Hong Kong

We arrived to Hong Kong at 8am. All cruise passengers needed to fill out a medical questionnaire and go through a thermal body scan before going ashore. This is because of continued precautions due to the H1N1 pandemic. We got off the ship at 8:30am. It was hazy downtown early and we were not sure what we wanted to do.

First we went to the MTR station. This is basically their subway (the equivalent to the underground in London). Princess has a cruise lecturer that talks about all of the ports before arrival and offers recommendations and tips. We have not attended any of the talks, but watch them replayed on our stateroom TV. For Hong Kong, he recommended buying an Octopus card for the MTR. This costs $150 with a $100 account balance and a $50 deposit (all Hong Kong dollars where 1 USD = 7.8 HKD). When you turn the card in, you get your deposit and unused balance back minus a penalty for turning it in early (he did not mention the penalty, but wiki travel keeps us informed). Each time you use the card, the fare price is deducted from your balance. It is a good idea for regular use but we were only there one day. They had a tourist day pass which made more sense. We bought it for $55 each (about $7 USD) and it gives you unlimited travel on the MTR for a 24 hour period. It worked out perfectly for us. We are not sure why the ship did not recommend this instead.

Before each stop, both Brian and I read Wiki travel’s synopsis of the city. We have it printed out and also on our Kindles. Wiki travel offers lots of great tips to help you understand a city you are visiting. For example, thanks to Wiki Travel we knew what a subway was in Hong Kong. Subways simply get you to the other side of the street. They are underpasses for pedestrians that go under the road. They are not subways like you would think of subways in New York City. Those are called MTR stations. Without this inside information, we may have been relunctant to go down into “subways” to get across the street not realizing what they were. Wiki travel is a great resource and has helped us hit the ground running in many cities.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Hong_Kong

Travel wiki also offers some history on the cities. We did not realize that Hong Kong used to be separate from China until 1997. Despite being part of China now, it remains very different. It is a capitalist city with its own currency unlike communist mainland China. It also avoids censorship and has separate laws. The arrangement is described as “One country, two systems” and was interesting to learn about. In some ways Hong Kong behaves like a separate Chinese colony despite officially being part of China.



Our ship was docked on Kowloon Island which is across the bay from Hong Kong Island. After we got local currency from an ATM and bought our passes (no credit cards are allowed), we took the MTR to Hong Kong Island. They also have a ferry (the star ferry) that goes across but the MTR worked fine for us. While at Hong Kong Island, we took some pictures of our ship. We knew we wanted to go up to Victoria Peak however the weather was cloudy and hazy so we wanted to wait until later. Hopefully it would clear up as the day progressed.

We also wanted to do some shopping however the stores did not open until 10am. We usually don’t shop much on vacation but on this trip we are doing a lot of shopping! The prices are good and Christmas is not far away.

We decided to take the MTR to Lantau Island. Lantau Island is about 30 minutes away on the MTR. On Lantau Island they have the famous Giant Buddha. To get up to the Buddha you need to climb 200 steps. From everything we had read, it was worth seeing. We originally were not planning on visiting it since we heard it was so far away. After seeing that it was connected to the MTR though, we figured it would be easy enough to get to. It was.



Once arriving to Lantau Island, we took Ngong Ping 360 cable car which is right outside the MTR station. The Nong Ping cable car had a line to buy tickets. When we arrived to the ticket counter, they said it would be an hour before we could get on a regular car. We could upgrade our tickets for a crystal car and it would only be 15 minutes. We did not have time to waste so we upgraded. This cost us an extra $100 (about $14 USD). Our MTR tourist day pass came with coupons which included a 10% discount on the cable car, so that helped (two round trip tickets cost us a total of about $36 USD). One of the perks of a crystal car is that it has a glass floor so you can see straight down. This is probably not worth the extra money, but saving time was.



When we got onto the cable car, it was a 25-minute ride to Lantau Island. It was sunny and pretty here. I think I am getting over my fear of heights because on the cable car I looked straight down many times and it did not bother me.

At Lantau Island, we went straight to the Big Buddha. Ngong Ping 360 is described as a Buddhist amusement park with other attractions. You could probably make a day of it here, but we skipped everything else for the main attraction. The Buddha was so large that we did not have trouble finding it. We climbed to the top. I find it fascinating that people can make things like this. It is so big and looks so perfect sitting isolated in the Chinese mountains.

We took the cable car back down to the MTR station. Princess cruise lector also recommending taking a picnic lunch to the top of Victoria Peak. That was where we were going next. There was a Subway restaurant near the MTR station so we got a sandwich and packed it into our bag for later. We took the MTR back to central station on Hong Kong Island.

