23rd May 2010
Yesterday morning we were heading for the airport along a dusty strip of tarmac in a tuk-tuk that couldn’t go above 30km per hour. This morning we were walking around a clean, modern city with an efficient public transport system and every designer name you could imagine. The differences between Hong Kong and Cambodia are vast and highlighted by the fact we’ve jumped from one to the other in 24 hours. It’s a bit mind-boggling to say the least.
We started the morning with a wander around the Central district on Hong Kong Island, which is near the area where we’re staying. Trams rattling along the streets and people everywhere. Especially around central station and the malls where Philipino and Indian maids meet up in groups to enjoy their only day off in the week. We walked through various shopping malls that are all linked by covered elevated walkways, which make crossing the streets really easy.
As we were walking, we came across the central elevator. This is the world’s longest covered, outdoor people-mover and is part travelator for commuters (it is used for coming down the hill from 7am to 10 am and the rest of the day for going up), and part tourist attraction. It consists of a series of elevated escalators, moving walkways and linking stairways up an 800m hill. It was great fun sliding past various streets with nail bars and restaurants, then through the narrow Shelly Street past bars and apartment buildings.
When we finally reached the top, we elected to walk back through the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanic Gardens. We walked part the zoo part of the gardens which was quite sad, with large apes and monkeys cooped up in bare cages. We want to come back and explore the gardens properly, so this literally was a walk through back down to the bottom of the hill.
Back at sea-level, we hopped onto the MTR and headed over to the more touristy side of Hong Kong, Kowloon. One of the things we want to do while we are here is to buy a new camera (ours has done us proud, but is now looking somewhat bashed about and it’s upgrade time), so we spent some time exploring the electronics shops in Kowloon. This side of Hong Kong was manic, much busier than Central with more hawkers and people rushing everywhere.
Since we had arrived in Hong Kong, we were feeling quite homesick and tired so this evening we treated ourselves to Pizza Express. Slightly different menu to back home, but quite a few old friends, we even enjoyed our first bottle of wine in a very long time.