Hong Kong 2012 - Chapter 5: Cruising along Victoria Harbour

Continuing from where I left off, this post will feature the amazing night view of Hong Kong, which is something you must not miss if you do visit!! We gathered at the lobby at 4.30pm to take the bus that would bring us to Temple Street or 庙街. My colleague who didn't join us in the morning was still feeling sick, so she skipped the whole itinerary, poor thing.. (no refunds for skipping the tour some more, luckily it was a company trip).

Forgot to take a picture of the first bus, so this will have to do, it was a long and boring journey before we got to Temple Street because there were a few stops to pick up tourists from other hotels.. XD

Luckily the weather was good, can you imagine if it rains while you are on an open-top bus.. haha

Finally made it to Temple Steet~

Personally I preferred Ladies Market much much more, this was too obviously a tourist trap, and prices were higher for the same things compared to Ladies Market, and it had much fewer stalls, with many stalls selling fake goods, I got bored of it after a short while. Luckily we were only given about 45 minutes to walk around..

After Temple Street, we switched to this open-top bus, everyone enthusiastically rushed to the upper level, except my boss, hehe... it was so fun to zip around the streets with the cool wind in our faces, until we came to the bigger roads that is..

Not only were the streets crowded, the upper levels are all crowded with signs too XD

After we got to the open areas without buildings on both sides to block the wind, everyone nearly got their noses and ears frozen off, hahahhahaha.. it was really cold, until I didn't know where to put my hands even :S but the view was all worth it! :D

This was the best I could do without a zoom function but luckily my colleague had brought her Canon along, so no worries~

We were quite far away actually at this point, so she had to zoom and zoom @.@

This was taken with my camera.. pretty neh, if i may say so myself.. :P Its the International Commerce Centre Building, the tallest building in HK with 108 floors, also the 4th tallest building in the world by the way.

The Peninsula Hotel, a super duper expensive hotel that we can only dream of staying in one day @@ The room that made it to the top 10 most expensive in the world list costs USD5k a night~

Finally made it to the harbour with our numb faces, as you can see, it was cold!

Next up was buffet dinner aboard a cruise, where we could also enjoy the Symphony of lights show which is on every night at 8pm~ When we got on the cruise it was already 7.55pm, so we all rushed to grab some food and headed to the upper deck to watch the show..

With the music and the lights on the buildings all around going in tandem with the music, it was just amazing to watch~ Can't imagine how long they took to coordinate everything, and its a free show too, how awesome!!








We were very lucky since we were there at the end of chinese new year, all the lighted billboards with the fancy greetings were still up, you won't get to see those during the rest of the year I guess~

Here's a short video just to let you know what it felt like, with the music playing and everything.. I only thought of taking videos towards the end, how stupid.. I think its something that no tourist in HK should miss.. Can't wait to go again just to see it~~

We only returned to the hotel at around 11pm, and we were all longing for our beds.. but we had to check in on our sick colleague first. Instead of getting better, she had gotten worse, alternating between freezing and having hot flushes. She was too weak to even get a glass of water from the kettle, but she was adamant that there was no need to see a doctor and she would feel better after getting some sleep. So we forced her to down some porridge and left her to rest for the night.. Oh well, you can guess what happened the next day~ on to Day 4...

Hong Kong 2012 - Chaper 4: Day 3 @ SOHO and The Peak

Day 3 in Hong Kong, everyone woke up bright and early to go for breakfast *scratch that* everyone woke up early except me O.o... We'd planned to meet in the lobby at 8am to head over to Central Hong Kong to have eggtarts for breakfast. I have no idea why but I actually forgot to set my alarm and woke up at 8.10am, rushed downstairs right after brushing my teeth and changing so please pardon my my haggard looks in the pics taken that day.. T_T

Doesn't this place look like someplace straight out of a TVB drama? :)

I forgot to adjust the white-balance on my camera that day, but I think this looked quite nice~

First thing we did was to wander around Soho looking for this shop called 泰昌饼家 or Tai Cheong Bakery which apparently sells very yummy eggtarts. Its a tiny shop located at Lyndhurst Terrace which has been open since 1954, according to the date emblazoned on the floor.

Me footing the bill for the first round of tarts to redeem myself for being late XD
HK$5= S$0.80 for 1 tart~

I miss you eggtarts!!!

