Category: Hong Kong

HK: obligatory money shot

Here are the common HK coins and bills.
Well, the HK$10 coin is old as an equivalent bill has replaced it.
Also, I received an old HK$20 bill, so I made an old vs new comparison too.

Update: there are actually different bank notes and coins issued by 3 banks (like in Scotland). Also, there is a HK$1000 note but I wouldn’t call it common as it didn’t cross my hands.

And yes, the currency is a little too big to fit comfortably in my walled (it’s taller than US/Cdn bills)

Note the newer HK$10 bill is plastic.

HK: will it be sunny today or won’t it?

The weather forecast (online) is still calling for very sunny weather today. I see dark clouds over The Peak.
So which one is it? Maybe it will be sunny later today…

I was going to do some require-good-weather trips today (up The Peak and either a bus ride to Stanley Park on the south side of the island or a trip to Sunset Peak on Lantau Island), but if it doesn’t clear up soon, I’ll have to go with Plan B and see some sights in the New Territories (like a centuries-old walled village) and Kowloon.

Though I was going to save Kowloon for tomorrow when the museums are free (and most of the museums seem to be in Kowloon).

So far the weather has been quite cooperative, in that there have only been a few brief sprinkles (vs the low-chance-of thunderstorms called for)

Update: no it wasn’t sunny. It did sprinkle a little in the late afternoon. Even the MTR entrance showed the rainy forecast and temp on the digital display above the entrance turnstyles.

HK: breakfast (as it happens) and sweet soy sauce?

I try to have meals at different restos each time, so I walked the neighbourhood looking for a breakfast place (that wasn’t noodles with ham). Found a place called MK on the first floor that was very busy with nary a tourist in sight – jackpot!
The menu was actually quite similar to yesterday’s cafe, with a similar setup: look at a menu on the wall with pictures (and English), order and pay up front at the cashier (can use Octopus card, much easier and faster), take paper slip to another line where staff take it and set up your tray with pre-prepared food. Fast and efficient.
HK$22.50/US$3 for a Chinese breakfast set: congee, turnip cake and milk tea (or coffee)
Congee was good, turnip “cake” not my cup o’ tea, so to speak – weird taste, and more like thicker porridge than a cake; for that matter, I should have had coffee instead of the milk tea, but I figured I’d be heading to St@rbucks to do some more blogging.
For that matter, I thought Chinese were lactose intolerant – maybe it’s lactose free milk, or soy milk. I do enjoy hot Chinese tea with meals, but not this milk tea.
It also came with a packet of Sweet Soy Sauce: water, white sugar, salt, soybean, flavour enhancers, wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, preservative
Not surprisingly, it’s sweet, which is not how I like my soy sauce, which is salty by definition :-)

HK: random tourist moment

So earlier today I was sitting on a bar patio having a happy hour pint (not much of a bargain, HK$40/US$5.15 instead of HK$50/US$6.50; some places have 2-for-1 specials) and free peanuts – I was resting my legs after doing my architecture walk and walking back down from the mid-levels, and it had started to rain slightly…

Anyways, so I’m sitting there minding my own business (with wi-fi on my smart phone to keep me company), when I see two Chinese girls smiling and taking a photo of me, and then one takes a photo of the other standing next to me (on the other side of the rail separating the patio from the road).

I figure they must be mainland Chinese tourists (the fastest growing segment of tourists in HK), especially since i was sitting in a bar in a well known little street of bars called Lan Kwai Fong (in Central). And there were quite a few other Chinese obviously-tourists-what-with-their-cameras-and-posing-under-the-street-name-sign behaviour.

Tables turned? I wonder what they’ll say about me when I they show their pictures when they get back home…

HK: Day 2/Sun summary

Here’s what I managed to do on my second day (a Sunday), with more details and photos to follow in later posts.

