An unforgettable trip to Hong Kong!
Hong Kong 2013
Start
Two years ago, we suggested to a friend that we go to the lake, but she replied, “I’d rather go to Hong Kong! ” " That’s when the thought of the trip lurked in my head. There was only a matter of time left. Sitting one night and looking through ticket prices, I find relatively inexpensive tickets to Hong Kong. I type into Google “Why go to Hong Kong? ” in response I receive “Because it is visa-free” and “It’s so cool there, I really want to come back. ” I turned to Dasha and said that I had a great idea to go to one visa-free country - Hong Kong, at that very moment the final decision was made, and a day later I already had tickets in hand, 66 days remained before the trip. After Googling a little more, we found out that Hong Kong will only be the end point of our journey. And so on the road, no luggage, only hand luggage!
Road
Aeroflot met our hopes, and we flew in an elite aircraft with all the amenities. Despite the long journey crossing 6 time zones, it was somehow impossible to sleep. In a cozy armchair, listening to different films with headphones in our ears, we savored the upcoming trip. The kingdom of night had come overboard, and there was an ocean of a billion stars all around. Various constellations enchanted with their brilliance, and our ship hovered above the foggy clouds as if over an abyss. From time to time the same ships sailed towards the meeting. I was so fascinated by the spectacle that it would have been simply impossible to go to sleep. A fabulous atmosphere that simply cannot be conveyed. But now the distance covered is 8.000 km, and the outlines of Chinese islands and greenery appear in the daytime fog. Having arrived at the airport, we went through the transit area to the TurboJet terminal for the ferry. An unmanned metro train quickly took us to the ferry.
A high-speed ferry took us to Macau in an hour.
Food
I always get to know a country through its cuisine; the food here is different from Thai. In the description of the cafe, you should understand that these are not pretentious expensive cafes where they will speak to you in any language, but the simplest street food canteens, we love them very much. There are no usual Thai noodles here, but there are dinsams, manti, rice noodles and various meat masterpieces. Portions in cafes are always large, when ordering a portion you don’t have to worry about being hungry, but ordering it is more difficult. At best, the menu will have English words. In one of the cafes, Dasha had to choose between six hieroglyphs, since the Chinese do not know much English. Having chosen the tastier hieroglyph, Dasha even received what she expected to order. The most memorable trip was to a cafe in a Chinese alley.
The Chinese hosts simply could not stop smiling when they saw us. Everything is in solid Chinese, no English at all. The waiter approached us. Pointing to the Chinese grandmother's plate, we hoped that this would be enough, BUT NO, the girl was very interested in what Chinese phrase we would eat with this dish, and when she was convinced of our poor knowledge of spoken Chinese, she offered to show us on the menu with beautiful traditional Chinese characters. It was more difficult to choose hieroglyphs than a phrase, but by some miracle we explained ourselves and even got exactly what we wanted. The Chinese in the restaurant admired our professional use of chopsticks for a long time and showed a thumbs up, otherwise it’s not for nothing that we eat sushi in Kiev))) But just in case, they brought us two more forks, because there were also two chopsticks.
It is worth noting that the chopsticks in the cafe are plastic, it is really difficult to eat with them, as the food slips out, and with rice and soups it is generally sad. And so that tourists don’t get too tired of Chinese food, McDonald’s is there in unrealistically large quantities, that is, you can always find McDonald’s within a couple of minutes.
Mini McDonald's with sweets
Since we couldn’t eat Chinese food all the time, we often ate dinner at McDonald’s. Mak in our personal rating took a place slightly below average, on a level with Kyiv, but Mak has promotions, and with the shares you can have a really good and cheap dinner. Burgers are divided into two types, with a traditional cutlet and a spicy Chinese one. There is always unlimited and very tasty sweet pepper sauce for potatoes.
So, we started from Taipa Island.
Taipa Island
Chinese Las Vegas immediately captivated us with its beauty and expensive pathos. After checking into a hard rock hotel and receiving our gift package, we went to sleep soundly for a walk around the city.
Pleasant warm air with a sweetish aroma gently enveloped us, the heat made it clear that we needed to change into very light clothes. Everything on the island is very beautiful and unique: luxurious lobbies in expensive hotels with fluffy carpets, high-rise buildings with beautiful lighting, playing music, shining torches and expensive cars.
