a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at February 27th, 2008

On Monday I had a really awesome day. I got up, had breakfast in a coffee shop, hopped on the MTR to Central then walked up the hill to the peak tram. The tram was great, you don’t really get excellent views from the journey, but going up a 45 degree hill is impressive enough. And it was only HK$48 for a return ticket with entry to the terrace on the peak tower.

Upon arrival at the peak tower you’re in a shopping mall (which is what happens when you get off pretty much any public transport in HK) and go up a load of escalators until you’re on the open air terrace and surrounded by fellow tourists, all taking pictures and asking people to take pictures of them. I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to be impressed/envious of the pop out and flip screen on my camera, which is perfect for trying to take pictures of yourself.

I thought I’d treat myself and go to one of the restaurants since I’d read somewhere that the food was a lot better than you’d expect from a tourist destination. I first went into a cantonese restaurant but they couldn’t offer me a table with a view, so I left, what’s the point of eating at the peak if you can’t see the view? So instead I went to Japanese restaurant that was really, really good. That pic above shows off the raw scallop and pomelo salad and the ridiculously nice view I had from my table by the window.

This is the second course, a massive prawn and a small salmon fillet that I think were just fried with a little soy.

Third course: Thinly sliced beef stuffed with spring onions, and some fired mushrooms, a tomato, and a baby corn cob. There was fried rice and miso soup too, but this pic looked better. Total cost of the lunch with tea, a coke and a tip HK$282 (my highest yet! but still just £20ish)

Then I went down to Two IFC tower (currently the tallest building in HK) and went to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s exhibition, which I had no interest in, but I wanted to see the view from the 55th floor, it was great, but not many of the pics came out well because of lots of window light reflections. Then I wandered around the posh shops on Queens Road Central and went into the A Bathing Ape shop there, was tempted to try on some trainers even though they were £100 but just bought their Spring/Summer 08 magazine instead. After that I headed back to the hotel for a bit to rest my feet before heading out again.

I got the train back to Central and took the famous Star Ferry over to Tsim Sha Tsui (just HK$2.2 for the upper deck, though I’ve now found that the HK$1.7 lower deck has better views) for the “symphony of lights show” which is basically 33 of the skyscrapers around the bay lighting up to music. It was a lot of fun although the music that they played to accompany it was pretty cheesy. I hung around for a while afterwards taking lots of photos and then walked up the ‘Avenue of the Stars’, which is the Asian equivalent of the Hollywood walk of fame.

My gudiebook recommended a shanghaiese restaurant that was fairly close by, though unfortunately located just off Nathan Rd, an area where everyone asks if you want to buy a fake watch. I guess me wearing a t-shirt that had a watch pattern on it wasn’t helping my situation though. The restaurant was one of the underground ones that are really prevalent in HK but I usually wouldn’t go in because I couldn’t look in to see whether it was decent. It was decent, quite swanky in fact, and I thought I’d take it as an opportunity to see what a real sweet and sour pork tasted like… good. It was quite odd though, the accompanying the pork were small santini tomatoes, melon, and chinese gooseberries. Admittedly, it all worked very well, I even enjoyed the tomatoes, and the rice was great too. I think it cost about HK$200 with a beer and some really nice tea.

Now that was a great day.