It might make some people wonder why we chose to do a weeklong trip. I mean what is there in HongKong and Macau to do for one whole week? But as we discovered, even a week was a pretty tight squeeze. We would have been happier with 2 additional days - 1 to do a complete tour of Ocean park and another extra day at Macau, because we spent less than 24 hours at Macau in this trip. It all depends on how you plan your trip of course and it is definitely possible to cover everything we did in 5 days. We were taking things a bit relaxed mostly for my mother, but also because we were using public transportation almost 95% of the time and this meant a lot of walking and sometimes trying to figure out the locations as even google maps confuse at times.
Our flight was around 2.15 in the morning (It was delayed by about half an hour). We landed at about 10 in the morning (local time). Immigration and Visa stamping were a breeze and we were finally in Hongkong! After collecting our bags, we went over to the Airport express counter. The Airport express is a super fast train that takes one from the airport to certain points within the city. At these points, there are free shuttle buses that take you to various listed hotels. I had already made my research in advance and the hotel we had booked was listed.
Link to understand the Airport express better: http://www.hongkong.net/transportation/to-from-airport/airport-express
The Airport express tickets cost us 150 HK$ for 2 of us. We also procured two Octopus cards at the same counter and that was 150 HK$ each. The Octopus cards are useful if you expect to use the public transportation a lot. It can be used to swipe your entry and exit at MRT stations, buses etc. Some stores even accept payments with them.
Coming back to the Airport express, most other tourists around us seemed to prefer to take the taxi and so did my mom but I insisted on this, and later even she agreed that this was a much better and cooler ride. It took us less than half an hour to reach Kowloon station. The view outside gave us our first glimpse of this magnificent city. Once there, we took our free shuttle to the hotel.
The flip side to reaching early was that we had to wait for a while to check in. We had reached our hotel long before noon and Check in time was at 3pm. So we left our bags at the concierge and wandered outside in search of the vegetarian restaurant we had already planned to visit. It was not easy to find it because although I had already googled the location earlier and thought I knew where it was, being on the ground gave me a reality check. It was a bit confusing with no internet. We finally asked some people and reached the place. It was inside a mall and google did not mention that fact. Besides there were no signboards outside, so that kind of explained our difficulty in finding it. Once we had had our meal, we walked around to see if there were any stores we could pick up bread for dinner. There are 7-11's pretty much on every street, so it was not difficult to find one. We picked up some bread & spread and walked towards the hotel.
Our hotel room was very compact but comfortable. The best thing about Holiday Inn is that they provide each room with a smartphone. You can carry this smartphone everywhere you go around HK, and the calls are absolutely free. Yes, international too. But what was even more exciting was that it came with data. A lot of places in HK have free WIFI but when you are stuck somewhere without wifi and you are struggling to navigate, this is a life saver. Also you can quickly google stuff on this wherever you are. I set up a WIFI hotspot and continued to use internet on my own phone. Thank you Holiday Inn for this handy device. It was such a blessing!
We slept for a bit after check in and later in the evening decided to walk around and explore the Tsim sha tsui area. We wanted to visit Avenue of stars but it was closed for the season, and ended up visiting Garden of stars. It is just an elevated footpath with paintings of celebs splashed across the walls, but the view of the HK skyline from here is breathtaking. Especially at night time.
Exhausted from the flight and lack of sleep inflight, we called it a day and went to bed. Next day we were going to Disneyland!! Click this link to read Part 3
Here is the link to the start of the blog: HK and Macau trip - Part 1
Our flight was around 2.15 in the morning (It was delayed by about half an hour). We landed at about 10 in the morning (local time). Immigration and Visa stamping were a breeze and we were finally in Hongkong! After collecting our bags, we went over to the Airport express counter. The Airport express is a super fast train that takes one from the airport to certain points within the city. At these points, there are free shuttle buses that take you to various listed hotels. I had already made my research in advance and the hotel we had booked was listed.
Link to understand the Airport express better: http://www.hongkong.net/transportation/to-from-airport/airport-express
The Airport express tickets cost us 150 HK$ for 2 of us. We also procured two Octopus cards at the same counter and that was 150 HK$ each. The Octopus cards are useful if you expect to use the public transportation a lot. It can be used to swipe your entry and exit at MRT stations, buses etc. Some stores even accept payments with them.
Coming back to the Airport express, most other tourists around us seemed to prefer to take the taxi and so did my mom but I insisted on this, and later even she agreed that this was a much better and cooler ride. It took us less than half an hour to reach Kowloon station. The view outside gave us our first glimpse of this magnificent city. Once there, we took our free shuttle to the hotel.
The flip side to reaching early was that we had to wait for a while to check in. We had reached our hotel long before noon and Check in time was at 3pm. So we left our bags at the concierge and wandered outside in search of the vegetarian restaurant we had already planned to visit. It was not easy to find it because although I had already googled the location earlier and thought I knew where it was, being on the ground gave me a reality check. It was a bit confusing with no internet. We finally asked some people and reached the place. It was inside a mall and google did not mention that fact. Besides there were no signboards outside, so that kind of explained our difficulty in finding it. Once we had had our meal, we walked around to see if there were any stores we could pick up bread for dinner. There are 7-11's pretty much on every street, so it was not difficult to find one. We picked up some bread & spread and walked towards the hotel.
Our hotel room was very compact but comfortable. The best thing about Holiday Inn is that they provide each room with a smartphone. You can carry this smartphone everywhere you go around HK, and the calls are absolutely free. Yes, international too. But what was even more exciting was that it came with data. A lot of places in HK have free WIFI but when you are stuck somewhere without wifi and you are struggling to navigate, this is a life saver. Also you can quickly google stuff on this wherever you are. I set up a WIFI hotspot and continued to use internet on my own phone. Thank you Holiday Inn for this handy device. It was such a blessing!
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| The hugely helpful handyphone |
We slept for a bit after check in and later in the evening decided to walk around and explore the Tsim sha tsui area. We wanted to visit Avenue of stars but it was closed for the season, and ended up visiting Garden of stars. It is just an elevated footpath with paintings of celebs splashed across the walls, but the view of the HK skyline from here is breathtaking. Especially at night time.
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| Our dinner from 7-11 |
Here is the link to the start of the blog: HK and Macau trip - Part 1
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