At the entrance to the complexes, concierges in white gloves open the door and gently invite you in; when they see you for the first time, they may ask how you are doing and whether this is your first time in Macau. Our hotel was located in the City of Dreams complex.
Having become acquainted with the beauty of the complex, we went to the park and the village of Koloan. According to the map, the village was in the forest, but in fact the forest turned out to be a large mountain. But for us young people) Uphill, uphill! After walking around the Seac Pai Van park, we began our climb. Perhaps it was not very difficult for a person with fresh energy, but after 26 hours without sleep, the climb seemed unreal, especially when you see the Chinese temple (the main attraction) through the cliff, the morale begins to fade.
But in just a couple of hours we still reached our goal. The temple is beautiful, the A-Ma statue is tall, the clouds that came right towards us are thick. Tropical butterflies and exotic trees accompanied us all the way back.
In the clouds
After leaving the park, our first ride on public transport awaited us.
A classic of the genre - the Chinese look at us in surprise, we look at them, on the bus in Chinese we try to understand how to pay and where the bus is going, then a little fear when the bus approaches the official border of Macau with China, for which we do not have a visa, then relief when the bus turns ten meters from the checkpoint and goes in the right direction, and finally, a sea of joy upon arrival at our hotel.
One night at the Hard rock hotel in Taipa was not chosen in vain, since expensive tickets to the House of Dancing Water circus were included as a gift, we bought a package here. Although we had already gone through our third dozen hours without sleep, the show was on that very day. When we climbed the mountain, we were afraid to fall asleep during the show, but when the show started, we realized that it was impossible to sleep at such a spectacle. The performers literally flew through the air doing dangerous stunts with falling into the water arena. The arena became either deeply bottomless or hard as stone.
In general, visiting Macau but not going to the show is, to put it mildly, a waste of money. I've never seen anything like this before. Tickets, apparently, need to be purchased in advance on the Internet, preferably in conjunction with the hotel. After finishing the show, we went to get some good sleep for two days.
Early in the morning, having a hearty breakfast with a delicious breakfast, we set off to get acquainted with the legendary Venice Hotel.
*In this case, the word “Heavily” meant that you need to have breakfast so that you don’t want to eat until the next breakfast, the task is certainly not an easy one, but who has it easy now)))
A Piece of Venice
Venetian streets running along small houses, gondolas floating along rivers, in which a Venetian sings beautiful arias in an operatic voice, slowly rowing with one oar, and a constantly blue painted sky, all this is located inside the hotel complex.
Having inhaled the scent of Venetian charm, we went to the spherical cinema to watch the dragon show.
Macau Peninsula
The peninsula greeted us with a good, high-quality Chinese downpour! The problem is that it is very difficult to understand where our next hotel is on a map made of solid hieroglyphs, and it is also impossible to do this in the rain. Fortunately, on the street I caught a thin stream of Wi-Fi and determined the bus number. After another half an hour, looking for the next stop, we finally got on the bus. To understand the difficulty of orientation, it is worth noting that there are no house numbers, and the Chinese, looking at their own hieroglyphs, say that they do not know English. That is, the map does not help much. Having checked into the new hotel, we set off to explore the beauty of the peninsula.
Lou Lim Ioc Garden greeted us with a night landscape.
A pond in which fish splashed and turtles swam, a bridge with nine turns through which evil spirits cannot pass
Bridge with nine turns
and landscape beauty, among which meditation and music rehearsals are held during the day. Since we later returned to this garden in the afternoon, we saw it all. Next we went to the area of St. Lazarus, where there are old beautiful cobbled streets, and the trees are hung with Chinese lanterns in the shape of bunnies. After the quiet square, the world of the casino awaited us.
I'm winning big!
I'm making a small jackpot!
The streets were literally shining with different banners with hieroglyphs and paintings, you could feel like you were in Las Vegas.
