what a depressing day, argh. eh, time for the long-overdue account on the hongkong trip which i HAVE to elaborate because it is so unforgettable.
ok firstly, the trip was from 7 to 10 april. ya i know, long-overdue. initially, four of us were supposed to go. (three cousins and an adult, our aunt, who planned the whole trip as a final getogether before one of my cousins go overseas for her degree pursuit) the plane was at 6 a.m. and so we all had to wake up at 3 a.m. which means all of us did not sleep much the day before, and one of my cousins, who had already been anaemic in nature, slept 1 hour only, plus 1 more hour on the plane. the moment we reached hong kong, soon after a nice meal of “zhao pai wonton”, i was accompanying that cousin back to the hotel while the other two went shop-hunting. and suddenly, on the way back, she just fainted, without much warning. should have grabbed her all the way, but i didn expect it to happen anyway. just fell face down on the floor. i quickly called the hotel manager who told us where the hospital was blah blah. according to my upper study, she suffered from jet lag due to low blood count and lack of sleep. the hospital wanted her to have an immediate blood transfusion, which she refused. in the end, my aunt accompanied her back to singapore the next day. (transferred the date of flight.)
so that means, left me and the other cousin!just the two of us to roam the streets of hong kong for the remaining 3 days. (plus the first night where we walked in “jordan” aimlessly looking for a good porridge restaurant.)
there was a half-day-tour in the 2nd day, where we went places like aberdeen, hong kong island, jacky chan’s jewellery shop and a chinese herbal medicine shop where the shopkeepers have unique ways of making you buy their stuff. after that, we were all on our own, armed only with three maps, the “jiu yang shen gong”, a brief guide to good places in hongkong, the “shi yang shen gong”, an imitation map because it is so useless, and the “ru lai shen zhang”, the most detailed map which helped us the most. haha, lame right?!
being not exactly very skilled with our navi skills, we ended up being lost MOST of the time. for example, when we wanted to go ESPRIT “warehouse”, we walked the wrong direction only to realise that after moving three grids of the map northwards, and reaching an ESPRIT “branch” which we thought was the “warehouse” in the first place.
and then, another time, we wanted to “save money” by walking from Prince edward MTR (hongkong’s MRT) to Mongkok since it was only one stop away. thanks to my fucked up map-reading skills, i suggested going down a particular street which just happened to be opposite from where we were supposed to go. ended up at “deep water street” MTR. one stop away from Prince edward, the other side. LOL.
and then we learnt the hard way that Tsim Tsa Tsui MTR is extremely big, and is a twenty minute walk from one end to the other.
but in general, i’m rather proud of ourselves. we managed to visit the places that we had wanted to go in our original plan.
as for the food, we tried:
- the “steamed egg”, hot and cold, white and yellow, not bad!
- “stewed pigeon” on the last day, and my cousin was so fascinated by it that she videocammed the pigeon, much to the bemusement of the other customers in the shop.
- “smelly beancurd”, which i’ll NEVER try again.
- a heavy “dim sum” meal in a restaurant we happened to walk past, probably a bit too heavy for our own good because we had a hard time walking to “bird garden” after that.
- “che zhai mian” for supper in one of the nights; it wasn’t that nice also, or maybe just too unique for us lol.
- hongkong “macs” where they were promoting an asian “nugget sauce” promotion, such as malayan satay sauce, japan curry, thailand chilli mayonaise and singapore honeyed mustard. yea, i am wondering too, if the “honeyed mustard” really originated in singapore? cuz i’ve never heard of it before, hahaha! but it tastes not bad though. but the best is still the wonton we had on the first day, it’s a really satisfying meal; if not for the lack of meal timeslots i would have wanted to eat it again!
as for the places we go, we stumbled upon “temple street” by accident on the first day, and officially visited it the next night. we went to “l—– (forgot name) east and west street”, as well as “women’s street” where we bought a shit load of stuff, for ourselves and our relatives.
we visited what used to be “teddybear land”, before realising that it had closed down long ago, much to my cousin’s dismay.
we took a walk at the “avenue of stars”, a path that recognises hong kong stars in the 20th century that had been very influential and successful, as could be seen by their names and hand prints on the floor.
we visited the “bird garden”, which is simply a place full of very adorable birds, lol.
we went shopping at “times square”,the biggest shopping centre in hong kong; reminds me of taka over here.
we took a trip to “esprit” warehouse (the long way), thinking that the clothes sold there must be cheap. they are, but damnit they aren’t very appealing either.
on the last day, we went to the “huang da xian” temple to pay our respects, and got cheated of some of our money by some old women at the entrance, stuffing all sorts of religious items into our hands, and before we could say no, they were demanding us to pay. and inside the temple, we both didn’t know what the procedures were, i mean we just heard of this place before and thought of visiting, that’s all. so i just stuffed the joss sticks into one altar (which is not supposed to be the case)
places we “roamed aimlessly” include Causeway bay, Mongkok, tsim sha tsui, and central.
on places that we “accidentally” came across: a road filled with designer shops, for the rich. a small platform where a famous hongkong singer (wu hao kang) was signing autographs, lots of familiar restaurants such as macs and ajisen, a small sex shop (not sure if my cousin saw it though), several roadside “lap sap” buo nuo vcd shops, several branches of HMV which we did extensive shopping in, because the ORIGINAL vcds are 1. super cheap!, and 2. generally uncensored. i mean, stuff like “texas chainsaw massacre 2″ and “last temptation of christ” cost only S$3 each, and will probably never be found in singapore, so i bought a copy of them, lol!
hence, we spent most of the time in hongkong buying stuff, mainly on clothes actually. it wasn’t too long before we reached Day 4, when it was time to go back. did some shopping in the airport, bought a few snacks for our relatives, as well as wine, and magazines (no, not those kind, but games magazines. though i was chided by my campmates and zhiyang for not buying penthouse for them lol) to read on the airplane. the airplane had a very good menu, (with chef’s recommendation some more! and haagen das ice cream for dessert), and the in-flight entertainment was excellent!
and then, we reached singapore at around midnight, 11th april. ah, quite an unexpected trip, but definitely memorable.
-flashback complete, back to present-
damnit, my whole body still itches, and my skin horribly peeling from the bad sunburnt we had last weekend at sentosa. (five of us sunburnt, three of us took MC, i’m one of the remaining two who didn’t… *beams with pride*) and what a depressingly enlightening day, so maybe it’s time to sleep lol.
