Sep 6, 2009, Day 2: City Tour and Open Top Bus Ride

Although apparently, I was dead tired after the crazy night, I had to wake up early since we had a company meeting at the breakfast longue at the 12 floor of the hotel. The detail is irrelevant for this post so I will skip.

After the company breakfast, we hit the nearby Dim Sum restaurant. There were so many of us that we had to split ourselves on 3 separate tables. After tough time ordering plus in the beginning we were given a menu in all chinese characters, we managed to get our order. I would rate the dim sum quite okay, but I got the impression that this shouldn’t be the dimsum that Hong Kong was very famous of! We had to pay something like HKD 60++ per person which was okay.

Dim Sum

After the treat to our hunger, we started our city trip which had already been arranged by the company, sitting nicely on our coach. It was beginning with boring starters with traditional chinese medicine – but I got my best jumping pic in HK here -, and a jewellery shop – bet the tour was paid by the jewellery shop to bring us here-. We were also taken to Repulse Bay situated in the southern HK island,  where we hit the local temple over there. Not much to say that the fact that there’s some interesting myth about the temple and interesting high rise building with a hole in the middle of it saying that it’s where the dragon should pass according to the Feng Shui. We took plentiful of pictures here though.

After a while, we finally arrived at Aberdeen, the fishing village. The famous floating restaurant of Jumbo is located here. We did a little bit of boat trip here by riding a boat going around the fishing village. You could still see lots of traditional boats in the area like a floating market, fishes being dried on top of those boats, but with the cityscape and skycraper in the background. It was nice, excluding the fact that we had to pay like HKD 50 for the boat trip. Somewhat I was getting fishy again with the tour.

Aberdeen

We finally went to the Victoria Peak, the tallest mount in HK island. From there the view was magnificent, you could see the whole city scape of Hong Kong core area during the twilight. Things got even more beautiful when it’s getting darker where all the skycrapers have their light on. Here was also the home to Madame Tussaud.  A very interesting attraction where you could find lots of wax mannequin, a branch of the same museum in London. We took superb lots of pictures with the wax figure of Andy Lau, Bruce Lee, Obama, Bill Clinton, Einstein, Tiger Woods, and other famous figures. Entrance fee was HKD 160.

Obama, Client, and Fake Pope or whatsoever at Madame Tussaud

It’s night time, time for us to leave the Peak. We didn’t have our ride with our usual bus though. Instead, we boarded the Peak Tram which brought us from the top to bottom just within 5 minutes instead of 20 mins by cars. The tram was one of the oldest Hongkong and was meant only for westerners at the time it was built since only westerners were allowed to stay at the peak. What was so great that the tram travelled with 45 degrees inclination so you were actually like falling while seeing the marvelous night cityscape of Hongkong.

HK Cityscape from Victoria Peak

On the summit, were fetched by our coach to be left somewhere near Tsim Sha Tshui. We hit the local food in the street in smaller groups while waiting for our open top bus. On the open top bus, we could see the view of the Nathan Road from the top while having wind blown to our face. It was very nice. Too bad the trip was so short that it was a short bliss. The trip was ended at Ladies Street. It’s said you could buy lots of cheap stuffs for ladies here in Ladies Street, if you really know how to bargain.

At Ladies Street, I tried the very local dessert of Hongkong, Mango Ice. It was so nice that I really craved even for more when I had been back in Singapore. After our dessert session, we hit another restaurant to actually had our bachellorette to one of our colleague – which unfortunately didn’t go so well either.

Long story short, afterwards we took our trip home just by walking to our hotel since it was very close. It’s the end of Day 2.