A peek into Fion & Frankie's life: Day 2 in Hong Kong

Sunday, 2nd Dec 2007

After losing almost 4 hours of sleep in the middle of the night, we were still able to force ourselves waking up as early as 8.30am, though according to my plan it should be 8am.

We have opted out the breakfast meal when booking the hotel to experience more local cuisines. First thing in our minds was the dim sum, so the hotel staff recommended us to a nearby dim sum restaurant, known as "Tao Hiong" 稻香, on 3rd floor of a shopping centre.

Some of the dim sums we ordered

One thing different from dining in a dim sum restaurant in London is that, here we were given two pots of tea. Probably because two people two pots of tea, as we noticed the other table of four had 4 pots of tea!!?? No, we were wrong! the second pot was actually just hot water, which we realised only when the 'tea' becoming tasteless and colourless....

With a satisfied meal and full stomach we walked toward the nearest MTR station at Tsim Sha Tsui which was just few minutes away. A must-buy essential when travelling in Hong Kong is the Octopus card 八达通. It makes travelling so much easy and more economical. The card costs HK$150 with HK$100 credit and HK$50 deposit. The deposit plus the remaining credit will be refunded when returning the card, but this will subject to HK$7 handling charge. Nevertheless this is still the cheapest option.

Our first destination was Wong Tai Sin temple 黃大仙祠 - one of the most famous shrines in Hong Kong.

Half an hour here was probably more than sufficient. Not wasting any more time we then moved to the next destination - Snoopy's World in New Town Plaza, located at Sha Tin 沙田. The Snoopy's world is actually not that big, but enough to keep us busy for quite some time.

Introducing the Snoopy and his friends....

Snoopy's house

Inside the 'house'

"I am so cool..."

I must say today's weather was really nice. In fact we had checked the weather forecast back in London and were pleased to know it would be sunny with average temperature between 18-20 degree Celsius during our time in Hong Kong.

Even so, after standing under the sun for longer than 30 minutes we started to feel the heat already, especially I was wearing a turtleneck. Nevermind it was time to go back inside the plaza and shop around first before meeting Jenny for lunch.

I haven't seen Jenny for a long time, I guessed at least two years or so. I still can remember she sat behind me on the next row when we were in secondary school in Kuching. Time flies and Jenny is now a Chartered Accountant (!!) and has just been sent to Hong Kong for a couple of months training before going back to Malaysia. I took this opportunity to contact her and asked her out for a small reunion.

Seeing her again made me really happy and also envy! She still have the stick thin figure as 10 years ago!! Don't know what is her secret. Anyway we then decided to have japanese food at Genki Sushi for lunch. Shamed that the food here not really nice.

Us sitting at the sushi bar counter.

So coincidentally Jenny has bought the same camera as we did just few weeks ago, a Canon PowerShot G9. She bought hers in Hong Kong and we bought ours from Amazon.co.uk. We did think about buying it when we reach here, as the price will be cheaper. The thing is, buying a camera in UK is really just buying a camera (including one battery and one 32MB card) , you don't get any free gift e.g. casing and tripod, as a whole package. But after a careful thought we ditched the idea simply because as this one is more like a semi-pro camera with lots of different functions, it would be silly to use it without study how to... Now even better, we can exchange tips and learn from each other!

As it was a weekend Jenny has no other plan so decided to accompany us to the next destination, Victoria's Peak and Madame Tussauds. The nearest MTR station to the Victoria's Peak is at Central in Hong Kong Island. On the train to Central we noticed many Philippine maids and Jenny told me Sunday is the off day for them and they will gather together, and this somehow happened to be at the park outside Central station. Don't ask me why. They will just sit down together and start to picnic and have party! It reminded me of a Cantonese film, Driving Miss Wealthy, starred by Lau Ching Wan and Gigi Leung Wing Kei I watched some years ago. Ha!

Victoria's Peak, also known as The Peak, is a mountain in Hong Kong. It is the best place to see the panoramic view of Hong Kong. A short walk uphill from the station will lead us to The Peak Tram Terminus, where we will be taking tram to the top of the mountain.

The queue to get the tram ticket was unbelievably long. I suspect by the time we reached to the top most probably will be dark already. We then discovered another shorter queue next to it, ahh... a fast track lane. To qualify for fast track lane one needs to buy a combination of return tram trip and a entrance ticket to Madame Tussauds, a wax museum of famous celebrities. The ticket for both is HK$130, with option to top up to Sky Terrace at HK$15. According to Jenny, it was free when she first visited just months ago. Now they really know how to make extra profit!

Guess who's the first we saw next to the ticket counter?

