Our final international leg. It seemed so far away back when we were planning in spring of 2018 that we, well, kind of forgot to plan for it! That was of course an unfortunate turn of events because Hong Kong is, by far, the most challenging destination for our dynamic quartet of intrepid travelers. Imagine NYC with tropical weather, bigger crowds, more wealth, with an Asian twist. We also chose to go during the worst time of the year!!! I will get into the gory details.
We had to board Hyderabad at 1am to get to HKG at around 9am, so we flew all night and the children were surprisingly spry and awake. We landed and wandered around the ginormous airport until we found our luggage, and since we were starving and it was a little early to check into our Airbnb, we headed to the lounge outside the baggage claim area to rest and eat. We got a glimpse of the best part of HKG: the food!! Even the lounge food was delicious. We got a taxi and got into our airbnb, which was a re-furbished small apartment inside a really old apartment building called a “mansion” (common term for the city). The elevators were small and cramped and we often had to stand in line to go up and down them. We got in, napped, then headed out into the city to discover…intense humidity and intense crowds. We stayed in a fairly busy neighborhood called Tsim Sha Tsu. It was overwhelming. There was no room for our stroller. We ducked into a grocery store and by this time I was starving again so in a moment of desperation, I ordered some food. And of course it was delicious, because practically all food in Hong Kong is delicious. We then wandered around some more and headed back to our apartment where we met up with our friend Adam! Clark and Adam were in the Peace Corps together years ago, and Adam has been living in Hong Kong for the past 2 years. We headed out for dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant and then headed home and to bed afterwards, exhausted from the little we saw of HKG.
Here is Soren enjoying some tea (quite dilute!) while a chef is cutting us pieces of Peking duck.
Below is an example of how crowded the metro system is in HKG! It seems busy like other cities except…the metro station is HUGE. It is a vast underground system and it is this busy in the entire station! You can pretty much navigate half the neighborhood underground. There are places to eat, shop, everything. It is clean and quite well maintained despite the ridiculous crowds and the hot humid and rainy weather. It is much nicer than the NYC subway. The only fault is that they could use a few more entrances and elevators for those on wheels, such as our gang; it took us twice as long as freely ambulatory citizens to traverse the MTR system. Clark had to use his brute strength to carry Meera+stroller up many flights of stairs on this particular leg of our trip. Check out those muscles****Swooon**** We had to take the stroller when we planned on staying out all day because otherwise Meera does not really have a good place to sleep and it is impossible to carry her for hours in the baby Bjorn in such hot humid weather.
Journey to Hong Kong Island
We got up and accomplished much more this day thankfully! First we headed to N1 Coffee where we indulged in truly decadent coffee to pump up our day (and a chocolate treat for Soren):
We then walked over to the “The Avenue of Stars” which features various film-oriented statues and is usually on the boardwalk by the bay; they were temporarily moved to this park near the water while the harbor area is undergoing renovation.
We headed across the bay over to Shau Kei Wan and walked around the neighborhood and indulged in some local treats. This egg waffle thing is quite common here, but Soren was of course skeptical:
Then we took a tram to Adam’s neighborhood around Quarry Bay Area. There we learned that one of the behemoth old-school apartment buildings was the site of one of the Transformers’ movie shooting. So of course we had to go. I was the scary Transformer and Soren the oblivious civilian!
Clark daringly tried some chicken feet with Adam during our lunch break:
Our lunch was of course delicious! I love Szechuan food! We finished it all.
We then took an extremely long escalator up the mountain that the Central neighborhood is in…actually perhaps the longest escalator in the world!
Then we went up even higher (this time in a taxi) to Victoria’s Peak to enjoy some views of the city. HKG is a gorgeous city of tropical vegetation, mountains, islands, and bays in the middle of which is this dense metropolis of 8 million people. We got to appreciate that, albeit in a foggy fashion:
We returned on a ferry back to TST, where our home is and got to enjoy this view:
Journey to Lantau
We took a day trip over to Lantau to visit the village of Tai-O, the big buddha, the nearby monastery, and the big famous cable car down from the buddha to the nearest MTR station to return home. What a big day!
We first took the MTR to Lantau island and then took an unexpectedly long bus (1hr) that only cost 10 HKD to the village of Tai-O.
Tai-O was a magical fishing village and indeed it smelled kind of fishy! Very beautiful and picturesque. We wandered around and went on a boat ride followed by lunch at a local Chinese diner type place.
We then headed to the Buddha statue and nearby monastery. The view was beautiful from the top.
Here is Meera on the grounds.
Then we got to ride most amazing cable car we have ever seen, called Ngong Ping. We paid a bit extra to get one with a “crystal” clear floor, so you are really flying through space. Some people seemed to be scared (grown adults) of this experience, but our little Meera Vijaya was fearless and quite enjoyed the journey:
Final Day in HKG: main city areas.
On our last day we mostly relaxed and ate a lot of food because really, the food is just so amazing in HKG. In the morning we headed to Kowloon Park, which is just a beautiful amazing inner-city park.
We then enjoyed a Dim-Sum lunch. At this point it started raining pretty heavily and Meera and I were already starting to show signs of illness (upper respiratory infections) so we thought it best to go home and rest for a bit.
We then headed to the Penninsula for high tea, followed by some window shopping, and then a delicious Thai food dinner in Admiralty neighborhood with our friends Adam and Jenny. Of course, right at the beginning of dinner, Meera vomited all over me and Soren refusing to eat any dinner, but such is the nature of travel with children in tow. We could not leave without a dramatic event! But we enjoyed ourselves anyway.
The next morning we headed to the airport for the long journey home via Korean Air to our new home in Washington state. We connected through Incheon (Seoul) airport, which was an amazing gorgeous airport, planting new ideas in our heads about future travels to Asia. Soren was particularly excited to see the Tayo themed children’s play area.
And just like that, 10 weeks abroad ended so quickly, and we are back in the USA, this time on a new coast.