This blog post took a bit longer than I expected. My plan was for this to be published already last weekend but my brother’s birthday and the EU elections didn’t leave me much time for editing. Today will be all about Hong Kong and next blog post will be about our experience in Disneyland. At first I wanted to bundle it all together in one post but I must admit that our day in Disneyland deserves its own blog post.
We had six days to discover Hong Kong and it was honestly not enough. We did not even have full six days as we arrived at our Airbnb apartment in Mong Kok right at the Ladies Market in the evening and flew back to Xi’an in the early morning of the sixth day. As for flying I really have to mention that it was our first time flying with Cathay Dragon and Oh boy what a difference it is to our standard Finnair flights. To sum it up Finnair feels in comparison with Cathay more like being bundled up in your own carry on while being manhandled by farmers with pitchforks. Of course this is only when comparing it with Cathay Dragon as all our other flights were pretty much on par with Finnair so far but it was really nice to have such different flying experience for once.
Yes our Airbnb was in Mong Kok right next to the Ladies Market. It was rather an interesting sight stepping out of the bus and to be right in the middle of Nathan Road, everywhere advertisement and way too many people. Our accommodation was small but good enough for us and the most important thing was the location. From here we were able to get around with ease and could experience Mong Kok every day. For our first day we set out immediately to Central to take the Cable Car to Victoria Peak. At least that was the plan. While walking from Central uphill with Nathalie in a push car in that incredible warm and humid air we saw a sign near our destination telling anyone interested that the cable car is out of order for maintenance and that we should take the bus. Great, just great, everyone was exhausted from the march but complaining wouldn’t help so we set out for the bus station few hundred meters away.
The bus ride to the top was really fascinating and I tried to record as much as possible with my camcorder. However in doing so I could not take any pictures. More than just a few people got a bit scared when the bus was just on the edge of the road as most of the times there was no curb, just a steep drop few dozens of meters. Nathan was no help either for those poor souls when he explained excitedly in Mandarin “Ohh it is so high we are falling down now!”. At the top it was a bit cooler and pretty windy. For some reason most people wore winter jackets of all things while I was just happy to be able to cool down a bit after the oppressing humid warm air below. The view was really something else and it was really hard to find some good spots to take videos and pictures without having dozens of people in front of you taking selfies.
The next few days we continued our exploration of the city such as taking a ferry ride, travelling between Kennedey Town and Causeway Bay on a Ding Ding, walking along the Avenue of Stars and “hiking” around Lamma Island. The island was a really nice change to the lively city even more emphasized due to the near complete absence of tourists due to occasional rainstorms. We did not suffer the rain as nothing major came down on us until reaching the ferry port again where we met a group of people with their Shiba Inus. I had some interesting talk with them while the rest of the family slept due to the little hike up and down the hills on Lamma Island.
Now I come to the part which was not working out at all for us. Hong Kong is known for its cuisine, especially the seafood. However none of us is really fond of seafood so we tried to settle for all the other great restaurants. But here comes the problem: either each restaurant we wanted to go had a line of people already reaching the street (which is a no go for a family with two little kids near starvation according to them) or they had no space to take us all in (three adults and two children). The worst of it all was that we even got kind of kicked out of a couple of restaurants when Nathalie started to complain too loudly due to being hungry and slightly feverish. In the end the best food we had were some takeaway noodles from a Sichuan restaurant and pizza slices from Paisano’s. To be honest even the food we had a Disneyland was grand in comparison to most of the restaurants we could find seats in Hong Kong. It is not that we hated the food but we could not get into any restaurant we had planned to due to the above mentioned reasons. Enough of the food for now even though it was a downer for us. All in all Hong Kong was a great experience, especially for the kids. Even now I still can see little Nathan looking at Nathan Hotel in awe telling us that he didn’t know that he owns a hotel, kids can be really wonderful.
Next up will be all about Disneyland and how we got very lucky with the weather.
Have you visited Hong Kong and how did you like it?
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