Saturday, June 03, 2006
Hong Kong Island
Most of the impressive photos you'll see of the Hong Kong skyline will have been taken from the Kowloon (mainland) side, looking across the harbour towards the island. We started off in the Causeway Bay area, which is way over to the lefthand side of those photos. If that all sounds a bit confusing, here's a map which should help.The island side of the harbour definitely seems more 'western', so it's here that you find the big banks and offices in the area known just as 'Central', and of course big shopping malls. Yes, if you want to come to Hong Kong to shop then Causeway Bay is definitely a good place to start! The shoppers amongst you will be even more excited when you discover that the sales tax in Hong Kong is a nice round zero. The people here seem to be expert shoppers and the malls are rammed full at pretty much any time of day.
We quickly learned that the rules here are very different to those in nice, polite Japan. Oh yes, if you want to get anywhere here you have to be prepared to muscle your way through the crowds because nobody is going to make way for you if you don't! The odd thing is that in spite of all this busyness quite a lot of people seem to dawdle at an inordinately slow pace as soon as they step into an MTR (underground) station. All the signs telling them not to run for trains seem to have had too much of an effect and we were constantly having to take care not to trample people in stations!
Another change was on the trains themselves. The Tokyo metro seems almost silent at times as everybody sits quietly, not making eye contact, certainly not talking on the phone and anyway all phones are without exception set to 'silent'. By contrast stepping onto an MTR train here is like walking into a busy nightclub. Sometimes it seems like everyone is on the phone, there is hardly anyone who isn't talking, and the volume of musical ringtones only makes everyone talk louder!
The Noon Day Gun is one of the main tourist attractions in Causeway Bay and is still fired at noon every day, and we were fortunate to be staying directly opposite. The hotel actually did a 'guided tour' to the gun. We excitedly book ourselves on and presented ourselves at reception at the correct time. The tour turned out to involve one of the hotel staff guiding us out of the door, through the underground car park, and up the stairs on the other side of the road where he proceeded to point out the gun and then leave us. Hmmm, we must be really hardened travellers by now because we probably could have managed that on our own!!
Just behind Causeway Bay is the Happy Valley race course where we managed to go and check out the last evening race meeting of the season. I think were told that horse racing and football were the only things that the locals are allowed to gamble on, and boy do they take it seriously. It only costs about 70p to get into the general admission area, and half of the punters seem to then spend the entire night inside the air conditioned betting area watching the races on TV. Outside the locals seemed to be almost outnumbered by a combination of tourists and expats (for whom it seemed to be a place to be seen). Unfortunately we didn't win any money, although to be honest our chances would probably have been significantly higher if we'd actually placed a bet. We did managed to win two t-shirts and a key ring by throwing beanbags at a sideshow though.....
The main tourist attraction on the island is probably the Peak. You get to ride up on the incredibly steep Peak Tram (the steepest in the world) and then once you are at the top you get a spectacular view across the island skyline and the harbour....... unless you come in June, in the rainy season, like we did. We tried going up on the first night that we arrived and all was looking good until the last 20 meters or so of the tram journey when we entered the clouds! Over the next two weeks we saw very little clear sky but we did manage to get up there and get a few pictures just so we can prove that we were actually there.
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