HongKong - the City of Dreams

Yay - holidays again! This time the Philippines were calling, but as it is a loong way to getting there, we stopped first for some days in Hongkong, the city of dreams (according to Google and I agree:)).

But lets start in Switzerland. After some stressful days and a fire in the apartment two floors below just before I left, I met Mila, Michi and Flo, my travelfriends (and also friends when not tavelling) or so called "Gspändlinis" in Baden for the train to the airport, having a last beer before the flight and 10 hours later we landed in Hongkong. We took the taxi to the Hotel Bauhinia, our accommodation for the next nights which is well located in the area Tsim Sha Tsui, the urban area in southern Kowloon and a nice hotel to stay.

As we arrived around 5 pm in HK, Mila reserved in Daikiya restaurant for my belated Bday dinner. In Daikiya you get all you can eat within two hours for around 30 HKD per person and you choose from a huge card what and how much they can serve. The variety is immense and you get tons of yum food such as sushi, fish and even a delicious corn salad! :) While eating so much, you have certainly to drink something and somehow we disovered the perfect match: Warm Sake which was our constant companion during our food festival. It was delicious - def. something which should not missed out during a visit in HK.

Before going to bed, we went to LFK (Lan Kwai Fong), the party and backpacker area of Hongkong. We ended at the Zinc bar where you got for each drink 1 shot for free.

In addition, Michi got a new friend - we named him Henry, our new mascot for our travels who joined to check out the clubbing as well. Mila and I were in the club pretty fast, the boys had to pay a fortune just to see and decide after 30 minutes to go home as we had some plans for the next day too.

Early morning we woke up and decided to do the Dragonsback Hike - as the other Gspändlinis have been in HK the year before, we were mainly going to do things they haven't done neither. We took the metro for a while (forgot the station) and seeing then that so many people where queuing for the bus, we decided to order an Uber. One word about the metro in HK - it is very easy accessible, the best is to get an Octopus Card on which you can charge some money and also pay in different stores with it (like 7eleven). Really smart, I don't know why we don't have something like this in Switzerland.

Back to the hiking action we got dropped of and started walking. It was a lovely walk, unfortunately pretty cloudy but it went up and down like on a dragons back and after two hours (if I remember right) we arrived on another side directly at the Big Wave Bay where you could also do surfing. How cools that? I love cities anyways where you can get everything, even access to a beach! We took then an Uber back to the metrostation and after being back in the hotel for a powernap, Mila and I had to go for a snack as I have seen some fun food available in HongKong and I didn't want to miss this opportunity to try it out. Check out Yum Cha, we had a lot of fun with our dumplings there :)

In the evening we wanted to go to the night market but somehow we missed the big street and got lost and hungry again so we decided to eat first. An ad was showing delicious Teppanyaki and we wanted to try out. It turned out that it was another all you can eat place pretty similar to the other one the first night and guess what - we couldn't resist and ended up with all you can eat and sake again before having an early night.

In HK it is not that easy to find a hotel where a great breakfast is included, so we were looking for a nice café and decided to go to the Charlie Brown Café. We had some difficulties to find it (Offline Map is not always reliable!) but then we were there and it is a really cool one especially if you like Snoopy and his friends and were heading then to the harbour. Unfortunately one of Hongkongs attraction, the avenue of stars was closed for some renovation :( But no problem for us, we can also do some shopping in harbour city :) As I wanted to see Hongkong from the top, we (exept Mila as she stopped counting how often she's been there already) went afterwards to Victorias Peak by bus (an alternative to the railway, not so crowded, nice ride but takes a while) to enjoy the view from the top which was amazing.

Did some fun shopping up there too and bought some face masks back home where I am equipped to having a beauty face for the rest of my life now :)

In the evening we took the ferry to the other side of the harbour again as it is really stunning to see the big city lights and had dinner in the area of LFK (Moi, Vietnamese, was really good!) where we then go to the ori-gin bar for a fancy bathub drink. The last drink of the night we took at Tutto Bene, a Pub Street very close to the hotel. In bed, the phone was ringing soon as the boys couldn't sleep neither and we kept talking for a while before we had our last sleep in HK as the Philippines were calling the next days.

Getting up early we got a crazy Taxi Ride to Hongkong where we were heading to Cebu next. To continue the reading about the Philippines, click here.