were four more of them. We must have walked 20 km and I’m seriously not kidding folks....we walked forever!
I wasn’t sure I was going to make it but in the end we did and sitting down on the Star Ferry was a TREAT! It was a seat....even if it was just a seat for a few minutes as our ferry crossed the harbour. But I should backtrack a little....getting our tickets for the ferry was fun. There is a kiosk where you buy your tickets. $2.70 for all adults. Seniors are listed as free if you have ID to prove age but when Lynda tried to use her BC drivers licence....they just said no, you have to have HK ID which she doesn’t but at least she’d given it a try. Darlene had decided she was going to pay as she had no ID but when she put her $10 bill into the machine...nothing happened. We tried to cancel the transaction but it wouldn’t let us and still her $10 was missing in the machine. There was a sign that said press the button if you need help so I did and OMG! The whole place erupted with sirens and buzzers. I guess the attendants might be a little deaf and need the extra volume to help them hear the call for help. The attendant (a young woman) came running and in no time she was able to retrieve Darlenes’ $10 as she’d stuck it in the wrong slot! OMG! We are quite a bunch!
The ride across the harbour was uneventful but beautiful. We’ve had great weather all day and even though there is a sort of low hanging smog cloud...the skyline is stunning both day and night. On the Kowloon side all four of us kind of hit a wall. Our long journey from yesterday seemed to be catching up and I knew my knees were about done for the day so we found a McDonalds (yes....a McDonalds in Hong Kong!) and had a coffee. The McDonalds here has designer coffees. It is a separate counter in the McDonalds and they just serve specialty coffees made just like any other coffee house. These coffees are $30 HKD each! (Not quite as bad as it sounds as that works out to about $6 CAD)
After more wandering the streets we located a plaza called 1888 and it was GORGEOUS! Again, we were among all the major designer shops and again you could smell the money there was sooo much of it! That plaza was something I’ll never forget though - it was beautiful! Escalators took us up four exterior floors in total and everything was so manicured and clean it seemed like we were inside a very fancy building. But we weren’t...it was all outdoors except for the shops...they were indoors of course. This plaza is also where the typhoon indicator sits. During the typhoon of a few weeks ago that indicator registered 10 (highest on the scale) for more than 12 hours. Previously the longest it had ever registered 10 was for 2 hours! Speaking of the typhoon...we’ve seen no signs of it right in the heart of the city except we suspect some of the high rise renovations are due to typhoon damage. On the way in from the airport last night though we did see a lot of damage still obvious. It was all in the form of downed trees that have not yet been completely cleaned up and removed. But none of it seems to affect the functioning of the city....there is no stopping this city that never sleeps!
We’d purchased tickets on the Star Cruise for the night light show so at 7:45 we were back at the pier and lined up to board the ferry that would float our in the middle of the harbour for about 1/2 hour to give us a show of the skyline (both sides of the harbour) at night as well as the 8:00 light show that happens at that time every night for 10 minutes. The weather was perfect and the view was amazing and as luck would have it we were able to get off the boat on the Hong Kong side rather than have to return to TST on the Kowloon side only to have to walk back to another pier to catch the ferry back again. As I already mentioned....we were all pretty much done in so missing out on another little ferry ride seemed like a blessing! We’d picked up some munchies to have on the harbour cruise and so we were full and happy and ready for the long journey home.
We had to retrace our steps to reverse our tram drive from West to East. We knew that Happy Valley was a main station and that if we got that far we could get a cab from there to take us the rest of the way to our hotel. In the end it all worked out. We had to walk another 5 or so KM to get to the tram station but we made it to the right one. Have I mentioned how helpful people have been today?! Well, if I haven’t....I will now. OMG! From Mr Chui to the strangers we asked for directions all along the way we’ve found nothing but helpful and friendly faces here in Hong Kong. And to think that the back pack was returned with everything in tact....truly amazing!
So here we are back in the hotel. Lynda is sound asleep and Gail and Darlene are tucked into their beds so it is just me that is left and I’m definitely done for this day. So until next time....night night from Hong Kong.
Darlorlynga
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