Wow. Beautiful. Amazing. Crazy. These were few of the many words we used to describe the city of Hong Kong. The skyline was one of a kind. The shopping…OMG, ALL THE SHOPPING!!! It was incredible. The amount of high-end brand retail spaces, the shopping centers, and the street markets were outrageous! The international cuisine that was offered in this city would be comparable to a big metropolis like Sydney and New York City. The HK night life is rockin’ - heaps of bars, clubs, and exclusive clubs in sky rises, underground and hidden. The party never ends in this city. The light show every night at 8pm is spectacular.
On our first day in Hong Kong (HK), the first thing we did was eat dim sum (Chinese tapas basically)! We were expecting carts to be pushed around from all sorts of directions but saw none in sight! Unfortunately, we learned that HK no longer does the traditional dim sum push-cart (where you point at what you’d like to eat). That evening, we spent a few hours walking through the famous night market, the Temple Street Night Market, in Kowloon. The market stretched for miles and miles it seemed! It sold mostly clothes, souvenirs, jewelry, and knock-off items such as purses, luggage, and watches. For dinner, we enjoyed Thai food at Sawaisdee Thai. Bob’s choice of Thai fried rice in a grilled pineapple and Carol’s eggplant with minced meat were our favorites!
The 2nd day we participated in a half-day tour of HK City. First stop of the tour was Victoria Peak. We took a tram up a steep hill up to one of HK’s tallest mountains on the island, where we enjoyed panoramic views of the city. Following Victoria Peak was a stop at Stanley Market. Located on the backside of HK Island, Stanley Market is a much smaller and quaint market in comparison to Temple Street. It sold mostly antiques, jewelry, silk fabric, cashmere and calligraphy artwork. On our drive to Stanley Market, we got to see where Jackie Chan lived! Last tour activity was a ride through Aberdeen Harbor on a junk boat. Many families still live on junk boats, some on fishing and house boats, and majority of Government housing (300 s.q.f. ‘family’ apartments- tiny!) are located in Aberdeen. We drove past the famous JUMBO floating seafood restaurant as well. After the tour, we had a late lunch at Serenade Restaurant which had a great view of HK Island’s magnificent skyline. Next was a walk along the water and some window shopping. We enjoyed Happy Hour in our room - some bubbly and red vino - then enjoyed a nice dip in the hot tub and swimming pool on the 9th floor, which had a great view of the city. We had a late night dinner in the Japanese restaurant upstairs: California, spider, spicy tuna and salmon rolls, and katsu don. We walked out of the restaurant very happy customers.
The 3rd day was a day tour in mainland China. Unfortunately for us, it rained pretty much all morning which caused a lot of traffic and flooding in Guangzhou. We only were able to see a wet market and a kindergarten. The kindergarten visit was interesting. It was a nice school and only the richest families in the city could afford to send their kids to this institution. They had us walk by classrooms and take pictures of these well-behaved kids who ‘didn’t notice’ we were watching them through the windows. It was like looking at well-behaved monkeys in a cage which made us slightly uncomfortable. It all just seemed like a façade…We got back into HK late, but that didn’t stop us from going out with our friend, Landy Joe, to enjoy HK nightlife! We had a few drinks at Lux in Central, an international district. Following Lux was Pi, a super exclusive club/lounge up on the 28th floor in one of the sky rises in Central. We were incredibly underdressed as most of the young crowd were wearing dolled up in prom-like dresses and suits.
On our 4th day, Landy showed us many of the local spots in town. He took us up to the Ladies’ Market, similar to Temple St. but much longer, where Liya and Carol enjoyed all the cute girley clothing, jewelry, scarves, shoes, and purses. Following Ladies’ Market was the Ladies’ Mall, 4 stories of retail spaces, all for us ladies! It was fabulous! Next was the footwear street, then the fish market street (where numerous of exotic fishes and turtles were sold in plastic bags), and finally another local street market to end our shopping adventure.
5th day was a day tour on Macau Island. That morning, we woke up to rain and it was still raining when we went to bed. A record was set in HK Island - it poured for 24 hours and 12” of rain was the result! On Macau, we visited the museum, an old Buddhist temple, a food shop where we bought the BEST egg tarts from, the Babylon Casino where we enjoyed a Chinese buffet and some small wins against the casino, and Macau Tower where we witnessed Mother Nature’s power (lightning struck the needle on top of the 99th floor, scared us silly for a few seconds!)
On our 6th day, we took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor to HK Island. We walked through HK’s largest shopping center, IFC, then took the mid-level escalators up to Soho (really cool). We browsed through a few antique shops on Hollywood Street then had a glass of vino at Enoteca in quaint Soho. For dinner, we took a boat to Lamma Island to eat at the famous Rainbow Seafood Restaurant. We ordered steamed scallops with garlic sauce, lobster in butter and garlic sauce, salt & peppered squid, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce and seafood fried rice. The scallops were our favorite! Probably the best scallops we have ever tried. On our last day in the city, we went shopping-crazy! And to end our great day in this great city, we had a fabulous dinner in an Italian restaurant.
We said our goodbyes the next afternoon at the HK International Airport :( Bob and Carol flew back to Boise and we flew to Shanghai, Mainland China.
