Monday, June 4, 2007
After our South side adventure at Hong Kong Island last night we decided to go to Times Square (a mall located in the Central district). This is where you can find a food court, in the basement of Lane Crawford and right next to the huge City Super (high class) grocery. The food court has Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and some other Asian cuisine (no Filipino). You choose the meal, pay at the central cashier and return to pick up your food. This place gets busy during the weekends and during lunch and dinner. As I mentioned before, the stores and restaurants/food courts open late here (if you wish to have breakfast your best luck will be Starbucks, Pret A Manger, McDonald's, and a DimSum place).
We returned back to the Mirador Mansion around 8 p.m. and decided to just rest for the day. I have to say, our accommodation here in Hong Kong is really not the greatest. First of all, the Mirador Mansion looks like the oldest and rattiest building along Nathan Road. It's next to Holiday Inn and the Chunking Mansion (which is slightly better looking).
At the bottom floor of this building are vendor stalls (same with any other building with apartments above). At Mirador and Chunking you'd see lots of Indians and Africans loittering around the area trying to sell Rolex watches to tourists. Fortunately, we look Asian so we do not get harrassed.
The lifts (elevators) serve either odd or even floors. We're on the 8th floor, so if we took the odd we'd have to exit on the 9th and take the stairs down. Our first experience here was at the center lift where lots of people were waiting. It was so hot and crowded that it felt like we were in a project somewhere in Manhattan. Also, the lifts nearest our room closes at 10 p.m. There was one night where we returned past 10 p.m. and had to use the central lift. We got to the 8th floor along with 2 women and encountered this African in the dark corridor of the building. It was a bit scary that we walked fast past the guy and the women to get to the other side of the building. After that I told Peter to make sure we return before 10 p.m.
Other than that, this place is a cheap place to crash. You get clean towels and your trash bins empty everyday. You also get complimentary filtered water outside the corridor and laundry service for a fee. We just didn't like their "bait and switch" tactic.
Today we had a good dim sum breakfast at a nearby basement restaurant. A good number of Chinese were there having "yum cha" or tea with dim sum. We were hoping to see those carts filled with bamboo steamer baskets where we can choose what to eat but apparently they do not do that here in Hong Kong. You are given a sheet of paper with all the dim sum and other dishes from which you write the quantity of your choice. The excitement of seeing and picking what looks interesting and yummy is gone. Although they give you a picture album of the choices, it's still not the same.
We had the fried bean curd with meat and mushrooms, the char siu bao, the fried taro with meat, the shrimp and scallops dumplings and custard dumplings - all for only $10.85 (with tea for two). It was good breakfast!
Leaving the restaurant we headed to the Harbor to catch the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island - for only 2.20HKD, 8-10 minute ride. It is very easy to catch and not too crowded compared to the Subway. We took the ferry to Wan Chai and walked to the Convention Center to see the Hand Over Obelisk which marked the hand over of Hong Kong back to China. (We missed it when we went to see the Golden Bauhinia, it is located on the opposite side).
We walked through the Convention Center, which was open to people just as an access to get to the other buildings and the MTR (Metro Transit Railway). We try to take advantage of these access places to keep us cool. (I should mention that the weather here right now is much better from when we arrived, it's slightly breezy at some areas and the heat is very much bearable, the clouds are very healthy and the haze is not as thick, and it's supposed to rain - we learned from watching the news that this is kind of unusual around this time. How wonderful for us.)
We then took the Subway to get to Causeway Bay to check out the Noon Day Gun, but we couldn't find the underground walkway passage to cross the street to get there, so we just had a snack at Honeymoon Dessert (I had the Snow White Sag0 - dragon fruit seeds with banana, mango, coconut milk ice, kaong, and lychee; Peter had the walnut and almond soup - just pureed and cold) at the World Trade Center building.
After our cooling off snack, we took the electric tram to Happy Valley race course. It was not too far from where we came from, about 5-10 minutes ride. We were thinking this place was a lot bigger and was farther from the city. It's nestled in between highrises and cemeteries. Peter took a quick nap at the park near the race course before we took the tram to return to Wan Chai.
From Wan Chai we took the ferry back to Tsim Sha Tsui and now here we are at this Internet Cafe right at the harbor.