My bribe to all of them.. hehehe..

we very spontaneously decided to just simply pop into a shop for breakfast: part 2.. haha..

my very very smooth and tasty fish congee, the bowl was so huge that I couldn't finish T_T what a waste..

literally fishy tasting 油条, I prefer our local ones more...

The difference between all dolled-up and just woke up, hahahha XD
This is where the Central Mid Levels Escalator is located by the way.. I was so happy to come here since I'd just seen the place being featured in the Hong Kong edition of (my current favourite show) Running Man :):):)

We only went up a few levels since its so super long and supposedly will take you 20 minutes to go all the way up, the steepness of the slope is quite scary.. one wrong step and you could find yourself rolling down the hill~

The very aesthetically pleasing former Central Police Station, but it looks a little like a haunted abandoned building if you look closely :S

We walked all the way from Soho to the Central Peak Tram Station to ride the funicular train that brings you up to Victoria Peak, I think we walked quite a distance but it was so cool that we didn't feel tired at all~ I wanna go again in January/February just for the weather.. Aaaaahhh...

Passed the very grand looking Government Office Main Wing

So cute, they have slope registration numbers and tree registration numbers, what next? grass patch registration numbers? :P

Finally reached the intersection leading to the Garden Road Central Peak Tram Station~

The slope was incredibly steep I think the angle was more than 45 degrees, so exciting!!! My only grouse was that it was too hazy/cloudy for us to see the scenery outside properly, and the tram ride ended quite quickly also, but all in all, it was a fun experience and I'm glad we didn't leave it out of out itinerary.. Skipped Madame Tussaud's and the viewing area though, since we wanted to save some money for shopping, heehee.. According to my colleague who went to both, we didn't miss much since it was too hazy to see much from the viewing platform, and we all know what's inside the wax museum already anyways :)

The hazy view from our hiding spot at the back of the Peak Galleria, nothing much to see.. nothing much in terms of shopping as well, although my colleague did get something from the Hard Rock outlet

Proof that I was at The Peak! It was really really cold and we all just ran helter skelter into the mall to hide from the cold after just a few seconds outside.. hahahha.. I guess the people who live there have adapted well to the weather since we saw many people walking their dogs or jogging around in shorts.. @.@



















This has got to be my favourite part of The Peak experience.. So many doggies everywhere!! All very nice doggies too~~~ :D:D:D:D

Oh yeah, we managed to fulfill our dream of meeting some celebrities while in Hong Kong as well.. As luck would have it, just as we were planning to head over to the tram station for our return ride, we spotted a whole mob of photographers flashing away so we quickly rushed over to have a look~ Turns out the fashion brand Moschino Cheap & Chic was having a spring/summer showcase at the Peak Lookout restaurant with real HK stars, whee~~~

Only posting pics of the 2 stars I recognised that day, Jennifer Tse Ting Ting (Nicholas Tse's sis) and Nicky Chow, Nicky Chow is so pretty!! The other people we saw which I found out later were models Amanda Strang and Janice Man.. funny how you can still be starstruck at any age.. even though we didn't really know who was there at first, we still tried our best to peer over the hedge, luckily I was tall enough, but you can still see part of the hedge in all our photos, hahaha.. my colleague who was shorter resorted to squatting down and making a hole in the hedge to see... lol..

Really have to give credit to these celebrity people, even though it was so cold, they had to come out in summery dresses and stand in the cold for interviews, you could practically see them shivering! We left before Ah Sa from Twins arrived, too bad.. but like I said it was cold so we didn't want to keep standing there!! *defensive*

The sky cleared a little on our way down the hill~

On our way back to the hotel from Mongkok station, we saw this very interesting street artist, he was using flour to write, his writing was so neat, I can't even write half as nice with normal pen and paper T_T

Ended up at the mall next to the hotel for lunch. We wanted to have dimsum but all the restaurants were jam-packed so we ended up having roast pork and goose at the food court. The roast goose was super yummy even coming from a food court. Wonder how the ones from those famous stalls taste like then O.o...

After lunch we went back to our rooms to rest a bit before meeting in the lobby at 4pm to go for our open-top bus and cruise down Victoria Harbour for the Symphony of Lights show, stay tuned.. Will post a short clip of the awesome lights show in my next post~