Last week I was in Hong Kong for a trip. I left on Thursday morning the 11th and came back home to Seoul on Monday the 15th. It is a short flight from Seoul, about 3 hours. I arrived in Hong Kong (traveling alone) and checked into my hotel. I walked out into the city and walked around for a while. The following day I did some more walking around the city and took a ferry over to the Kowloon side and checked out the view of the city harbor. I also walked along the Avenue of Stars and got to see the star and hand prints of some of my favorite actors. The main attraction for me there was the big bronze Bruce Lee statue that had been put up a few years ago. I took several pictures of it and sat and watched as several people would be coming buy and posing for pictures in front of Bruce Lee.
I looked through the hotel pamphlets at some of the tours offered around the city. I didn’t really like them too much. Some tours included things I didn’t want to do and some of the things I wanted to do were scattered among different tours. Instead I decided I would look into getting my own tour guide. I went on Hong Kong’s craigslist and found a couple ads for tour guides. I contacted a couple and heard back from one guy. He is a certified tour guide for Hong Kong and does it on the side for fun and a little bit of money. Saturday he met me at the hotel and took me to a restaurant well known in Hong Kong for serving the best milke tea around. They have their own secret way of doing it, which includes straining it through a pair of pantyhose.
We then headed to the south part of the island and checked out the beaches. Then went to the Aberdeen fishing village and took a little ride in the water over to the Jumbo seafood restaurant, it was in a James Bond movie. After that he took me to a restaurant where I could eat some goose. I heard it was really good, and it was. You get a combination of light and dark meat, and the fat tastes so sweet and its incredibly soft. He then took me to a popular bar area in Hong Kong and we had a couple Tsingtao beers.
Sunday we met up and ate at a good dim sum restaurant. The food there was incredible. Every item we ordered was just incredibly good. Except… the jelly fish. I wasn’t a fan of the jelly fish. It was just the white jelly fish chopped up. Some parts of it were soft and chewy while other parts were crunchy. I didn’t like it much. But everything else was just incredible. Then we headed off to go see a couple temples. One was a Buddhist temple and the other was a Taoist temple. I enjoyed seeing both of them. We then headed into the center of Kowloon shopping area. Here they have basically everything in the world. It was incredibly crowded too, reminded me of Seoul.
Later we headed up to Victoria’s peak. The one place that everyone who has been to Hong Kong has told me to see. Even my tour guide told me this is the best place of all. You go up a tram that takes you up the hill at a 45 degree angle. You get to see all of Hong Kong harbor and Kowloon. It is an incredible view.
The trip was great. I got to see so much stuff in a short time thanks to my tour guide. I felt like I was visiting Hong Kong Anthony Bourdain style. I got to see the great sites and eat great food, thanks to a local with a lot of Hong Kong knowledge, experience and culinary taste. Thanks to Chiho Leung for showing me around.
Here’s a quick little video of some of the video footage I had taken.
Few Highlights from Hong Kong from Josh Dill on Vimeo.
