Bingeing in Hong Kong

The overnight train T97 from Beijing to Kowloon was almost filled to the brim with most heading to the southern part of the country in particularly, Guangzhou province. I had bought the cheapest bed on the sleeper train - top bed in a 6 bed compartment. The 24 hour journey turned out to be one of the more boring train rides of my trip so far as I barely chatted with the locals in the bunk as I ended up staying along the corridor most of the time since it was just too crowded to have 6 people squeezed in a tiny compartment. As the train steamed towards the south, the main highlight has to be the moment when the massive Yangtze River came into view and the train rolling over the fast flowing water carrying millions of tons of silt from inner China.

My dive buddy was waiting for me at Wanchai MTR station (Hong Kong's Metro) before we headed to her flat where I will be bunking in for the next 2 nights. People along the streets were mostly wearing face masks as the first H1N1 case was found in a hotel just few blocks down the road. The 300+ customers were still in quarantined which meant plenty of reporters lining up the streets with cameras prying into those trapped within.

Hong Kong is very similar to Singapore, slightly more crowded in terms of population, flats are a tad on the smaller scale too due to the rocket high property prices. Everybody are used to literally rubbing shoulders with each other, either waiting to cross the street junction, taking a lift to your office or squeezing into the public buses and metro. The traditional trolley buses still plowing many of the routes on the 2 main islands are a must for anyone visiting, very similar to London's now-extinct Routemaster buses but much narrower in size - probably due to the smaller built of Asians.



We met up with another friend for dinner headed out to the famous Lan Kwai Fong
bar area after. The area is another of those tourist checkbox to tick against, but it really lacks any serious character unless you want to see and to be seen. Caucasians hang around here alot especially with folklore saying that you can literally pick up a local everytime you head to the bar counter to buy a drink. We met more friends after a mini bar crawl and ended up in a very loud club which we stayed on till the wee hours of the morning.

After a night of unusual high alcohol mixing and intake, I woke up surprisingly unscathed, with my the loss of my voice the only minor annoyance. As the day turned out to be quite nice, we headed up to Victoria Peak for a panoramic view of the country, on top of a 7 storey new shopping complex built at the top of the hill. The tram up the incredibly steep slopes is another interesting sight, else you can either take a cheaper alternative in the bus or even take a 30min slow walk to the top. If you have more time, I will definitely recommend you to head over to the rural Cheung Chau to escape from the urban crowds.

In this country, you can find food in every corner of the street, literally. There are so many "Tea cafe" which sell anything from buns to wonton noodle soup to roast duck rice. Even the 24 hour convenience store (7-eleven) is packed with snacks that can pose a serious danger to people like me to stuff ourselves to death with food! Dim sum is the other must do in the city, especially those older restaurants that still have the steaming hot buns and dumplings coming around in push carts by elderly ladies shouting at the top of the lungs the food that they have. Shopping is also brought to another new level of meaning when you wonder over to Mong Kok in Kowloon where billboards hug every square inch of the space above your head, where thousands of stores lined up the streets, selling from the latest electronic gadgets to shoes wore by the top sports athletics. For ladies, a visit to the "Woman Street" will sound a temptation unlikely to be missed, where the latest hand bags, cosmetics, shoes and lingerie are sold at prices and varieties matched only by those in Bangkok. After dinner at another roadside store, we joined the hundreds by the harbour to watch the "not-so-spectacular" night view of the office blocks that lit up Hong Kong island. Been a weekend, most of the buildings were down to their minimal lights and thus lost a bit of its wow factor that you see in postcards. Instead of taking the metro back, we decided to take the very affordable ferry across the straits instead, becoming a part of what thousands of locals do daily to get on with their lives.