Sunday, December 19, 2004
ok, firstly, the photos uploaded were taken from a pok T610 sony ericsson phone. So the quality sucked. And we din't bring a digi cam along, anyway, it'll be too troublesome to scan and upload the pics. reason why we din't bring the digi cam along was simple, my mum was afraid that Hong Kongers will run away with our cams if we asked them to help us take a family photo. BUT, when we were there, hello!! maybe our cam is already ANTIQUE. everyone there is either using their latest mobile cams or the latest digi, busy snapping away. When we asked this guy to help us take a family pic, the poor guy was like trying to analyse how to use the ANTIQUE, desperately trying to look for the mini pic screen. untill, we just said in Canto, " just press the damm button!"
ok, anyway, the heart of HK was really vibrant!! full of people everywhere, even more ppl then those at orchard on weekends. Shopping was simply incredible, sis, mum and I bought so many things, from clothes to bags, to shades to accessories. From head to toe, we were fully clad in brand new clothes after the trip. But uh huh of course, my dad's pocket was busted.
here's an attempt of a short summary of what we did.
Day 1
terrible start of the day, we were really pissed cos, our cathay pacific flight was overbooked, and they wanted us to take the next flight, which means a delay of 2 hours. Alas, thank goodness they had the initiative to give us compensation, 106 bucks per person, a free breakfast and business class flight there. So after calculation, hey it was a blessing in disguise. Afterall, we weren't really rushing for time and haha, our family trip just got 400 plus bucks cheaper. So all was good again.
My sis had 4 friends sending her off at the airport for like a week's trip. Friends that she made on the taiwan trip, but I must say her friends were really funky though, Royston and Michael were really friendly and even held a pretty engaging conversation with my parents. Yea, so even my parents were impressed and din't start their usual nag abt BGR and stuff.
Business class seats were more comfy, food was better, service was excellent. Tho I really loathe the way they treat the more affluent, I mean, the class difference thingy really suck. But I guess that's how things work in society.
Throughout the trip, my sis was ranting on and on and on and on about her Taiwan trip. About the acsi guys vs the ri guys, about their hip hop dance/break dance, about the girls, the most crushable wu-shu lao shi( haha, I tink wu-shu lao-shi are possible all crushable, I remember on my china trip with the school, everyone had this major crush on wushu lao shi), abt yadadada.. blah blah. haha, but it was interesting listening to her tho.
we touched down at HK in the afternoon. great great weather. no rain good sun. temperature was around 18-22. fantastic. oh, and because our flight was delayed, cathay pacific had this guy to usher us around the airport, and we were treated like VIPs actually, we were allowed to cut queues and our luggages were all prepared, we din't hafta wait at the conveyor belt. haha, see the delay wasn't all a bad hing afterall.
We got to our hotel, Newton's Inn, situated on the outskirts of HK. It was really funny because our hotel, believe it or not, was right smack in the middle of a wet market street. yea. wet market. But the insides of the hotel was not bad.
For the rest of the day, we just roamed around the area near our hotel. It's called the North-point area. You probably can get there by MTR. you got to get their octopus card tho( equivalent of our easy-link). They had a lot of snacks around and shopping malls, and also tong shui (in canto).
Day 2
It was a mistake to go on a complementary day tour... We were being SHOVED around tourists attractions and the tour guide was trying to get us to fork out money for the stupidest things. I shall not elaborate. Basically, I felt like we were fat, juicy tomatoes ready to be squeezed dry by those money-grabbing tourguides.
At victoria peak, I met this RJ senior from 2SO3M. I'm quite sure it was him. The OGL of nolly and qy, not ronald the other one, who incidentally was my note-angel for senior-junior class. But he couldn't recognise me i tink, he was with this other gal, probably his gf. I helped them take a photo at vistoria peak. While he struggled with our ANTIQUE cam, to help us capture a family pic in the memerising lighted city scenery.
So one day just stupidly wasted like dat.
Day 3
It was free and easy from then on. Great. A time to test my map-reading skills. After analysing the damm maps for 30 mins( most were in chinese) and with some really brief instructions from the Hong Kongers in Canto, I finally had our route planned out. When we reached the train station, I stared blankly at the train map. hokay, so the map that I have been analysing was way outdated. way way out dated.
But it was still pretty easy finding our way around, firstly, no language barrier, I can speak a little canto and my parents are great at canto. Their modes of transport are damm efficient, even more so than in Spore. You can even take a straight train to Shen Zhen or Guang Zhou straight.
mmm, their toilets area hygienic and clean, u use ur foot to press the flush button and traffic lights are controlled by sensors, so u dun even have to press the button at the pedestrain crossing. just wave ur hand.
Ok, we shopped at tsim tshai tsui! Once out of the MTR, we spotted the espirit factory outlet!
It was 4 levels high, each level quite huge! And since espirit is a HK brand, things were much cheaper there, needless to say, we bought quite a lot of stuff.
Hk is really a place where you, "ma dong si, chi dong si" man! We had almond paste and sesame paste dessert, roast duck and goose and hairy crabs and pigeon and dim sum and wanton noodles, chou dou fu and a lot fo other weird snacks.
a lot more to add, but gtg now, laters.