The gaming halls themselves have many floors and gaming tables, shows with half-naked girls, Chinese people rejoicing over their winnings, the atmosphere is new and unforgettable. After refreshing ourselves in the dining room and walking around Senado Square at night, we went to bed. Entering the minibus, I was so delighted with Macau that I sat down on a chair in which a Chinese woman of about 30 was already sitting and writing something on her phone. Hearing the crunch of the Chinese phone with the phone, I got very scared and jumped up. I have never seen so much indignation and dissatisfaction on a face at the same time. Lucky it wasn't a samurai. A funny fact is that an hour before the incident, Dasha and I discussed that the Chinese are so small that you can step on and not notice. In other matters, a day later, I also stepped on a Chinese grandmother, but out of fear I hugged her so tightly that she immediately forgave me.
Drinking cocoa in Macau
The next morning began with a climb to Fort Guiya, from this hill a panorama of the entire city opens up, and the sunny weather of 25 degrees, although tiring, is very uplifting. We took a small cable car up over a flowering park, enclosures with peacocks and bamboo groves. After visiting the Macau Museum, we decided to go back down not by cable car, since the park is very beautiful; fortunately, the already purchased return tickets cost only 4 UAH.
I even found sakura in the park! In any case, I thought so until I tasted the berry, the evil bitterness seemed to be trying to tear out my tongue. Offended by Sakura, I went to console myself with peacocks. Next was the most touristic place in Macau - the ruins. The ruins are certainly beautiful, but it’s not every day that you see so many Chinese people per square centimeter.
The most interesting thing is that the Chinese, when taking pictures, take a rather interesting pose with a necessarily toothy smile; more than once, while taking photographs, passing Chinese women hinted to me that I was smiling incorrectly and demonstrated how to show my teeth. There was already street food and a bunch of tastings in meat and cookie shops. In general, if you are hungry, go to the ruins, they will feed you there)))
Dasha is photographed according to all Chinese rules
But among the squares and ruins you need a little variety, so the next point was the A-Ma Temple. What I like about Chinese attractions is that they are all completely different. This temple was located in a rocky area with hieroglyphs carved into the stones and shrines.
A-Ma Temple
Next, there was a desire to go up to the observation tower of the TV tower, but the price of tickets convinced me not to go to the top of the neighboring hill with the same panorama.
In the evening we went to Taipa Island and watched with breathtaking excitement as a Chinese man played roulette with a sum of 12.000 UAH. When it seemed that his affairs were completely bad, he took out a wad of another 10.000 UAH from his pocket and added more chips. In the midst of his losses, he raised the amount to 21.000 UAH and stopped playing. During the game, even the extreme fatigue in my legs went away. Dasha and I virtually figured out what would have happened if we had placed two bets, in the first case we would have won twice as much, and in the second case we would have lost everything because “Zero” fell out. Unnoticed, the first part of the journey came to an end; we had to move from cozy Macau to endless Hong Kong!
Kowloon Peninsula
An hour on a comfortable, high-speed ferry and we are in Hong Kong. Macau said goodbye to us with a multivisa, so we could return at any time. Of course, upon arrival we went to the metro, since the hotel was near the metro, and when we got on the metro, we realized that the hotel was not far from the ferry, but it would still be nice to take a ride in the unknown metro. Fortunately, the payment system turned out to be very easy and well thought out, unlike in Thailand and Istanbul. With wild difficulty we find the building in which, apparently, our hotel, among the hieroglyphs we find the number 11F, making the assumption that this is the 11th floor, we go into the elevator, which does not have button 11, but there is 12. We go into another elevator, we go up to the desired floor. A half-naked Chinese man kindly agrees with his friend to help us; in the course of providing assistance, it turns out that they only speak Chinese, and to the question “Reception? ” “They talked about something and confidently pointed their fingers in different directions at the same time.
Then the third Chinese opened Chinese Excel on his PC and, in a pile of hieroglyphs, pointed to a Latin cell next to the dates with my last name, I nodded. That's how we moved in.
The island greeted us with unusually marvelous parks with spacious landscapes and Wi-Fi. The light show of skyscrapers began on the embankment at 20:00. I wouldn’t say that the show is something wildly unusual, but there are two reasons: it’s free and the beautiful night panorama.
Sleeping at night without windows is epic. You wake up, and it’s impossible to understand whether it’s already morning or still night. A sunny warm morning against the backdrop of a blue sky greeted us with the gentle rays of 25 degree heat. Early in the morning we went to Lantau Island.
