Landing in Hong Kong

It’s been two weeks since I embarked on this trip, arriving to Hong Kong on the 14th of December and haven’t had time to blog much about this, so let’s see a bit of Hong Kong action here.

I arrived semi jet-lagged (as I happily managed to get a couple of hours sleep on the plane) I jumped on a bus to Kowloon where I met Aurélien, a Belgian guy who was moving to Australia and decided to take a look at Hong Kong for a few days. I actually thought this was going to be easy, meeting people on the road. How wrong that seems so far…

Anyway, I had reserved a guesthouse in the infamous Chungking Mansions. A quick google images search can show some alarming photos. I was actually not sure whether to book or not on this place, but finally I decided that if other people trusted this fire trap, why not me?

I was expecting to find something similar to the images I had seen on the internet, but I was gladly disappointed that the whole thing had been renovated. Reading about it on the internet brings many complaints about it; People around it (more about that later) and the lift. The lift was a constant theme among these complaints.

The thing is that Chunking Mansions is a super mega block of flats? transformed into guesthouses by their owners, so it looks. There are two lifts, one for the even floors and another for the odd floors. Given the amount of people who must be ‘living’ at any given moment in these guesthouses, it’s logical that the lift is always creating queues of people trying to go up. I personally didn’t find it too annoying and you usually get to your room in less than 10 minutes.

Ok, got there, checked in, got to my room, now the difficult part was to head out and avoid the temptation to crash on the bed, so that I could actually dodge jetlag. So, determined to win this, I met up with Aurélien and go out on an exploration evening around Hong Kong.

Do you want a copy watch, sir?

First time I was approached by someone trying to sell me a fake Rolex watch. What? Fake Rolex? What is it with that? Who wants a fake Rolex? Do you get laid more if you have a fake Rolex? I don’t get it.

Anyway, ‘no thanks’ I replied. Not having finished my sentence, there was another guy wearing a suit that looked tacky:

Special tailored suits, sir, please follow me’.
Err, do I look to you like I want a suit? No thanks.

Now, this was something I didn’t know at the time, but I was going to get dead tired of hearing the same over and over for the next few days…

Anyway, we go around, try to have dinner at a restaurant/eatery

{% img center http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7146/6523484813_3c01d86311.jpg Soup %}

By the way, that thing you see on the right is a local tea with some kind of milk that tasted like dead rat. The wonton soup was really good though :)

Then head to see Hong Kong island and have a beer looking at the absolutely gorgeous skyline of Hong Kong island before heading back to the hostel we were staying and crash, happily.

{% img center http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6523492521_ff05747b55.jpg Harbour %}

Let the adventure start…