Third Day of the Hong Kong Trip

A second cold morning in Hong Kong began, in a slightly less than favourable condition, with the news that E was unwell and would not join us for breakfast. It would be a missed opportunity of sorts, as this would be our only real dim sum breakfast.

It took the occupants of room 204 until the meeting time to wake up, indicating their physical condition as well. Again, it wouldn’t be hard to believe Hen little boy was first up. This morning we would set out with much more concrete plans, having taken clearer direction from Van’s sister to find a dim sum restaurant the night before. Another short MTR ride later, we arrived in Jordan. We took the exit to Shamrock Hotel, and upon reaching street level, spotted what looked like what we were looking for, just opposite the road. We passed a BreadTalk shop on the way to the pedestrian crossing, and it wasn’t long before we got into the restaurant and settled down for breakfast at a single table.

The service wasn’t too good, but that would most likely be because of some language barrier and our difficulty in fully comprehending the menu. We placed about 3 rounds of orders, with stuff like peanut pancake, fried dough fritters in chang fen, char siew buns, siew mai, ha gao, etc. the bill came to almost HK$300, which was actually pretty good since it worked out to be about the same as eating at any other random food shop. It was about 1100h when we finished our meal and left the restaurant.

We proceeded to meet E at the MTR station, and continued our journey to Causeway Bay. This would be our next shopping destination. We split up and covered malls such as Causeway Bay Plaza 1, Sino Plaza, SOGO, and also Times Square. Sino Plaza saw some guys playing on escalators to kill time while waiting for another. Times Square was large, evidenced by the presence of 2 Starbucks outlets in the mall, both of which were patronised by us. This was also where the little boys took a nap at the foot of an escalator after watching a part of “How to Train Your Dragon” a good number of times. Both of them did buy something from the Starbucks located on the lower floor, but whether it was intended to keep them awake is clearly questionable. Hen little boy’s hunt for Eragon in the Page One bookstore was unsuccessful.

There was some trouble in meeting back, as this was the first station that we encountered where it was impossible to go from one entrance to the next without going through the fare gates. This meant that setting the control station as the meeting point wasn’t ideal. Either way, we found each other quite quickly, and proceeded to Central. From there, we took a rather uneven walk to Tai Chung Bakery, famous for their Egg Tarts. Here, we got to buy and eat what should be the best Egg Tarts around, and some other bakery products. The guys purchased 1 box each, except for K who had 2. The ladies shared a significantly smaller number amongst themselves.

On the walk back, we found that we had skipped the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator by accident. We were fortunate to have not attempted to take it downwards, because it would have involved taking a flight of stairs to discover it only went up, with widely spaced steps for the way down. We later stopped at another H&M outlet where some went in to shop. The guys took this opportunity to take the Escalator upwards, and walked back down. As it turned out, the return trip on the Escalator took longer than the ladies required in H&M.

Our journey on foot continued for some time, taking us to the Peak Tram Lower Terminus. With the hilly landscape and the number of people with some form of leg trouble, it might have seemed longer than it was. It was evening by now, and starting to get dark and cool. We purchased tickets just for the ride, and got in the queue for the Tram. It came quite soon after, and we started the journey up. As was promised in the description for the ride, we got pulled up the hillside at quite a steep angle, possibly 37 degrees or so. Those seated on the right side of the Tram got a better view, as that was the side facing the Hong Kong Skyline. We again talked of the possibility of placing a roller-coaster on this hillside, most likely because of the experiences the previous day.

Up on the Peak, we took a group photo with the wax figure of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, since it was free. We did not visit the Madame Tussauds museum as it did not draw many positive reviews or popular interest amongst ourselves. We also attempted to enter a restaurant on the highest publicly open floor, but decided against it when we were told we would not get the seats that we wanted as they were reserved. It would otherwise have been a great way to get a good view. Since this route was not available to us, we somehow found an exit that led onto a balcony. From there, we enjoyed the view, and also constant wind accompanied by lower temperatures than we had so far enjoyed. There was some shelter available in the form of the top of a stairwell. After taking a number of open-air shots of the city, we re-entered the building through Burger King. As you can expect, Hen little boy was the most well protected from the cold.

