Kowloon. Home of Bruce Lee and bargains.
The penultimate day of our holiday (sob), we fueled up with another breakfast in the Jia, with even dodgier milk in the coffee. Emma concluded she didn't need a coffee quite that badly. I persevered.
Our party of four (Emma, Leona, Keith and me) set off again to the other side of the harbour. Today we added to our transport experiences by including the MTR underground trains and the Hong Kong ferry. They have a brilliant ticketing system, the Octopus card, an electronic debit card travellers can simply pass over a reader at the turnstile. Elegantly simple and effective, and therefore unlikely to be adopted in Sydney anytime soon.
The train system was opened in the 1980s, and is very well maintained, looking as if it only opened within the last five years. The ferry looked ancient in comparison, which is most of its charm, of course.
On Hong Kong Island the new dominates the old. Once past the waterfront the opposite is true for Kowloon. Much of the oldness is a facade, in that the clothing, handbags, electronics and the rest in the shops is world-class, although the food is still largely traditional, and there are nooks and crannies that could be right out of the 1960s, and still plenty of street stalls catering to the locals.
We took the bus up Nathan Road past Boundary Road (as you might expect, the original boundary of Hong Kong: British Hong Kong this side, China the other), stopping in Sham Shui Po. Being China, step one was food, this time in a thoroughly unpretentious and non-English speaking Cantonese restaurant (although Emma and I might have managed to order with ample pointing, it was much easier and interesting with a native Cantonese speaker), with amazing prawn dumplings.
We wandered through a few street stalls, then split up, Emma and Leona looking for handbags, Keith and I checking out computers and cameras. The Golden Computer Centre was geek heaven on Earth, with two floors packed with all the techie-goodness a nerd could wish for: graphics cards, monitors, laser pointers, USB hubs, keyboards, alien implants -
Maybe not alien implants. Everything but, and at substantially cheaper prices than we get in Australia.
Emma and Leona have failed to find any clothes or handbags they liked, but had success finding egg custard tarts. Emma used this as an excuse to skip trying the snake soup. Where's her sense to Adventure! I ask? I was prepared to try it -
Although I must confess I didn't argue the point.
Then to Mong Kok to buy a camera. Our six-year old Canon IXUS was playing up, apparently not helped by my dropping it on the balcony, and the entire trip we'd been planning on upgrading to an SLR, probably one of the Canon EOS series.
So I bought a Fujifilm EXR compact instead.
In the end we went for convenience over quality, and the step up from our current camera is phenomenal. For example the IXUS only had a 3x optical zoom, the EXR had a 20x optical zoom. Plus it's the latest and greatest just-released most amazing state-of-the-art compact - and superseded within five minutes of leaving the shop.
Late afternoon we had high tea on Victoria Harbour at the Intercontinental (you'd never guess this was once a British colony) with me snapping away like crazy with my new toy while stuffing my face with pastries and blackberry-flavoured iced tea. Afterwards we walked along the Avenue of Stars on the foreshore.
The Avenue of Stars is essentially Hong Kong's equivalent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Famous actors, producers and directors of Hong Kong cinema, many well-known to Westerners: Bruce Lee, Sir Run Run Shaw, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, Sammo Hung Kam Po, John Woo, Jackie Chan. The stars with their names set in the pavement, while the ones who were courteous enough not to have died before it was built have handprints set in concrete. On this measure Jackie Chan is the most popular star; his handprints have been virtually obliterated by tourists over the years.
A bit more shoe and handbag shopping, the most fascinating shop being a second-hand handbag shop for top end handbags, such as Prada and Chanel. The handbags are not only essentially as-new, many literally are new, complete with original tags and wrapping.
Leona explained the women tended to fall into two groups. The ones on moderate incomes who saved up for an expensive handbag, used it for a short time, then sold it and moved on to the next. Kind of like a lease.
The second group were the ones who had their boyfriends buy them a new bag, only to sell it and pocket the money. This struck Emma and I as - odd. Instead of buying a new US$10-15,000 handbag and selling it for half price, wouldn't it be easier, not to mention more financially sensible, for him to just give her the money?
As I understand it the reasoning for a Hong Kong girl is something like this: Being given a handbag is all about love, which is good. Being given money would be about money, which is bad. And selling a handbag is fine, because after all now it's her handbag.
I'm not even going to pretend I really understand the reasoning. But I do find it fascinating.
Not having eaten for at least an hour it was time for dinner, this time at Nanhai No. 1, a restaurant on the 30th floor of the iSquare in Tsim Sha Tsui overlooking the harbour. The "overlooking the harbour" aspect was a bit of a sore point - Leona had tried to arrange a table near the window, the reservations staff bungled the booking, and then they tried to cover by lying about it. Not quite the service expected of a restaurant with a Michellin star.
Seating-hiccups aside, the menu was excellent: Peking Duck, spiced turbot, and amazing sesame seed balls the size of small balloons that had to be cut open with cooking scissors. A bottle of prosecco and bottle of pinot grigio didn't go astray either.
Our return on the ferry gave us a brilliant view of Hong Kong by night. Gorgeous, and a fitting way to finish the final night of our holiday.
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