Another new day at Hongkong. Today we were going to visit Peaktram at the heart of the Island.
The tram is a furnicular railway that takes you from the Peaktram station to the mid and upper levels of the island.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that Peaktram is probably one of the biggest tourist attraction - otherwise there would not be this mile long queue for it. Literally everytime you go that side you see long queues waiting to get tickets for it. You can get the tickets online here: Peak Tram tickets. Luckily for us we had free passes from BigBus so this allowed us to join the queue waiting for the tram straightaway.
You are not exactly packed into the tram but you may or may not find seats. Thankfully we did. It's a short trip anyway but it goes up a slope and you could lose balance if you are not holding onto something. Plus it's quite inconvenient to take pictures that way.
The only interesting thing about the Peaktram journey (for me, atleast) was that because we were going up a steep slope, we could see all the tall buildings outside in an almost 45 degree angle. It almost makes you wonder if our mind's playing tricks.
But that was all there was to it. I expected it to be a long journey but it was cut short and we ended up in this touristy peak tower at the top with more souvenir shops and other attractions like Madame Tussauds, Skyterrace etc.
The tram is a furnicular railway that takes you from the Peaktram station to the mid and upper levels of the island.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that Peaktram is probably one of the biggest tourist attraction - otherwise there would not be this mile long queue for it. Literally everytime you go that side you see long queues waiting to get tickets for it. You can get the tickets online here: Peak Tram tickets. Luckily for us we had free passes from BigBus so this allowed us to join the queue waiting for the tram straightaway.
You are not exactly packed into the tram but you may or may not find seats. Thankfully we did. It's a short trip anyway but it goes up a slope and you could lose balance if you are not holding onto something. Plus it's quite inconvenient to take pictures that way.
The only interesting thing about the Peaktram journey (for me, atleast) was that because we were going up a steep slope, we could see all the tall buildings outside in an almost 45 degree angle. It almost makes you wonder if our mind's playing tricks.
But that was all there was to it. I expected it to be a long journey but it was cut short and we ended up in this touristy peak tower at the top with more souvenir shops and other attractions like Madame Tussauds, Skyterrace etc.
We spent some time up the tower, and then took the tram back down.
Once back down, I was eager to visit a vegan restaurant I had earlier googled back in India which served Dimsums and tea. The Lockcha Tea house is located quite close to the Peak station inside a pretty huge Botanical park. We had to rely on Googlemaps to guide us to this place. Lockcha teahouse
It turned out to be this exquisite place with very polite waiters giving you the royal treatment. Since we had not reserved our table (I didn't think it would be such a big deal), we were seated in a corner and provided with our own customized menu card which we had to just circle what we needed with a pencil. As the name goes, LockCha is primarily a tea house. Therefore Tea is mandatory. If you do not want tea you would still be charged for it. So I ordered a King Chrysanthemum tea for myself. My mother, being allergic to tea, was OK to just pay for tea but not get anything. They gave us a bottle of water instead (The most expensive water we had bought in HK :) )
The tea was great but I just absolutely LOVED the dimsums. I was eating the most authentic Chinese dimsums without worrying about whether they contained eggs or meat.
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| That's me handling the chop sticks like a pro ;) |
After a hearty meal (my mother wasn't as much impressed as me with the food though she did like one of the dishes) , we headed back to the Peak station to take the next trip atop the Bigbus. This time we took a bus towards the western side of the Island. We got off at Queen's road central and proceeded to take the famous mid level escalators. The Central–Mid-Levels escalator and walkway system in Hong Kong is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world. It bisects at several streets where you can get off at anytime.
To be honest we had no agenda there except to see what the escalator was all about. We got off at one of the streets and looked around to see shops everywhere but the area looked sort of dirty and the shops didn't appeal to us although we probably covered very little of the area. We wanted to get back but finding a ride proved to be hugely difficult for some reason. Finally we decided to take a cab and just get back to the more familiar Central Pier. I was a bit disappointed at wasting a whole lot of time for this mid level escalator sojourn and my mother was tired. We hadn't yet explored the north eastern part of the Island! So we took our final Bigbus on the Red route which took us along Golden Bahinia square, and Wan Chai before getting off at Causeway. Causeway Bay was a lot more crowded than any other part of the city. Malls were packed and people were literally queuing up outside shops. There was a sale going on in the Michael Kors store in SoHo and you'd think they were giving free MichaelKor bags. I haven't seen this kind of crowd in the malls anywhere, even in India and believe me it can get very crowded in India.
We just walked away from the crowd and looked around a few independent electronic stores before deciding to head back to our hotel.
By the time we reached our hotel, my mom was super tired. It was only 6 in the evening but she was totally beat and said she was going to bed without dinner. I let her sleep and went to the MTR station wondering where to go. I finally decided to go to the famous Night market on Temple street in an area which was called "Jordan". The night market is similar to ladies market and you get great bargains. I picked up some more knick knacks and bags here.
I got back to the hotel to find my mom still asleep, ate some dinner and googled a bit about the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island. For that is where we were headed next day. Click here to read Part 7
Here is the link to the start of the blog: HK and Macau trip - Part 1
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