After our South side adventure at Hong Kong Island last night we decided to go to Times Square (a mall located in the Central district). This is where you can find a food court, in the basement of Lane Crawford and right next to the huge City Super (high class) grocery. The food court has Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and some other Asian cuisine (no Filipino). You choose the meal, pay at the central cashier and return to pick up your food. This place gets busy during the weekends and during lunch and dinner. As I mentioned before, the stores and restaurants/food courts open late here (if you wish to have breakfast your best luck will be Starbucks, Pret A Manger, McDonald's, and a DimSum place).
We returned back to the Mirador Mansion around 8 p.m. and decided to just rest for the day. I have to say, our accommodation here in Hong Kong is really not the greatest. First of all, the Mirador Mansion looks like the oldest and rattiest building along Nathan Road. It's next to Holiday Inn and the Chunking Mansion (which is slightly better looking).
At the bottom floor of this building are vendor stalls (same with any other building with apartments above). At Mirador and Chunking you'd see lots of Indians and Africans loittering around the area trying to sell Rolex watches to tourists. Fortunately, we look Asian so we do not get harrassed.
The lifts (elevators) serve either odd or even floors. We're on the 8th floor, so if we took the odd we'd have to exit on the 9th and take the stairs down. Our first experience here was at the center lift where lots of people were waiting. It was so hot and crowded that it felt like we were in a project somewhere in Manhattan. Also, the lifts nearest our room closes at 10 p.m. There was one night where we returned past 10 p.m. and had to use the central lift. We got to the 8th floor along with 2 women and encountered this African in the dark corridor of the building. It was a bit scary that we walked fast past the guy and the women to get to the other side of the building. After that I told Peter to make sure we return before 10 p.m.
Other than that, this place is a cheap place to crash. You get clean towels and your trash bins empty everyday. You also get complimentary filtered water outside the corridor and laundry service for a fee. We just didn't like their "bait and switch" tactic.
Today we had a good dim sum breakfast at a nearby basement restaurant. A good number of Chinese were there having "yum cha" or tea with dim sum. We were hoping to see those carts filled with bamboo steamer baskets where we can choose what to eat but apparently they do not do that here in Hong Kong. You are given a sheet of paper with all the dim sum and other dishes from which you write the quantity of your choice. The excitement of seeing and picking what looks interesting and yummy is gone. Although they give you a picture album of the choices, it's still not the same.
We had the fried bean curd with meat and mushrooms, the char siu bao, the fried taro with meat, the shrimp and scallops dumplings and custard dumplings - all for only $10.85 (with tea for two). It was good breakfast!
Leaving the restaurant we headed to the Harbor to catch the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island - for only 2.20HKD, 8-10 minute ride. It is very easy to catch and not too crowded compared to the Subway. We took the ferry to Wan Chai and walked to the Convention Center to see the Hand Over Obelisk which marked the hand over of Hong Kong back to China. (We missed it when we went to see the Golden Bauhinia, it is located on the opposite side).
We walked through the Convention Center, which was open to people just as an access to get to the other buildings and the MTR (Metro Transit Railway). We try to take advantage of these access places to keep us cool. (I should mention that the weather here right now is much better from when we arrived, it's slightly breezy at some areas and the heat is very much bearable, the clouds are very healthy and the haze is not as thick, and it's supposed to rain - we learned from watching the news that this is kind of unusual around this time. How wonderful for us.)
We then took the Subway to get to Causeway Bay to check out the Noon Day Gun, but we couldn't find the underground walkway passage to cross the street to get there, so we just had a snack at Honeymoon Dessert (I had the Snow White Sag0 - dragon fruit seeds with banana, mango, coconut milk ice, kaong, and lychee; Peter had the walnut and almond soup - just pureed and cold) at the World Trade Center building.
After our cooling off snack, we took the electric tram to Happy Valley race course. It was not too far from where we came from, about 5-10 minutes ride. We were thinking this place was a lot bigger and was farther from the city. It's nestled in between highrises and cemeteries. Peter took a quick nap at the park near the race course before we took the tram to return to Wan Chai.
From Wan Chai we took the ferry back to Tsim Sha Tsui and now here we are at this Internet Cafe right at the harbor.
posted by Mimi | 9:43 PM
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