At the time we went, 10HK$ = £0.8 = US$1.4
Thursday 2.Oct
After a very long day at work, the time to go to the airport has finally arrived …
ready for our very long check-in with BA at T5? Not a chance – rather impressively – no problems encountered. Mind you we had checked in online. We changed some money and strolled around the shops and ended up at Wagamama, which apparently it was obligatory we tried… ;o) Do I want a fork? No, I might as well start making a fool of myself already.
Have to admit to being pleased with BA, in-flight entertainment was really good and kept us quite busy, a prompt and somewhat lavish supply of drinks were provided (I think it was the stewardess’s first day), and food was also very much appreciated :o)
Friday 3.Oct. | Hong Kong (Salisbury YMCA)
11 hours on we landed at HKK in some rather stormy weather. We whizzed through customs, picked up our bags and headed for the airport express train terminal. Everything is very well signposted so we had no problems. Took the train to Kowloon station (£15ea?), from which we decided to walk to our hotel (we took backpacks). It transpires that maps can be deceiving when they don’t have an accurate scale! Despite the constant warnings in my ear about those Typhoon Warning signs dotted around public places, and the ominously large drops of rain starting to fall (is it ‘falling’ or ‘flying’ at a 45° angle?), we did indeed make it to the hotel before the storm arrived. After the flight and the walk, the hotel probably looked better than it was, but it was fine, and the location is perfect.
After a quick shower we went out in search of food, and after only a block or so a lady with a menu on the street enticed us down an alleyway and up an elevator into the Hong Kong Hot Pot restaurant. Being the only non-Asians we got some anticipatory glances as we picked up our chopsticks, but all went to plan even if a slippery piece of sweet (or was it sour?) chicken did come close to causing an international incident. True to form with less touristy places, the food was very nice and the total bill cheap (£5-£7.50ea). Afterwards we went to watch the ‘symphony of lights’ – unfortunately Hong Kong was covered with some thick cloud layers or mist and very windy so the show wasn’t as good as expected but still worth coming out for… after which we both slept like a log!
Saturday 4.Oct | Hong Kong (Peak)
We made the most of our body clocks waking us up early no matter how tired we were, and caught an early Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island (2 mins from hotel), destination The Peak. Took a ten-minute open-top bus [?¢ ea, no change given] from the ferry port through what looked like the business centre of HK, and got to the Peak Tram entrance at about 9am. No queue, $48ea tram + viewpoint. The tram is seriously steep, and old – the history of HK’s colonial past held much more interest for me than its glistzy neon contemporary.
To experience the views from The Peak are obviously mandatory if HK is not just a shopping trip, and the weather played its part for us. The area around the Peak and HK is surprisingly tropical, and it would be hard not to envy those with the villas overlooking the curving coastline and islands to the south. There were even a few ‘temples’ of sorts we hit before taking the tram back down. Now, take this as gospel (or just some friendly advice). Do not arrive at the bottom of the Peak Tram after 10:00 and expect to stroll on. At an estimate the tram takes about 100 people, must have taken 5 minutes, and there must have been close to a thousand people queuing. Inside the foyer was packed, and the queue stretched outside and back up the road a good 60-70m. Anyway, after a healthy dose of schadenfreude, we got a bite to eat and headed over on the metro (which is cheap and easy to use, machines in English of course) to Wong Gi Temple [?], which was fine enough to spend an hour.
Despite barely a day in HK, we didn’t feel like we were missing as we headed back to the airport express train in the afternoon (this time we found the metro from outside the hotel to a stop within a few 100m of the airport express… typical) for our flight to Guilin. Dragon Air had self check-in booths which we took advantage of; very easy. Light dinner consisted of noodles and chocolate for the nervous flyer… Guilinbeing only 1¼ hr away over land, it was presumably easy for the pilots to find a bumpy route all the way, with the stewardesses aborting serving refreshments on several occasions. On landing the announcement that we need to leave any newspapers behind as we enter the Peoples Republic of China reminded us that we are indeed about to finally see the country of so many controversies and contrasts, although customs and immigration seemed entirely normal without so much as a glance through our anti-revolutionary Western bags, thus our attempt to smuggle a Lonely Planet in by separating it into 59 parts was unnecessary, as was me leaving my ½ read newspaper on the plane, damn it. We were picked up by a ‘representative’ from Li River Retreat. Not sure which way she took but this was definitely not (one hopes) the official way out of the international (HK & Macau J) airport – the disrepair of the road compared to the worst roads we’ve experienced. Despite this we slept in the car, arrived at what we presumed was LRR and went straight to bed!
Eyes On The Cloud 