Hong Kong

After Singapore our next destination was Hong Kong. We flew with Tiger Airways and I really like these cheap airlines in Asia. In Singapore they have an own ‘Budget Terminal’ which is perfect for these operators. It’s a simple and small terminal right next to the International Airport, but it has everything you need (without the luxury brand shops). There were some nice café’s and restaurants and everything from check-in to the actual boarding worked really smoothly.

But let’s talk a bit about Hong Kong. We had booked our hostel on Hong Kong Island, not too far away from the centrum and close to the metro station called Fortress Hill. Compared to other place where we’ve stayed, the hostel prices in Hong Kong are a bit more expensive but you can find reasonably prices places too. One pretty famous building is the Chun King Mansion, which is located on the Kowloon side of the city. It’s full of hostels (very cheap ones) but it’s mainly full of Indian and Pakistan people, some of them are actually living in the dorms there so it could be a wiser decision to pay some extra dollars and stay somewhere else. During our first day in HK we walked around the central districts, visited a traditional temple on Hollywood Road, walked through the Hong Kong Park, visited the Zoological and Botanical Garden and ended the evening on the Kowloon side looking over the bay at the HK skyline (on a clear day or eve the view is very nice) and walking through the Avenue of Stars. During the second day we travelled around Kowloon. Some places we saw were for example the flower market street, bird market street and fish market street. Close to those streets is also the neighborhood of Mong Kok that has the highest population density in the world according to Guinness records and it’s not hard to believe that. It was impossible to walk normally there because all the streets are so full of people.

One must see spot for every tourist in HK is the Peak. As our second day was really bright and sunny we wanted to go up to the Peak in the early evening.. Let’s say it so that we weren’t the only ones who had that plan. The queue for the Peak tram was quite long and we had to wait about one hour. After a while on the Peak the queue down was about the same size but never mind, the view was worth it! 

In the late evening we visited the bar street of Hong Kong, called Lan Kwai Fong. There are 80 bars and restaurant spread around the pretty short street and it was full of people, mostly westerners. As you probably already know, HK is one of the best places in the world to go shopping. As back packers with a student budget we surely weren’t the best shopping tourists but the city is full of very nice shopping malls, as well as smaller shops you don’t find anywhere else. The best areas for shopping are of course around Central (every luxury brand has its flagship store there), the IFC Mall next to the Hong Kong station, the area around Causeway Bay three stops east from Central and the whole district around Tsim Sha Tsui in the Kowloon side. At least compared to Shanghai, the prices are a lot cheaper (thanks to the high import taxes in China). 

Trip to Malaysia via Hong Kong

We’re having a 2-week break from the school and the five of us planned to spend the holidays in Malaysia and Singapore. The first plan was to visit a friend of us who is studying in Kuala Lumpur so we flew there first via Hong Kong. The flight from Shanghai to KL started without any problems but the closer we got to HK, the worse the weather got and we had to circle around the Hong Kong International for about 30 minutes before getting the permission to land. According to the flight schedule we should‘ve had 2 hours time in HK before the flight to KL. Due to the thunderstorms our flight was delayed and we didn’t get any information about the estimated departure time. About one hour after the scheduled time we finally got the information from which gate we’re supposed to board, so we walked to the gate. Once at the gate, it was already time to board. However, after getting into the plane nothing happened in the next two hours. Finally after over 3 hours of delay in total our flight took of. The turbulence was really hard in the first 30 minutes but after that it fortunately calmed down.

Thanks to these coincidences we arrived in KL shortly after 4am. We didn’t know exactly how to get from there to the city and first we thought the first train would be leaving at 5.30, but then we found out that it’d leave at 7.30. After eating breakfast at the airport we took a bus to the centrum because the taxis were really expensive. In KL we had to found our hostel in Chinatown area but after a while we found the place and it turned out to be a really nice one, though a bit expensive compared to many other hostels.

After a few hours of sleep we woke up in the middle of the protests. Tens of thousand people were protesting against the government and for clean elections to come during summer or fall. One of the main streets for the protestants was the street in front of our hostel which was full of policemen in the afternoon :) All the people were despite the protests very friendly and peaceful so it was safe to walk around the city. Two times we had to change our route since the police was shooting tear gas into the masses but otherwise it didn’t affect us that much. In the evening we visited some Finnish guys who lived in a very nice penthouse in top of one shopping mall and a hotel. There were in total 11 people living in the huge apartment. After a few hours chatting with them, we headed back to the hostel to rest.