The day dawned with Polly blessing the bed with her full approval and us finding ourselves in the baking heat of a crowded street. This wasn’t hugely intentional – the hotel ran a free shuttle bus into town every so often. However, as part of our package we received a free dim sum cooking lesson, which turned out to be at 10:30 in the morning. This was fantastic – we were dragged into the kitchen and one of the chefs taught us, showing great patience, before we devoured our results. However we were left with 90 minutes before the next shuttle bus and so, brimming with energy, decided to walk.
This may have worked had it not been 33 degrees. We made the distance of two tube stops before surrendering and going underground. This turned out to be fantastic and the Hong Kong tube (MTR) is everything public transport should be. Yes, it’s crowded, but it’s clean, fast, air-conditioned (don’t underestimate that) and the longest we ever had to wait for a train was 5 minutes. Further, there’s a electronic board that lets you know where you’re going, where you are and where you need to change. And for tourists NZ$10 buys you 24 hours of unlimited travel. The only downside is the walking – each station has many exits, some of which take an immense amount of walking from the platform. It’s much easier than going by street however, and cooler. Much cooler.
Item one for the day was buying myself a laptop. We started at a mall in Causeway Bay that boasted 3 floors of computer shops. Having liberated a 15” PowerBook (which is wonderful bar the fact that there’s not really enough space to type on one in BA cattle class) we went to (prepare your condemnation) StarBucks in Times Square. Crass, I know, but they were the nearest place with Internet access. It took us about 10 minutes to walk between them, yet both have an exit for the same tube station. We also picked up little branded fans that someone was handing out and which proved to be essential in the Hong Kong heat.
In Times Square we discovered a great supermarket – you name it, they had it. They also had a bakery attached that turned out to be excellent, with many of the breads still being warm. Although I did think NZ$2 per apple and NZ$20 for a melon was getting a little silly.
We then retired to the hotel to drop some laptops, before heading into the central city and finding the peak tram. This is by far the easiest way to reach Victoria Peak, and given the tram was on gradients of 35 or 40 degrees at some stops I was rather glad not to have to walk it. From the top the views are fantastic, and the food is even better. We discovered an only slightly pricey restaurant with views of the city and Kowloon and superb food, as well as an excellent selection for Polly. Sated, we then jumped back of the tube and headed across to Kowloon to watch the nightly light show. Unfortunately the pyrotechnic version occurs only at weekends so we had to make do with the standard version. It was rather neat to watch, although as you can imagine did look a bit tacky, but was worth it just to hear a rather stocky building described as the “People’s Liberation Army Special Administrative Region Forces Building”. We then leaped back upon the tube and half an hour later we were dead to the world in our hotel room.