It's superstar Jackie Chan

After passing through the ticket barrier was another queue, but for the tram to come. There was no more priority right for us as fast track ticket holders, so we just waited for our turn as everybody else.

Waiting for the tram to come

One ready needs to sit still and no one is allowed to stand because the tram is almost running 45 degree steep uphill.

Inside the tram car

A preview of the Hong Kong scenery

Madame Tussauds is inside the Peak Tower on one of the floors. I lost count already how many floors there are all I knew was we were constantly on escalators up and up. You will still be able to buy the entrance ticket to the wax museum if you didn't get one at the tram terminus, but would be silly as you have could have save time queuing for it.

Entrance counter of Madame Tussauds

A big welcome from Kelly Chan

Hollywood glamorous couple, Brangelina

Aiks...I look so short!!

Ha... Frankie isn't any better either!

Here are some of the photos taken...

After almost 2 hours inside the museum, taken numerous photos with celebrities, I still not very satisfied, simply because WHERE IS AARON KWOK??? I can't find him anywhere!!! Have I missed him? No it can't be as I have kept an eye on him from the beginning... He was my childhood idol and I would love to 'meet' him but what a shame... I came all the way here and he is not here!!! Jenny even questioned me whether am I sure if I can find Aaron Kwok here. Yes, I am 100% sure!

Here's the proof! (photo from Madame Tussaud's website)

They better have a good reason why withdrawn him!

Anyway... we then proceeded to Bubba Gump, a seafood restaurant resembles some similar characteristics of the movie film Forrest Gump, for our dinner. We were actually early for our reserved table, which we booked before visiting the museum. Nonetheless we still have to wait because we have specifically requested a window seat overlooking the Victoria Harbour. So we were then led to the bar area while waiting for an empty one. It was quite dark inside but the overall ambient was nice.

Waiting for our table

As this was our first proper dinner since in Hong Kong, Frankie decided to splash out a little more and ordered me the most expensive dish on the menu - Alaska king crab legs... hehehe... but actually there was nothing special other than they were big!

My dinner

Whereas Frankie ordered himself a Fisherman's Combo Bucket meal - deep fried shrimp, slipper lobster and fish, cajun spices and french fries, and the meal was served in .. em.. old newspaper??

No worries, this is not the normal newspaper we read everyday, but those with plastic layer so we won't get poisoned!

Jenny's meal - shrimp linguini and creamy soup

This restaurant has a different service attendance approach, instead of waving our hands to attract the waiter or waitress's attention, we will just flick to the red sign which says 'Stop Forrest Stop' and immediately someone will come and serve us, otherwise it will just be the blue 'Run Forrest Run' sign. Clever!

While enjoying our food the radio suddenly annouced the start of the Symphony of Lights at 8pm, and we were so lucky to overseeing this from the restaurant.

Basically it is a 14 minutes spectacular multimedia light and sound show organised by the Hong Kong Tourism Board. The lights are displayed from the most famous skyscrapers on both sides of the Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong accompanied by symphonic music.

After the meal we then went up to the sky terrace at the top floor to take some photos of the night scene. It's really beautiful up here.

Christmas decoration

The night was still young and Jenny assured me that it would be save to still be out and in fact she said she felt quite safe walking alone in the city of Hong Kong than in Malaysia. That's why she then led us to the famous Lan Kwai Fong, a small square of streets well known for its night life, for drinking and clubbing of course. If you watch Hong Kong movie you will know this area!

It is indeed a small area and we didn't spend too much time here. We just kept on walking and and exploring the area of Central the Jenny's way.

We then hopped on the overground tram and managed to select the front best view seats.

Everywhere in Hong Kong is neoned up and as it is approaching Christmas there are a lot of christmas lights and decorations dispalyed almost every corner of the city.

We then got off somewhere, kept on walking, passing through a shopping central, up and down the pedestrian bridges etc... we could have got lost without the guide from Jenny and certainly won't have come to the front the Hong Kong Convention center to see this large Golden Bauhinia statue, which is a gift from China government when Hong Kong was officially handed over to China in 1997.

We wanted to take star ferry back to Kowloon as we weren't that far from the pier, unfortunately we have missed the last ride. So we have to turn back and walk to the MTR station instead, before that we managed to snap few more shots directly from the waterfront looking opposite Kowloon.

We waved goodbye to Jenny and got off at the Tsim Sha Tsui station while she continued her journey back home.

It was hell lots of walking today especially for Frankie so on the way back to hotel we stopped by the famous dessert restaurant, Hui Lau Shan. It was near midnight by now and surprisingly there are still shops open till late.