It’s been a while ago, but i haven’t got the chance to write about my trip to Hong Kong last March, so here it is! Got the return ticket Jkt-KualaLumpur-HongKong a year before via airasia.com for mad cheap price Rp 2jt for myself & J. I don’t like the idea of couple of hours transit in between airports, but what the heck! Budget airlines is one of the best thing from this decade.
It was around 8pm when we first set foot outside the HongKong airport and the first thing we noticed was the weather. It was quite chilly! maybe around 17 Celsius or less, and i immediately remember that i only pack my summer clothing (Don’t even ask why it didn’t occur to me to check the weather before packing). Good thing it wasn’t winter at the time.
We went to the bus locket just outside the airport door to purchased 2 bus tickets to the city. I forget how much it cost, but it was a lot cheaper than taxi fee. We waited for around 15 minutes for the bus. I asked the bus driver if he know where is the closest bus stop to our our hotel at Wan Chai area, i even show him the location of the hotel at map I’m holding but he just murmur something, wave his hand and ask me to sit down in Cantonese. Oh well, we’ll just ride along then and figure things out on the go.
When the bus is entering the city (although we don’t know which part of city or what street exactly), boy you’ll know! the buildings along the street ensemble a perfect example of east meet west, all those lights, the restaurants! Oh the restaurants along the busy street was wonderful, it was exactly the classic small, Chinese restaurant that i imagine i will find in Hong Kong, and there must be hundreds if not thousand of them next to each other along with other shops.
Since we don’t know where the bus is going nor the bus stop closest to our hotel, i decided that we should get off the bus and have late dinner first at one of those restaurants. Dragging our luggage, we enter the first restaurant we found from the bus stop, and ordered house specialty of HongKong barbeque pork with rice and half-cooked pan fried egg on top and wonton noodle! In short, it was heavenly.
After dinner, I tried to ask for direction (in English) to an waiter uncle but he just look confused. By this time i realize that most waiter/driver here doesn’t speak English at all, so i repeat the question in mandarin. He tried to be helpful by drawing me map and goes blablabla in fully explanation mode in mixture of mandarin/Cantonese. It was my turn to get confused. So we thank him politely (in Cantonese no less), and head out to look for a taxi.
In that busy street side while waiting for a taxi, i found my self full, in a foreign country with my fiancee, thousand of miles away from reality, completely and utterly happy. I remember myself thinking that this is exactly why people love traveling, it’s one kind of happiness in the world that can be bought.
We found our taxi quick enough and the taxi driver doesn’t speak English, of course, so i just showed him the name of the hotel the the street name written in Chinese character given by the information guy at the airport. I found this extremely useful.
The driver give a small nob to show that he understand where he is taking us and deliver us to the spot in less than 10 minutes. It cost around 35rb rupiah.
We stayed at Cosmopolitan Hotel located in Wan Chai area, which looks a lot like “kota lama” area in jakarta. It’s a small & hip boutique hotel, the room is rather small but very nicely designed, shiny clean with minimalist interior, just the way i like it. I booked this hotel a month earlier from booking.com with special price around Rp 650rb/night, which i believe was a very good price for hotel in HK. The price did not include breakfast and we have to walk around 10-15 minutes to reach the nearest MRT, but who need hotel food when you are in foodie paradise and those 15 minutes walk to and from MRT everyday is a good to burn up those extra holiday calories, no? Plus you got to see what local people are up to instead of just lingering around the touristic & shopping spots.
On our way out the next day to nearest MTR we walk passed suburban street, got a sim card at 7eleven, stop by at a local restaurant to have brunch, got some egg tart from a bakery and bought a bucketful of fresh green grapes and some mango confection from a local market. The market was a small outdoor one and also sell poultry, meats and all but it’s clean and not smelly. I guess i love suburban area and local market because i can pretend I’m living there, buying daily stuff, with simple local language like “please give me 1 of that” and “thank you” and the seller will replay in the same local language like you are one of them. As simple that, i felt somewhat belong. It’s impossible to have that feeling around tourist spot.
Our destination that day was Ngong Ping, a famous out of town tourist spot (kayak puncak) where supposedly we can find a lovely Ngong Ping Village and monastery with a sitting budha statue on the top of the mountain. To get there, we ride on MTR and get off at Tung Chung which was at the end of the MTR line. The station was very clean with a factory outlet mall on it. When we go outdoor, the weather turn out to be even colder here and my feet inside a thin ballet shoes were freezing! So we get inside the mall and bought a pair of stylish boot just like all HK woman seem to be wearing, before we continue our journey.
There are 2 alternatives of transportation to get to the Ngong Ping Village from Tung Chung station: by skytrail or by bus. Without hesitation we went to the skytrail locket to purchase the ticket. On our way inside the skytrail, the view were amazing although the thick fog blocked most of the view. The temperature was even lower here, i can feel my teeth grind together and even my feet was still freezing inside the warm suede boot.
We walk around the Ngong Ping village, explore the souvenir shop, watch some shows about monkey. Too bad when we were done, it was too late to visit the monastery & the giant Buddha statue because the last skytrail was only until 6pm. I was particularly bumped because i really looking forward to visit the monastery and meet some bald monks in yellow clothing. From HK tourist website i found out that if you went to the monastery around lunch time, you can actually join the monks for lunch! Veggies lunch no doubt. I heard that in the monks dining hall, no one, monks or visitor, is allowed to speak during eating time. Wow, I’m really curious of how it will tasted & feel like, eating veggies in a monastery with monks in total silence. It can be a life changing experience. I mean, i could have a changing heart about veggies, denied human nature as meat eater and turn vegetarian, or even decided to be a monk altogether. So I vowed that if i ever visit HK again, I’ll never missed this for the world.
On the second day, we embraced our inner child in HK Disneyland! Even before arrived on the spot, you can already feel the excitement. The Disney train, with its window & hand handle shape like mickey, it was too cute! The ticket to enter HK Disneyland cost about Rp 350rb /person which was the only down moment, feeling your pocket slightly lighter. As you walk in the gate, you can almost feel like the adult in you melts into nothing and what’s left is the 10 years old you.
To Be Continued….