Lantau Island
After standing in line for an hour and a half, we set off on an exciting trip along the cable car, almost 6 km long, in a trailer with a transparent floor and four Chinese people.
As mentioned above, the Chinese really love photographs, and when I lay down on the floor for a photograph, I received as much applause as Philip Kirkorov did not even receive when he married Alla Pugacheva.
Green mountains, the Pearl River and madmen walking on foot opened up to our eyes, although we also initially thought of walking, but the thought of walking through 5 mountains as tall as a twenty-story building repelled us. At the top, a 30-meter bronze Buddha and a Chinese forest were waiting for us.
We mistakenly believed that we climbed Victoria Peak, even two Chinese women were interrogated on the topic “Ver from the panorama, ” but from their wide-narrow eyes we realized that something was wrong. Having carefully rechecked our routes, we realized that we had made the wrong island and, accordingly, the climb, but fortunately this island was also in the plans.
There are a lot of interesting things on the island, I remember a beautiful tree hung with bamboo tubes and a wish tree, one of the wishes read “I want to fall in love! ” "We hope that Natasha will fall in love soon: ) After walking next to the Buddha, we set off on the path of wisdom through the lightly trodden path of the Chinese forest.
In any case, that’s what we wrote down, but in fact the path has long been trampled down and covered with concrete and asphalt. At first we decided that it wasn’t her, and we finally found a poorly trampled one...But, on the other hand, we walked through the Chinese forest.
Chinese forest
Having taken the right road, we reached the path of wisdom, from which there were beautiful views and wooden pillars in the form of an infinity sign with hieroglyphs.
Having gone down, another test awaited me: to run through a fountain in which jets of water were chaotically beating from the ground. Dry and satisfied, I crossed the fountain.
Hong Kong Peninsula
Unlike the quiet, natural Lantau, here we plunged into the realm of skyscrapers and bustling life. After riding the longest escalator in the world, we went to the zoo and botanical garden, but since it was already completely dark, there was a suspicion that someone would eat us before we saw anyone. Every journey has its main attraction and the next stop was Victoria Peak. An old tram took us up the slope, the climb was so steep that the pressure of the seat was felt quite well in the back. And the skyscrapers outside the window seemed at a strong angle.
Millions of photos to take the best one, then an unusual dinner in a real expensive Chinese restaurant. At the end of dinner, I realized that one of the seasonings on the table turned out to be Parmesan, so there was Parmesan for dessert)))
Our last day was educationally entertaining, we rode on double-decker narrow trams, on a double-decker bus and visited, probably, the most beautiful park in China - Nan Lian.
Walking through the park, from time to time we heard pleasant Chinese music coming from behind the plants. I don't know how to describe the beauty of the park, but we think it's as must-see for Hong Kong tourists as Victoria Peak.
Since the metro line goes directly to the airport, the return journey was not difficult.
The only thing that was scary was the Kiev weather with the cancellation of flights, but miraculously everything turned out optimally well. Our new record is 10 hours and 8000 km non-stop flight.
To summarize, I want to say that a trip to Hong Kong and Macau is really worthwhile. But you need to prepare very well.
Date of travel: 17.03. 2013 – 24.03. 2013
Duration: 6 full days
Hotels:
Macau: Fu Hua Guang Dong Hotel Macau.
Taipa: Hard rock Bought on the City of Dreams website with a gift set
Hong Kong: Tai An Guest House
We recommend hotels.
Tour type: Self booking. com + senturia. ua
Excursions: All on your own.
Air tickets: Bought two months in advance, much cheaper
Difficulty of the trip: 10/10 (Very Difficult)
Recommendations:
1) On Lantau Island, buy tickets for the cable car, there in a crystal cabin, and back in a regular cabin, it’s cheaper.
2) Buy tickets to Victoria Peak without a paid observation deck, since there is a free one at the top, which is no worse.
3) The tram to Victoria Peak is called Sky Tram.
4) The Subway sign doesn't always mean it's a subway, it could just be an underground passage. You need to focus on the metro icon
5) If the trip starts from Macau, then you need to immediately go to the transit zone at the airport and, when buying a ferry ticket, tell them about the presence of luggage, which they themselves will reload from the plane.