  • Did some research and blogging over breakfast and coffee at Cafe de Coral (a chain); the millet porridge was surprisingly tasty but the sandwich and coffee were disappointing (I was expecting a fresh sandwich, but maybe not for HK$20/US$2.60 for the set breakfast)
  • Tried to go to the Peak (as you might imagine, it’s the tallest point on Hong Kong Island, just south of Central), but didn’t want to wait in line an hour for that tram
  • Meandered around Central a little, including Hong Kong Park next to the Peak tram (random: the park also houses the HK Squash Club)
  • Noticed the large number (many hundreds? a thousand?) of F Filipino maids hanging around Central, especially Exchange Square, anywhere they can find shade (this is Sunday, remember, so it’s their day off it seems)
  • Hopped on a ferry to Cheung Chau Island for seafood, a temple (home of the annual bun festival coming up), a beach and a long scenic walk ending with a pirate’s cave and a “resting” (perilously perched) boulder (and a surprising amount of trash, mostly in the form of discarded water bottles);
    it’s also the childhood home to HK’s only Olympic gold medal athlete (windsurfing in ’96 Atlanta games).
    Definitely recommended (thanks Yin)!
  • Saw some of the nightly Festival of Lights, where buildings in Central, Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui are lit up in a “moving” light show

HK: Day 1/Sat summary

Here’s what I managed to do on my first day (a Saturday) after the late arrival the night before:

  • Walked around my immediate area (near Causeway Bay MTR), including a light breakfast (not that many options at 8am!), purchasing and activating a SIM card and wi-fi plan, stumbling on a St@rbucks (pros and cons for that one :-), and a light lunch of squid ball soup at a hole-in-the-wall resto in Jardine’s Bazaar
  • Rode the double decker tram (streetcar) westbound to a loop terminus at Chun Yeun St Market near North Point MTR
  • Walked around North Point area, finding the pier where my dinner cruise will leave from later this week, a little seafood market, little a waterfront promenade, a cement dog run park, a green park and another cement park with (Chinese) Checkers players
  • Hopped on the tram to the next westbound terminus at Shau Kei Wan MTR (not much to see there); the south/inland side of the road/tracks starts going uphill right away
  • Met a nice local traveler named Yin for a veg dinner
  • Walked around Wan Chai in the evening – lots of bars, many with “bad” bands, and hostess bars (apparently this is where the sailors used to go, but the area has cleaned up some)

HK: local SIM card and wi-fi

I bought a local SIM card from PCCW the first morning. Surprisingly I didn’t need to show ID.

Cost was only HK$48/US$6 which included the full HK$48 worth of credit, i.e. the SIM card is effectively free (in comparison, I’ve paid up to US$30 in other countries for a SIM card with almost no credit).
This was for the “no IDD” (international direct dial) version, which means I’d have to call through a special number in order to make international calls, which I’m not planning on doing. The IDD version was maybe 50% more expensive.
Aside: the SIM can snap down to a micro-SIM size if needed, though the package made it sound like it was only micro-SIM, which I had to ask about, since I need a regular SIM)

This gives me a local Hong Kong phone number (good for 180 days or as long as I keep recharging the account), as well as data on my phone at a not-cheap rate of HK$3/U$0.39 per MB. The data was easy to set up on my phone – pretty much just two entries for the APN.

For another HK$48/US$6 I bought a wi-fi plan online from PCCW – that’s the one month one device unlimited plan.
Why one month? It was cheaper than 7 one-day plans.
Why one device? I have two (smart phone, netbook). One device actually means one device at a time (no multiple simultaneous logins).

Note that you have to have a local HK phone number (not necessarily from PCCW) in order to buy the wi-fi plan.

And how useful is the wi-fi service? They have wi-fi locations all over the city, including at some phone booths and in MTR stations (and in the Airport Express train, which is partly why I picked PCCW, so hey, good advertising move for them there).
So while I’m walking about, if I see the PCCW wi-fi logo, I can briefly turn on wi-fi on my smart phone and do a quick email download or google search…

Note: of course there are several competing companies offering pay-as-you-go SIM cards; I’m ntot saying this is the best one, but it works for me.

Wi-Fi for 100m around this PCCW phone booth