We walked to Peak tram station. Hong Kong was easy to navigate. There were many signs in both English and Cantonese (Hong Kong speaks this different variant of Chinese – in contrast, Beijing speaks Mandarin). Traffic obeyed typical traffic laws giving pedestrians the right of way (unlike Vietnam, Thailand, and Beijing) and pedestrians were given frequent opportunities to cross (unlike Singapore). We bought round trip tickets for the Peak tram. It takes you up to the top of Victoria Peak. We did not have to wait long before getting on. The tram takes a very steep ascent up to the top. I was excited because this was my first time in a real cable car. (Think of the San Francisco cable cars). On a side note, I wanted to ride one in Wellington New Zealand but we ended up walking because we got lost and walked to the top station instead of the starting station. This time I got to take the tram. It was fun.

At the top, we went to the information desk. They told us about different trails we could walk. If we had time, we could even walk down. Since we already had purchased a return tram ticket, we decided to take the tram back down to save time. We walked the Hong Kong trail around the top. Unfortunately in Hong Kong today the skies were cloudy and still hazy even in the early afternoon. The views were not the best, but at least it was reasonably warm (mid 70’s) and not raining. We walked for a while. We never did find a picnic area, but did find a bench to sit on and ate our sandwich there. It was around 4pm and I was hungry.



After our nice walk together, we went back down to central station. We then took the MTR to what is called the “ladies market”. It was a street market selling all kinds of things (not just things for ladies either). We went shopping for a couple of hours. We have bought so much stuff that we needed to buy another bag to get everything home. We are now really good at bargaining. Some of our best deals included talking prices down from 350 to 100 and from 140 to 60. As reported earlier, the key is to be willing to walk away and sometimes even do so even if it means you don’t get it. Stay turned to see how packing goes next Thursday when we leave the ship.

On our way to the market, we stumbled upon a performance in the MTR. It looked like it featured various MTR employees (they had on different uniforms that we also saw people working for the MTR wearing). It was a Christmas performance. They played Christmas music and danced to it. It was within one of the MTR stations, so it was only available for MTR travelers. It was really fun to watch. We found it fascinating because they were dancing to traditional Christmas songs in English (Jingle Bells, Rocking around the Christmas Tree, Santa Clause is Coming to Town). It is also interesting to see this since the majority of Asians do not even celebrate Christmas. Less than 10% of people in Hong Kong are Christian!



Once we were done shopping, we went back to the ship to drop everything off. It was crowded and we did not want our things stolen so we had to carry our backpacks in the front. That was hard on the back after a while. We wanted to see the laser light show which started at 8pm and was sure to be very crowded on a Saturday night. We did not know if we should watch it from the ship or out in the city. We decided to watch from City Harbor mall outside from where the ship was docked. It worked out perfectly. It was not very crowded at all because it was an area intended for passengers. We had a great view and not too many people around.



The light show was great. We had brought our MP3 players from home. The lights are synchronized to music (103.4 FM for English). It was fun. We took some pictures but also tried to enjoy the moment. The show lasted 15 minutes and started at 8pm. It is amazing how many buildings are involved. You really have to scan the entire skyline to take it all in. A picture cannot do it justice. Afterwards we had about 2 hours left in Hong Kong.



We went back out to the streets and walked around. We wanted to enjoy the last few hours there and wandered around the streets and shops nearby Nathan Street. Hong Kong is a fabulous city. It has a lot of shopping and nightlife. I’m not sure the city really sleeps. Obviously it is a major city, so the people are not as welcoming as Vietnam or Thailand. Nonetheless, I really liked Hong Kong. Their public transportation system is great. I highly recommend people traveling to large cities familiarized yourself with public transportation. It only takes a few times doing it to really understand it. In Hong Kong, there are MTR signs everywhere and multiple entries into various stations which make it easy to enter and exit. Most of the time, we did not even need a map. We just followed the signs. One nice feature in Hong Kong is that the MTR tells you which exit to use for different attractions. A station might have exits labeled A through F with signs explaining which to use for different points of interest. It is very convenient and ensures you get starting in the right direction.



After we got back on the ship, we went to the buffet to eat since we did not eat anything except the subway sandwich we split earlier in the day. We went on the top deck and enjoyed the view of downtown Hong Kong. Once we started sailing away, we went to a lower deck with lounge chair and laid and watch us leave Hong Kong. Our time here was too short but we really made the most of our 14 hours we had here.