getting the hongkong feel

a much needed quick sleep in our tiny room did us good for the four of us after arriving in hongkong at past 1am through a cheap cebu pacific flight from cebu. the fantastic four consisted of me and my 3 former colleagues who braved the busy and expensive hongkong for the first time. of course, planning had already been laid down months before, even a few weeks after january, the month when we booked our flight. nah, we're not excited, for that would be an understatement! :P

we were all smiles by the time we hit the streets in hongkong on our first day, shrugging off our hostel's tiny toilet, the tiniest that we've ever seen so far and i mean ever!! discounting the toilets in airplanes. well, it was like a toilet in an aircraft with a shower in place.

to jump start our day, we hit off mcdonald's for breakfast which turned out to be our official fast food chain in this entire trip. not only for convenience but it's the cheapest food find we could end up with.

these pancakes were too overwhelming for me though somehow, i was able to finish off everything. LOL this by the way cost HK$19.50, roughly Php117. i don't usually make conversions because it's a headache but since for the first time internationally, it's now all on me.

next up was the octopus card that solves the hassle of train tickets and loose change for convenience stores or even mcdonald's. we headed off to tsim sha tsui station, the nearest mtr (mass transit railway) station which i thought all along that it's a normal train and not a subway! i then found out, that mtr in hongkong almost consists of subway trains. so silly, i failed to distinguish the subway in google map.

octopus card is worth HK$150 with HK$50 serves as deposit and you start off with HK$100. we gave HK$200 to the customer service thinking that we could just add the extra HK$50 to our initial load but he just gave back the HK$50 every time and that was like, four times for the four of us! we did not bother to explain because we surely won't understand except of course karina, the lost chinese in our pack. :D

since we're planning to head off to macau the day after, we then bought our ferry tickets in china ferry terminal. we needed to secure our ferry tickets beforehand for it was a weekend, squeezing not only with fellow tourists but with hongkong residents as well. in china ferry terminal, new world first ferry (nwff) transits passengers from hongkong to macau and vice versa. we did not buy our ferry tickets in nwff's counter but to the travel agency? just next to it.

    Day Sailing Ordinary Class: 148 (HK to Macau)
    Night Sailing Ordinary Class: 175 (Macau to HK)

a total of HK$323, but we only had it for HK$290!

we took a taxi to china ferry terminal from tsim sha tsui station since it's a bit far based on google map and it's advised by the hongkong gurus. but anyway, it turned out be a distance we could fancy walking albeit the humidity that was starting to sink in.

i love their taxis because it's roomy and it has much larger legroom! see this link for the fares. hongkong got color-coded taxis, you see.

traffic violators can be seen in hongkong as well. sometimes, that go signal takes too long to come by. tsk

well, hongkong loosely stands for shopping. shops and i don't mean just shops but the signature shops are conveniently located everywhere, say like 7/11?

the kowloon park which we only managed to pass by several times. and a whole lot of walking then continues...

o-O