Kowloon
(Written back around 2001)
This is your webmaster writing to you live from Hong Kong, also known as the fragrant harbour, a name it truly lives up to. Walking along the streets of Hong Kong - rows and rows of restaurants await you. The smell of freshly roasted meats - duck, pork, chicken fill the air. Your mouth starts watering. You hop into a restaurant to satisfy your hunger. That will be wonton noodles with barbecue pork on top please. It arrives promptly. You feel satiated. You continue on your stroll. visiting countless shopping malls, department stores and mom and pop stores. Bargains await all around. The staff are friendly and helpful. A real shopper’s paradise.
After a hard day of power shopping, you treat yourself to a foot massage…
Today, was my first full day in Hong Kong. Starting in the morning, I took the MRT (train system) to Admirality station. My first big decision of the day, which of the 2 or 3 connecting shopping malls should I visit first?
I decided to visit a electronics store to buy a calculator - make money conversion easier - how much is this in Yen, and how much is this in Canadian dollars? Afterwards, a quick coffee break at McDonalds - free refills too!
Then it’s off to the Star Ferry to Kowloon. I almost got on the wrong ferry, twice! If you aren’t sure, make sure you ask the attendent if the ferry takes you to Kowloon. [snap snap snap] lots of pictures which I will be sharing with you in the next couple of days.
Once there, I walk around a bit - more shopping. Feeling hungry, I start my quest for a restaurant, unfortunately, the area where I was walking there weren’t any restaurants selling chinese food… so i settled for TGI Fridays.
Kowloon is great in that you can walk from South to North, West to East with no problems - so I did just that. Finally ending up at the History of Hong Kong museum. It’s a great exhibition and I highly recommend it. I wondered around some more and came across a foot massage place Relex Foot Company located in the South Seas Centre. Surprisingly, I was greeted in Japanese - which I found interesting, and which served as an icebreaker and my eventually becoming a customer. It was very soothing - my massager was a guy named Wan - he gave me a foot shaving - I think this is unique to his establishment followed by the foot massage. All my troubles melted away.
After an hour, I headed back to Hong Kong Island to meet my friend at the Quarry Bay station. We did some more shopping, watched Spy Game (great movie by the way; although I haven’t seen a movie for about a year, given the price of theatres in Tokyo) and then had dinner.
Stay tuned for the next update, after visiting the Peak.
Filed under: Hong Kong
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