♥The Cantonese Land II (Thursday, December 10, 2009 / 10:48 am)
Day 1There wasn’t much exciting to blog about as I have a late afternoon flight and arrived at my hotel, Nathan Hotel at only 9.30pm.
Because the airfare for late afternoon flight is 100 bucks cheaper than the morning flight.
So Ivan and mei mei accompanied us to the airport in the afternoon, lunched at T3, Kopitiam before our plane took off at 3.45pm.
We took Jetstar. Frankly speaking, this wasn’t my first time taking Jetstar but I still feel that its taking off and landing are not as good as those commercial ones. And I dunno if it's Jetstar or the HK Airport crew or wad, see what I saw when I opened my luggage and saw my blusher disintegrate into bits and pieces!
We reached at Hong Kong airport at 7.40pm, because Jetstar is a budget airline, we need to descend from the plane ourselves in the open space and there was this bus that we need to board to reach the arrival halls.
The wind was blowing strongly because it was in the night-time but we were well prepared with jackets!
There were some health check forms we needed to fill up beside the usual arrival cards.
Hong Kong is pretty conscious about the health check thing which is good, I guess. There were sanitizers installed everywhere. You can see them in lifts, eatery places, shopping centres etc.
I didn’t take many pictures because my hands were occupied with luggages and maps.
Finally, my mum and I reached the bus terminus for airport shuttle bus. Bought our round trip tickets and surprisingly cost HKD 11 lesser than what I researched online as round trip has discounts.
The ticket costs HKD55 for round trip (per person)
Here’s the airport bus we boarded.
Airport bus A21 arrives at Nathan Hotel (at the 10th stop). After we alighted from the bus, we walked in the wrong direction!!! Hence, we went one big round before we reached at our hotel. >.<
Basically I have no qualms about the hotel. Its rooms were bigger than what I expected and the staffs were pretty well-mannered. Their service was good and some of them spoke good English too. (the ones I encountered on 2nd and 4th nights)
The staff who handled my check-in almost shocked me though. He told me in English that the deposit for hotel was HKD 3000 (approximately $500 plus). That was almost the cost of my 4 nights stay there lor. But because I had emailed the hotel earlier on about the deposit and it was actually HKD 300.
So I guess he mistook English’s 3000 as 300. Left with no choice, I spoke to him in Cantonese to confirm what he was saying. But I have to emphasize that despite the discrepancy, he offered excellent service in explaining the details etc.
Everything went smoothly after that…with the porter bringing up our luggages and showing us how to operate some functions in the room.
Here’s how the room looks like…
And we had an early night.
Day 2
(Streets were empty and quiet on a Sunday morning-view from my hotel!)
Woke up and brought my mum to take MTR subway to Mongkok for breakfast. Read online that there is this Congee eatery which many found it yummy.
-at the MTR, heading to Mongkok
Stepped into the eatery feeling abit lost at what to do.
Mummy and I each ordered a bowl of congee and a plate of chee cheong fun with char siew to share.
The minute I took out the camera to snap photos of the food, everyone dining around me began staring at me. I don’t know if I should classify them as rude or wad coz basically they observed me throughout my whole meal as if I am an alien. And they really practically shifted their whole body to look at my mum and I at how we eat etc!!!!! >.< *faint
After breakfast, we shopped around the area. Many shops were not open yet so we roamed around. Aforementioned, shopping is great in Hong Kong. They were as expensive as I thought. I went Sasa for cheap Beauty Diary masks (yes…so much cheaper in Singapore), Ladies market to get a sling bag for Papa and I found the best looking hand carry bag there.
Yes, it was the Winnie the Pooh luggage.
Lunched at Café de Coral, nothing great coz it's char siew rice and we headed back to hotel to put back all my shopping stuff.
Some photos we took...
-policemen on the streets...
-ladies market
Late in the afternoon, mummy and I went out again. Bought Disneyland tickets at the hotel’s tour desk and went for some sightseeing at Tsim Sha Tsui. MTR rides only cost HDK4 (approx. $0.70) per single journey. (Cheaper than in Singapore, I guess)
We started off with the famous The Peninsula Hotel. It’s as famous as the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and they say it’s gorgeous at night. I didn’t go back in the night anyway.
Next we went to 1881 Heritage. It was the former Marine Police HQ. The structure of the building is beautiful. When I first stepped, it was like a big garden (minus the super crazy human flow there) and it has this European-Victorian feel there. They had some Victorian architecture that we can cam-whore with but because it was a Sunday, it was sooo packed with people everywhere.
In the end, mummy and I gave up and decided just to take a few pictures of it.
People go there for wedding and graduation pictures. And tt's like the only place I see some greenery.
We crossed the road and headed to the clock tower near the Victoria Harbour. This clock tower was previously for the old Kowloon Station which relocated.
And we came across, Mister Softee, one of the highly raved ice creams on blogs. This was their traditional way of getting ice cream back in the old days. I bought one to see how it tastes like. Basically, it’s just vanilla ice cream with a delicious cone biscuit. It definitely tastes better than the Mcdonald cone ice cream we have.
We carried on with our walk and photo-taking. The harbour view that day was hazy and foggy.
Mummy said it looked like sydney opera house...*faint
Then, we reached the Avenue of Stars. Took many pictures there. Mummy could almost recognise every single celebrity’s name imprinted on the ground.
We took with Michelle Yeoh, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung's palm prints...
Some other prominent people....
Sylvia Chang, Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang, Maggie Cheung and Jet Li (din pose JL's one here...)
It was actually a long walk. We were so exhausted. Shopped at the nearby SOGO and headed to New World Centre for dinner.
We dined at Heng Xiang Restaurant.
Total expenses for the meal: HKD 207 (approx. $37) for a 6 dish meal for 2 persons. We could not finish them all.
At around 7.45pm, we headed back to the Victoria Bay to watch the Symphony of Lights. Actually, I don’t know if it was due to the place we were, there was not much thing to see for the Symphony of Lights.
Nevertheless, I took some pictures of it.
It's the same place as the ones with haze and fog in the evening.
We headed back after the show. Intended to have an early night as well because the next day we were going to Disneyland.
Anyway, the Hong Kong channels in the hotel were too interesting to ignore. Probably because we are Hong Kong drama lovers, and they were showing the last episode of the highly raved show- Gong Xin Ji.
I need to mention that they have this Taiwan tv channel-V channel which shows lots of MVs in the morning. For the whole trip, every morning, mummy will switch to this channel to listen to the songs and watch the MVs. And you know what, one of the mornings; they were playing Korean and Japanese Mvs alternatively. One moment, I will be watching Super Junior’s It’s You, next moment Ayumi’s song and den Shinee’s Ring Ding Dong. :) :)
Well...disneyland for the next day...
