Just one week after our trip to Kaohsiung, it was time for the next trip: a short trip to Hong Kong. As this blog is supposed to be about Taiwan, I will not add too much details about that trip.

Magalie and Leila really wanted to visit Hong Kong and Macau. After some consideration I decided to join them. When will I ever be in Asia again with the opportunity to travel around? I booked my return flight a bit earlier than them in order to not miss too many classes (but finally it turned out that the two classes I really didn’t want to miss didn’t take place in that week…) Anyways: I was in Hong Kong from Friday evening to Tuesday morning. And because of severe laziness it took me until now to write a blog post about it 😉

We booked two different hostels in Hong Kong. On short notice we couldn’t find one good hostel that was available for all 4 nights.

For the first night we stayed at Yesinn@Fortress Hill hostel. On hostelworld.com it had rather well ratings and the location is totally fine. Our night there was ok. We met nice people in the mixed dorm room. The room was clean enough but due to 8 people sharing the room it wasn’t perfect.

For the other three nights we stayed at New Peking Guest House in Chungking Mansions, 36-44 Nathan Road. In that hostel we got a three-bed room for ourselves. That was very pleasant. The room looked really clean and we had nothing to complain about… besides 2 small cockroaches that we met in our room. The first one I managed to kill. The second one disappeared before we could find appropriate weapons. You can imagine how I felt about having to sleep just 1 meter from where we last saw it… But all in all I can recommend this hostel if you like a private room. The employees there were also very friendly and helpful.

 

After I had left back to Taichung, Magalie and Leila tried the Yesinn @Causeway Bay hostel and really liked it. It must have been much better than the other hostels and there was even a massage chair in the hostel 😮

View from a bar

Food stall somewhere in Hong Kong

The very touristic ladies market in Hong Kong offers many souvenirs. I guess the quality is not very high though. The shopping is made very difficult by the fact that one has to bargain the price. It seems to be normal to get around 50% of the original price. I constantly felt that I had paid too much. But when I asked for a cheap price the seller got angry and walked away from me ^^ I had bought very pretty hair accessories… but unfortunately I have already broken one of them 😦

One of the highlights of our trip to Hong Kong was the yummy food at Tim Ho Wan Dim Sum restaurant. This restaurant is very famous as it was rated with Michelin Star AND it is really cheap. If it had been really expensive I maybe wouldn’t recommend it so highly, but with this price you just have to give it a try! The only thing to consider: Long waiting time! We queued outside of the restaurant for maybe an hour or something. It is a very small place with not many seats. (On the picture above you can see us with 2 of the 3 deserts the restaurant offers.)

Fitting to the topic of food: We also went to a special dessert restaurant in Hong Kong: Chung Kee dessert. There one apparently also has to queue usually. But we were lucky and got a seat without any waiting time.

 

 

A place you shouldn’t miss in Hong Kong is Sushi One – we just loved it! That really was the best Sushi I ever had. And the good thing: After 10 pm you get 50% on most Sushi! But there is a minimum charge per person of 80 Hong Kong dollars. So be aware that you have to spend it, 50 % or not. But including the 50 % offer you can get a lot of Sushi for 80 dollar! 🙂
We actually weren’t aware of that minimum charge. There is just one sign at the entrance and nobody told us when we started ordering. I had ordered for around 60 dollars, so I could have ordered the missing 20 dollars without trouble. But my friends had just wanted to try a bit and were upset by the surprising minimum charge. They then discussed with the waiter and finally they let us go without the minimum charge. 😉

So besides eating and shopping, what did we do in Hong Kong?

For one day, we went by cable car to Lantau island. The island is very touristic and might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The view from the cable car is really nice, but we had to queue an eternity to get in the cable car… At least we got a bit of “extra time” for our trip in the cable car: Just as we were above the water, the cable car stopped… There was some kind of signal problem. And it took the cable car a few attempts to start again. In case you ever want to visit Lantau island: You do not have to take the cable car to go and to come back – going by bus is cheaper! We just bought a one way ticket for the cable car and had no problem to take a bus to come back.

On the way to the cable car station

Beautiful view from the cable car

And the view in the cable car 😉

We also went to Star Avenue in Hong Kong to watch a light show they have every evening. The light show is at 8 pm every day.

Even if it is not a main attraction of Hong Kong, we also visited a beach:
The beach was nothing special, but it was nice to relax. The food there was really expensive.

On my last evening in Hong Kong we ate yummy indian food. In Taichung we had found it a bit difficult to find indian restaurants, so we were really happy about the opportunity to eat there in Hong Kong. Also I was totally excited about the chance to drink a “salted Lassi”. That is a yoghurt drink with salt. In Taiwan yoghurt is always with sugar, I really miss natural or salted yoghurt.

Now that I overcame my laziness to write about Hong Kong, there are many other blog posts waiting to be written. 😉 For example about food in Taiwan! And about university: We just have midterm week where some assignments and presentations are due.

But for today I spend enough time in front of my computer – I will go to a Yoga class now 🙂
(Last week I managed to go to Yoga 3 times!!)