Jan 4-5 – Hong Kong & Kowloon

I’m on the flight to Bankok right now feeling much better after inhaling my inflight meal. This morning was a mad rush to get onto the plane only to have to wait an additional hour for other passengers to board from another flight.

Yesterday we took the airport express from the airport to downtown HK. It cost 100 HK (approx 12 CND) and the trip was about 20mins long. It was 15 degrees with overcast skies (or was that the smog??). The subway system is called the MTR and it costs anywhere from 1-3 CND to get from one place to another. It’s like a whole other city underneath the city of HK. For those of you who have seen resident evil, the underground city reminds me of the “hive” in that movie. It goes 3 levels down!

The people dressed are in fall/winter clothing (did I mention it was 15 degrees!) and boots and the color black and grey seem very popular with everybody. Many of the stores were high end like we would find in downtown Vancouver (Gucci, Fendi etc). We walked around the downtown business district, the dried food district, and all other downtown areas. Almost everybody spoke clear english and all the signs were in English so it was easy to get around. Most of the chinese spoken seems to be Cantonese. Michael didn't even speak a word of mandarin (the bugger!) and I said "hao?" to someone when asking if the product was good. Man. All that practicing of basic phrases and I didn't even use them! lol. For some reason I forgot to pull out my camera and take pictures. You will definitely notice a lack in photos in these few days.

We walked up and down lot of little hills and there was an interesting mix between cobblestone streets and well marked sidewalks. I enjoyed the “all ways” cross walks where we could all cross in any direction. I kept reminding myself to look the other way to before crossing because people drive on the other side of the road. Michael liked to remind me frequently how in asia, the vehicles (especially Taxi’s) have the right of way. We had lunch at this diner that reminded me of Hons. Everywhere downtown had food places like that and people were even lined up outside to be seated. We had the best Hainamese chicken meal that I’ve ever eaten. Super tasty, had all the fixin’s and it was pretty cheap. We paid about 49 HK (8 CND) for our 2 meals.

After a couple of hours in HK, we took the MTR to Kowloon across the water. Kowloon is like the "old" Hong Kong. The buildings are older. There are air conditioners hanging out of every window and there are clothes hung outside as well. There were more food and restaurant type stores and the stores were more affordable. There we walked around the ladies market, the sports market and headed down to the night market. We walked the whole way and needless to say we had a film of dirt and exhaust to wash off at the end of the night. I finally found bubble tea in Kowloon! I had a mango and red bean combo. I also snacked on bubble waffles and octpus balls from street vendors. We sat for a while in another café/ cafeteria style restauraunt. I was traumatized to have to use their washrooms. They had squat toilets! I rolled up my pants, laid down a whole bunch of toilet paper (available outside of the toilet stalls) and did my best. Michael told me that the mens room had open squat holes – no stalls! Yikes!

The temple street night market was a bit disappointing. I think we’ve been spoiled by the variety we have in Vancouver (and what we’ve seen in our other travels). It went on and on for 12 blocks, but it was the same stuff over and over. All of the knock off purses in the world, a bunch of watches and T-shirts and other misc. items. We thought it was funny that there were a whole bunch of stands that sold sex toys! We only bought 2 shoes, earphones, some novelty toys (jelly balls that splat flat and then reshape into circles), my token starbucks HK mug, a magnet and a shirt. Very very lame purchases for a city known for good shopping…I’ll have to make up for it when I go to Taiwan.

We had dinner at another semi-street vendor. The district is known for having fresh seafood that you can choose how to prepare. That was too sketchy as I saw many unsanitary methods of food prep and dish cleaning/ storage. We ate clams, oyster cakes, thau mieu and eggplant hotpot. My stomach was so full by the end of the day! Both of us probably gained 10 lbs. We barely drank any water. I think it was a mix between already retaining it from the super salty foods and being afraid of getting sick from the restaurant water. We were exhausted by the time we got to our hotel. We had planned to wash up and go out to hang in the airport to use the internet but that didn’t happen. We both fell asleep after soaking our sore muscles and dreamed about our our next adventure tomorrow!