Hong Kong: Day #1 - What a City!

After a long week I'v finally made it to Hong Kong for the start of a 5 day trip. I'm super excited for this trip and plan on making a lot of blogs about it. There's just way too much cool stuff to fit into a single post so i'll be seperating it into several different blogs:

1. The City

These blogs will focus on different places around the city I visited. There's a lot of cool places that I think deserve their own blog post such as the Ladies Market, Temple Market Street, Avenue of Stars, etc.

2. City Art

There is so much style and art around the city. I want to focus these blogs on what actually makes Hong Kong such a visually beautiful city.

3. Food!

These are the blogs i'm most excited to post about. I love food and there's no shortage of amazing food here in Hong Kong. There are so many street foods and such a huge variety of foods from different cultures. I spend most my day just walking around looking for interesting little treats to try.

Let's Begin!

Upon arriving I feel like the phrase to describe my initial reaction to this city would have to be love at first sight. It's truly an amazing mix of China and Western culture. The city is a thriving hub of mixed cultures, beautiful skylines, urban city art, delicious foods, drug dealers, sex shops and robot waiters. It's an experience so unique and diverse that it's hard to believe it's real life. It's actually my second time to the city but my first time was a rushed and busy 3 day trip. I loved the city so much in the brief pass through I made before that I couldn't resist coming back for a longer and more relaxing visit.

After a long string of stressful events over the last couple months I was happy to finally have a small little vacation. My trip didn't start on a happy note though. As I went through security at the airport I found myself thinking, my adventure has become! And it did begin there but not in the happy, exciting way I was expecting. I walked through security an entire 2.5 hours before my flight so I decided to sit down in starbucks and reward myself with a nice chicken wrap as I waited. After finishing the wrap I decided to hang out in starbucks a little and charge my phone while I waited for my flight. For some reason though, several of the outlets I tried weren't working too good so I decided to sit at one of the charging chairs by the boarding zone. After I found a seat and began to charge my phone I went to take out my ticket to check the boarding time only to find the ticket wasn't there!

Frantically I started searching all over the airport retracing the steps I took and asking several people for help. Unfortunately, my ticket was no where to be seen and there was no one manning my airlines desk yet. For the next hour and a half I nervously waited near the boarding zone for the airline workers to finally come. It wasn't until about 35 minutes before the flight that they finally showed up. I quickly reported my missing ticket and they told me to wait until everyone else had boarded and they'd verify my information and let me on. I waited and waited until every single person had boarded and went back up again. They checked my passport and handed me the ticket I lost. I don't know where they found it but it seems like one of the cleaners had picked it up and turned it in. And with that, I boarded the plane to Hong Kong and began the real trip!

Hong Kong is such a nice and convenient city. I got off the plane and was able to the subway straight to my hotel in the famous Chungking mansions. The Chungking Mansions are their own world for travels on a budget. I plan to make a seperate blog about this area in the near future so I'll keep this part brief but it's a building filled with cheap budget hotels, amazing indian food and a shopping area with tons of fake products. I stayed in a little hotel for 180 chinese yuan per night (28 $USD). I stayed in the same place my previous visit for 160 chinese yuan a night (25 $USD) and was extremely happy with the experience so I decided to come back again.

I wasn't so lucky this time though, despite paying a higher price I got a much smaller room and it smelled of rotting eggs (assuming from the sewage in the bathroom). I knew the rooms were small and didn't expect anything big but I didn't realize I could actually get a smaller room than I had for my last visit (my entire family cracked up when I showed them pictures of my room last time). The room itself was just a single bed with about 9 inches room between it and the wall. There was no little desk or anywhere to store stuff besides ontop of your bed (or under which I did later). There is also a tiny little bathroom attached that is so small that you shower while sitting on the toilet. I learned later that if you want the room I had last time you have to book the 大床间 big bed room. I'm not overly disappointed about the room because it's cheap and just a place for me to sleep but I'll certainly pay a few dollars more for the bigger room in the future haha.

Hong Kong is always such a busy city. It has 7.4 million people and while it's completely overshadowed by places like Beijing with well over 20 million people, it certainly doesn't feel any smaller or less populated because of how densely packed everyone is. The only time I'v ever seen crowds in China even close to that of the average Hong Kong crowd is during big holidays when everyone is off work and traveling all at once.

This is right outside the Chungking mansions midday Monday.

At night time, the Mongkok ladies market and temple market streets become extremely packed with people trying all the delicious street foods, watching the street performances, and trying their hands at haggling in the outdoor alley markets.

A lot of this city is cramped and small, the restrooms included! Made a pit stop into one of the many Mcdonalds to use the bathroom only to be greeted by this small dirty toilet stall with the trashcan having no place to sit besides on top of the toilet itself!

Hong Kong has a unique feeling and culture to it. They have a lot of Japanese influence and you see it quite a lot with funny little things like a robot server outside a restaurant.

Hong Kong has no shortage of money exchange booths, you can't walk more than 50 meters without coming across several.

They love their gun shops. Found several of these stores scattered around some of the popular shopping streets in hong kong. I'm not sure if they're real or not as I don't have a huge interest in guns myself but it's super interesting to see anything like that here as they're completely illegal in mainland China.