The past 56 hours have been a whirlwind of activity in Hong Kong - one of our favorite cities in Asia! Picture New York meets San Francisco meets your local China town and you get a sense for everything that HK has to offer...great food, beautiful scenery, quaint neighborhoods all enveloped by soaring modern skyscrapers! After a few hours roaming the streets of Kowloon (the HK equivalent of Times Square) Carlyn and I were wishing we’d planned a few extra days here. However, we quickly got the sense that even a week wouldn’t have been enough...you have to live here to experience it all it seems.
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| Iconic junk boat cruising through HK Harbor! |
Day 1: landed at 9am (rough morning) and dropped our bags off at the Sheraton in Kowloon. Exhausted but excited, we met our friends Nick & Gabby for our first Chinese dumpling foray at Din Tai Fung, the #1 ranked restaurant in Hong Kong on TripAdvisor.com! I love any city in which the best restaurant (a Michelin Star restaurant no less) is a cheap & bulky dumpling shop serving delicious bao rolls and siu mai for those on a budget. It was incredible! After a great lunch, we set off for Ocean Park, a roller coaster + aquatic animal theme park on the south side of Hong Kong island. Great rides and an even better view of Hong Kong’s rolling terrain makes this a “must do” in our opinion.
Carlyn and I ended the day with a great dinner at another local dumpling/dim sum restaurant called Xia Fei Shanghainese near our hotel. We had an amazing eggplant in chili sauce dish (Shanghai inspired) and some more great “bao” filled with pork & veggies!
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| Anxiously awaiting the Victoria Peak tram |
Day 2: Hit up the neighborhood grocery store for some cheap sandwiches and Chobani yogurt (yeah, Chobani!) for breakfast. Upon finding her greek yogurt, Carlyn swore that HK is the first Asian city she could see herself living in...obsess much? We spent the afternoon the on Hong Kong island (across the bay from Kowloon) walking through expat neighborhoods and looking through old antique and map shops. We then took the famous Peak Tram up to the top of Victoria Peak to catch what would have been the best view of the city if it hadn’t started storming once we got there - oh well, our first encounter with bad weather on this trip, can’t complain! We got soaked running back to our hotel but still found the energy to head out at night for a late night drink at Ozone, the highest bar in the world at 118 floors! A late night ride on the picturesque Star Ferry took us back across the harbor to some much needed rest.
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| Strolling through HK Park |
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| The streets of Sheung Wan district |
Day 3: Had a nice lunch at a local pastry & coffee shop then headed out for an excursion to Cheung Chau island with some Kellogg friends who just arrived in town. It was great to reconnect with folks who we haven’t seen in a while and absorb some of their contagious Spring Break energy. We hiked to the top of an observation point, checked out a local temple and strolled through the colorful port-side town before hitching a ferry ride back to Hong Kong proper. Carlyn and I hurried to pack & check out in the hope of eating one last meal at our favorite dumpling house only to find it closed when we got there! (what restaurant is closed at 5pm?!). Sad but not disheartened, we caught a taxi and made our way to the airport for our return trip to Bangkok. Hong Kong is amazing and we vowed to come back one day to explore more and enjoy all the hidden neighborhood gems!!
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| Observation Point on Cheung Chau island |
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