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| Hong Kong Round 2 - Day 8 |
Showing posts with label Hong Kong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hong Kong. Show all posts
Friday, June 20, 2008
HK Round 2 - Day 5
Today I met with my friend, Clarence, for lunch and he took me to a local spot to get some cheap good eats. After lunch we went to a famous local bakery where I had the most buttery dan tats (egg custards).
After walking around the IFC mall for a bit, I decided to take a day trip to Macau, a UNESCO site. It's about a 1 hour ferry ride to Macau and there are sizable remnants of the Portuguese influence. The captions on museum plaques are in Chinese, Portuguese, and English. I could get around HK rather easily because most of the people spoke a little English and when I went to some of the remote areas I could navigate in Mandarin. However, that was not the case in Macau as everyone spoke Cantonese and no English or Mandarin. My mandarin wasn't as helpful here as it was in HK.
Macau is the most densely populated region in the world and it was apparent in the hoards of people everywhere that I went. I visited two sections – the first being the historical area of Macau and the second being the casino area. The historical areas had a distinct European architecture and feel with the Portuguese style buildings and street names. I walked around the center for a couple hours and made my way up a steep hill to the top where there was a fort and a large museum in the fort. On the way up the huge hill it was extremely muggy and it felt like I was walking through a rain cloud so it wasn’t surprising that on the way out I got caught in a monsoon and stood under a shop awning for about an hour while I waited for the rains to dissipate. Then I walked around the casino area for a bit before heading home. The casinos in Macau were huge with an emphasis on hard core gambling. Other than gambling, there was little else to do for entertainment unlike Vegas where there are mini golf course, theme parks, local tours, street foods, clubs, gaudy reconstruction of other cities like Paris or New York, etc.
After walking around the IFC mall for a bit, I decided to take a day trip to Macau, a UNESCO site. It's about a 1 hour ferry ride to Macau and there are sizable remnants of the Portuguese influence. The captions on museum plaques are in Chinese, Portuguese, and English. I could get around HK rather easily because most of the people spoke a little English and when I went to some of the remote areas I could navigate in Mandarin. However, that was not the case in Macau as everyone spoke Cantonese and no English or Mandarin. My mandarin wasn't as helpful here as it was in HK.
Macau is the most densely populated region in the world and it was apparent in the hoards of people everywhere that I went. I visited two sections – the first being the historical area of Macau and the second being the casino area. The historical areas had a distinct European architecture and feel with the Portuguese style buildings and street names. I walked around the center for a couple hours and made my way up a steep hill to the top where there was a fort and a large museum in the fort. On the way up the huge hill it was extremely muggy and it felt like I was walking through a rain cloud so it wasn’t surprising that on the way out I got caught in a monsoon and stood under a shop awning for about an hour while I waited for the rains to dissipate. Then I walked around the casino area for a bit before heading home. The casinos in Macau were huge with an emphasis on hard core gambling. Other than gambling, there was little else to do for entertainment unlike Vegas where there are mini golf course, theme parks, local tours, street foods, clubs, gaudy reconstruction of other cities like Paris or New York, etc.
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| Hong Kong Round 2 - Day 5 |
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Hong Kong - Second Day
So for our second day in Hong Kong we were a little jet lagged, woke up early, and walked around in the “Central” area where there are a number of sights to see. We went to the high end IFC mall in the financial district right by the ferry and the wharf. There are a lot of banks and expats in that area. We walked around an open market, through the Soho district (an upscale area of restaurants and shops), to the Man Mo Temple (which is one of the first traditional style temples built during the colonial era), and through the Dr. Sun Yet Sun Museum. Then we rode up the mid level escalator which is the longest escalator in the world up to the top. There are a lot of expensive old money houses in the mid level section and a lot of expats live here. At the top we walked about half a mile down to a botanical garden where we saw some interesting primates. Then we met up with my cousin and went to the roof top of the IFC mall where there is spectacular view of the Kowloon side. We rode a ferry across to the Kowloon side and then had dinner with my uncle and cousins. We finished off the night with some traditional Chinese deserts of almond jelly and milk pudding.
Pictures of HK - Day 2
Pictures of HK - Day 2
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| Hong Kong - Day 2 |
Friday, May 16, 2008
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 -
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 -
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| Hong Kong - Day 1 |
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