Stop 20 - Hong Kong

Escaped expensive Macau...
To arrive in expensive Hong Kong. Immediately noticed it was nothing like I'd seen in the past two months or so - a bustling, futuristic metropolis. It has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world, with 303, don't you know:

I made my way to my hostel, YesInn Causeway Bay, located on Hong Kong island itself. Really nice 9 floor hostel with a rooftop common area, and a kitchen! First one of those I've seen in a while. The bad weather accompanied me from Macau, so the first evening was spent in planning for the week I had here. Trying to play catch up with the blog posts so I'll try and keep it short and sweet.

I'd read that there were some decent breweries in HK, and given the poor weather for the first couple of days, I knew I'd be spending my first day indoors. Luckily, the most highly acclaimed brewery, Young Master Ales, was due to have a brewery tour on my first morning (or so I thought) - turns out after emailing them to inquire, it was only on every second Saturday. But they said they could still sell beer for take-out (no licence for on-site consumption), so I thought I'd nothing better to do in the rain, and wanted to try their beers, so hopped on the 20 minute bus to get there that morning. When finally locating it (difficult as the shutters were down), I was greeted by a room of ~20 people all drinking beers, singing songs. Not what I was expecting.

I went up to the bar to ask what was going on...and to buy my take-away beers. The bartender said "oh, this is a Welsh choir that have booked out the brewery for the day - it's a private function. You can stay if you want. Though legally I can't sell you beer.....so they're free". Happy days.

Things are looking pretty good in Hong Kong already! Here I got chatting to three guys who had similarly visited hoping for the tour to be on, each of them English teachers in HK. They had all arrived in HK alone, so somewhat knew what it was like for me to be there on my first day, and mentioned they were heading back to Lamma Island after the brewery, where one of the guys lived, if I wanted to join. Sure why not, off we went to get the ferry to a part of HK I'd never even heard of:

And there we spent the evening playing pool at a very local bar - it's pretty much a small fishing village, very different to the rest of Hong Kong. One of the guys, Sean, turned out to be a big Cleveland Browns fan as well (as am I), which we only realised well into the evening. Coming half way around the world to meet another Browns fan was not what I was expecting!

The day just kept getting better and better. That was until we noticed that I had missed the last ferry back to HK island. Oops. The three guys had already planned on staying in Lamma, so they thankfully let me crash there. An absolutely fantastic first full day led to a horrendous second day, as a roaring hangover greeted me upon waking up in Lamma. The ferry back to HK awaited me, couldn't think of many things worse at that point in time:

Took me until the next day to get out and see some of the sights, and thankfully the weather was picking up for the rest of the week. I went exploring with a couple of girls from the hostel, around the glitz and glamour of Causeway Bay, which I'd by now figured out was a high-end shopping area, near to the central business district - plenty of impressive buildings/streets nearby:

and ended our evening in Ichiran Ramen, a ramen place recommended to me by one of the lads from the first night - when arriving here by himself he felt a bit out of place eating out alone, until he found here:

Pretty cool place, you order through the hatch in front of you, and a server you never see hands you a bowl of ramen before pulling down the curtain. There's walls on either side, so you have your own little booth. It's only Tonkotsu ramen (pork broth) served, so one of the girls accompanying me, who was vegetarian, wasn't too happy - oops.

Nice evening though, and given that I was now into my 4th day, I felt like I still had plenty of investigating to do. The free walking tour was a safe bet, so I joined up with that the next morning, and learnt a bit of the history of HK, a bit about feng shui, a bit about finance, and saw some amazing views of the harbour:

I was now on a roll, taking in some actually cultural things that Hong Kong had to offer, and not just going to breweries and being hungover. Was a nice change. The most famous local Cantonese cuisine is either Dim Sum (which I regretfully didn't try), or Char Siu, which is BBQ/roasted pork, served with rice and pak choi. Off I went to Joy Hing's Roasted Meat, to try out the latter. Bit fatty, but still unreal. Not a word of English spoken either, and you're sat at any table with a seat available.

Thankfully it's not only busy shopping streets HK has to offer - nearing the end of my trip I went on one of the many hikes you can do while there. There's plenty to choose from, but I went for what I think is the most famous, Dragon's Back Hike. About 40 minutes away by bus from my hostel, it's very easy to reach, and an enjoyable way to work off some of those pints and BBQ pork dinners - 4 hour round trip, and some spectacular views.

And so it came to my last day/night in Hong Kong - I realised I hadn't yet gone across the river to Kowloon (apparently the walking tour there is a must do - oops again). So spent the day exploring there, and made my way to the harbour front on the island that evening to finally catch the Symphony of Lights, a light/music show conducted every evening across the city. No video I took did it justice, it's absolutely ridiculous though - don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

I had wanted to go to a Clairo gig as she was playing in HK that night, but I stayed too long at the light show and felt it was better to head back to the hostel. Before I left though, there was still time to fit in a visit to a rooftop bar with people back at the hostel, and the famous HK pub crawl, which is definitely worth doing if ever stopping in HK.

Again nursing a hangover (in what was a week of many), I decided to splash the cash (€5.50 to be precise, yikes) and get the first decent coffee in quite a while in The Coffee Academics:

It was pretty good to be fair. €5.50 good? Is any coffee €5.50 good? It did sort of summarise what Hong Kong was like - some parts of it can be mega expensive (not pictured/discussed, the €11 pint of beer I got in a bar), but it lives up to that cost - it has so much to offer, and is one of the most diverse cities I've been to. There are ways to keep costs down too, so I'd definitely recommend it as a place to visit - I absolutely loved it, up there with some of my favourite cities.

Jesus, that was long. Hopefully short & sweet is a bit shorter next time.

Next up is my first high speed train of the trip, heading in to mainland China. Should be....interesting.

Big love,

Stu.

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