After descending a flight of stairs just outside Burger King, we arrived at a different part of the building, which was a good thing. We took some time to examine an orange juicer and two displays of pasta which had forks that looked as if they floated in the air. There was yet another exit nearby, but this one was considered the ground floor, meaning that it took us to a much larger open space albeit without a view of the city. We hung around outside for a while, before proceeding back into the building. Another interesting gadget was a remote controlled car that operated on the wall, literally being driven up the wall. We thought of dinner, but the food options were limited and did not seem appealing. As such, we decided to finally try the claypot rice just beside our hotel. We had observed long queues at the shop for two nights now, and figured that it must be good. This meant that we had to take quite a wait since we were nowhere near the hotel, but we were able to survive with the late meals during the rest of the day.

Before we got there, we had to queue in the cold weather for the tram down. The queue was outdoors probably to accommodate the large number of people. It took us a while, but we eventually got to the more indoor part. Even being on the inner queue wasn’t of much help. The humans in the next row were somewhat insufficient as wind shields. While in the queue, we were treated to singing by D & Boss, although it was sporadic due to the way they seemed to decide what to sing. Either way, it was quite different from their constant use of sign language the previous day, where they were so engrossed in their signed conversation on the bus from Ocean Park to Admiralty.

The ride down was about identical to the ride up, except for the fact that we were going downwards and backwards. We also passed by a tram on its way up during the journey, which we did not notice when we were going up. We exited the tram station at a leisurely pace, and found that the bus stand just outside was useful to us. The bus would take us to the Star Ferry Piers, which we wanted to go to, to experience a ferry ride across the water and back to Kowloon. The signboard said that an open-top bus would come every half-hour, and we must have had some luck to get an open-top bus. Not that we sat top-deck though, for the weather wasn’t particularly comfortable for us to do so.

There was some more singing on the bus, credits to the ladies this time. Apparently, Miss Awesome was well, awesome. The ferry we wanted was not difficult to find, and we took the entrance to the lower deck. The fee for the ferry was cheaper than if we took the MTR one stop, and it was an easy tap-in for all of us, with the Octopus Card. The boat ride itself was fairly comfortable, with no one getting sea-sick. When we reached Kowloon, we were treated to a laser-light show from the Hong Kong Skyline while Van and Zhe little boy visited the restroom. We also saw a lady selling an interesting laser pen putting out disco light-like effects. It was a short walk to the underground network again, with a sign near the entrance warning about the possibility of flooding. It could be assumed then that the MTR system must be vulnerable to large amounts of water for some reason or another.

Arriving back near our hotel, K & Zhe little boy queued while the rest went up to the rooms. The ladies were subsequently the first to emerge from the hotel, but the queuing still wasn’t finished, so they went to buy curry fish balls and other food from nearby, and kindly donated the 2 in the queue one each. By this time the guys had arrived as well, and we were nearing the front of the queue. The first few calls for people however, were for small numbers, which meant that not the whole group could get in. When we found that we might be constantly overlooked if that was the case, we decided to send people in when the next call would come. D & Boss were the first to get in, but not long after, the remaining 9 were granted seats together as a group larger than ours had just left. D & Boss successfully joined our table, and our orders were placed. They included oyster pancake, and the many different ingredients that could be had in the claypot rice.

The oyster pancake was excellent, even if you didn’t eat the oysters. The salted fish was quite a surprise, turning up in large pieces with bones and all. Fortunately it wasn’t hard to de-bone, but it was very different to what we see in Singapore. We also got to pour the black sauce on our own, and depending on experience, some got a lot of their rice stuck to the pot. Overall, it seemed like a good experience, if not for the genuine taste then for the satisfaction of appetite. Before the meal there were intentions to do take-away for in-room consumption, but eventually no one did that. We returned to our hotel and once again wound down for the night. The first night had seen the guys play cards in 203, if only for a while. The second saw a good number in the little boys room for the same purpose, and being past-midnight, was partially regulated by Boss for noise.

This night, most of us gathered in B’s room to play cards. The main players were Hen little boy, K, B, Miss Awesome, Slim and Jc. Boss had died in his room, Zhe little boy came over later looking half-dead and Van came over quite early but swiftly died in a corner with his blue shark. He was largely impervious to any noise made, so we also discussed the many scenarios we could try to incept into his dreams, or guess his dreams. These included the Titanic scene, hot Japanese girls, fire, flood and so on. We were actually unsuccessful, and Henry’s instantly created fire alarm also did not work (he apparently did not unleash his human alarm completely to save our eardrums). Having been out, D&E arrived a short while before B decided we should leave her room, to let her have 12-14 hours of sleep (which she never got during the trip anyway). An even later wake-up timing was set for the next day, to conclude the night.