The flight and first day in Hong Kong

Wow so we've had a pretty hectic last couple days with the traveling and touring. Getting accustomed to the time zone difference has also been fun. Sights are rather bland at 5 am in the morning when there isn't anybody there and the lights are still out...but I digress...back to the HK blog...

So we had a rather uneventful flight from JFK to HK. Everything went smoothly as planned unlike my last trip to Bangkok. On that trip I decided to wait until I got to JFK which is about a 45 min taxi ride from my apartment to remember that my passport was at home in my desk. We had about 1.5 hours until boarding time and I needed to get back into the city and get my passport. I've never been more scared for my life as the cabbie drove on the medians and ran red lights. I made it back a little past the take off time and had to sprint through the airport. Luckily they held the plane and I made it to Thailand in one piece.

There were not any catastrophes of that magnitude on this flight so after 5 movies (Rambo and Bucket list were rather entertaining) and some crappy airline food, my brother and I landed in HK; greeted by tons of banners and reminders that the Olympics is being held in China, with the equestrian heats being held in HK.

We bought tickets for the high speed train from the airport into HK which only took about 30 minutes. We were staying on the HK side of the island and took the subway from the Central stop to the Fortress Hills stop. The HK subway system is very easy to navigate as the signs and maps are clearly marked in Chinese and English. We also noticed a decent amount of foreigners around and almost everyone that we talked to when asking for directions or ordering food could speak or at least understand English. We arrived at our lodging around 8 PM local time, checked in, grabbed food, and walked around.

I had curry and rice and my brother had some roast pork on rice. After having our dinner we walked around and stopped a McDonald’s near the local grocery store to explore the local offerings. It’s always interesting to see how an international entity whether it is a company, restaurant, theme, marketing program, etc., is altered to fit the local culture and tastes. Any easy indicator to see how local customs are different is to frequent fast food restaurants, as they are easily accessible and have a standardized American menu with often a couple tweaks for the indigenous people. So even though we had just eaten, my brother requests a short pit stop to get a snack. On this trip, we noticed that McDonald’s had chicken wings in addition to the usual chicken McNuggets. The wings were excellent and even though we were there 5 minutes before they closed the wings came out in under 1 minute and were piping hot. The breading was light and crisp without being overly greasy and the wing was meaty, juicy, flavorful and well seasoned. It came with a Thai sweat and spicy sauce which was a bit sweat and not spicy for my liking. All in all, this was an excellent item on the menu and I wondered why McDonald’s doesn’t have this item in the US menu. I’m debating modifying the title of my blog from “…in search of the perfect dumpling” to the “…in search of the weirdest fast food” as we came across some other interesting items in our journeys and I’m sure that more will sprout up…but more on that later…

Pictures from HK Day 1 -

Hong Kong - Day 1