Will and I left SFO on Saturday (11/1) around noon-ish and embarked on our two-week vacation to the original land of my people. No, not Canada, we were going to China.
With the craziness of life of late (e.g. insane work stuff, new house, moving into new house, renovating the bathroom, living in a house without a bathroom, etc.), we were excited for the break. Even more exciting was the fact that we were going on holiday that was planned completely by my family, the fate of our vacation lay in their hands. You'd think that this would be scary, but we were so exhausted from life, it was fine by us to follow blindly and be taken care of. And boy, we were definitely taken care of.
Will and I arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday evening (11/2) and met up with my folks, who took us to Langham Place Hotel in a district of Hong Kong called Mongkok, which is on the Kowloon peninsula. This hotel would be our HK base, as we would be heading in and out of mainland China throughout the next couple weeks. The location of this was perfect, right smack dab in the middle of a lot of action, and our hotel was located directly over one of the subway (MTR) stations, the Mongkok Station, in addition to being located right next an adjoining shopping mall.
As soon as we got to the hotel, we checked in, dropped of our stuff, and then headed to dinner with some family via the MTR. The first thing that impressed me about Hong Kong is the MTR system. It is the most user-friendly metro system that I have ever seen, there is amazing signage with English, interactive subway maps, and all prompts are translated in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. The trains schedules are also incredibly well-organized, so there are many interchange stations that are timed such that when you arrive at one station, the connecting train arrives within the minute if it isn't already waiting for you. Supposedly, there have been major extensions to the system to merge two rail systems (the original MTR and the KCR East Rail Line), providing extensive coverage within the same system. And because it is so cheap, it is the most common form of transporation in Hong Kong.
Also, there is a card called the "Octopus Card", that is purchased and utilized like a debit card to access all the transit systems. You can ride any bus, subway, and ferry in the Hong Kong area using this card, and many stores also take the card as form of payment. And, you can keep adding money to it to re-use the card, and the balance is good for 3 years from the last date of money replenishment. Seriously, so easy.
For dinner, we headed to New Kowloon, only a couple MTR stops away from Mongkok. We met up with my dad's older sister, her son Raymond, and Raymond's family (Shirley, Anne and Karen) at a restaurant called Festive China in the Festival Walk shopping mall, walking distance from the Kowloon Tong MTR station. Yes, you'll note something as quickly as we did, there are a lot of shopping malls in Hong Kong, and usually within proximal distance to the MTR stations.
I remembered meeting Raymond when I was last in Hong Kong at age 6 (yes, that means it's been almost 26 years since I was last in Hong Kong!), so it was great to meet his family and catch up.
FYI, I had no intention of blogging any food on this trip, as we had a pretty packed itinerary, no computer access, and there was no way that I was going to be able to record everything we ate. And thank goodness, we ate a lot of really, really good food, and I was too busy enjoying it to write down/remember every name/translation of each dish.MONDAY (11/3)
On Monday morning, we got up relatively early and packed up some of our stuff, because were headed to mainland China! We managed to check the rest of our luggage at our hotel as we were returning in a few days. Sweet!
Before we left the hotel, I snapped a couple pics from our hotel room on the 22nd floor:
Off to China!
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