Me and my girlfriend celebrated last year's Christmas in Hong Kong. We were actually in transit to Sydney, Australia, but decided to stay in HK for a few days. Here's our travel report.
The flight
We're Dutchies, so we flew from Amsterdam (Schiphol) to Hong Kong (Chek Lap Kok) with Cathay Pacific. The flight took about 11 hours. We departed at 1.30 PM and arrived at 6.50 AM (local time). Since I never sleep when flying, I watched 4 episodes of Narcos and probably played 5 hours of Solitair at the inflight entertainment.
Our jet.
The Solitaire highscores, we smashed every other passenger..!
The Big Buddha
Since it was quite early in the morning when we arrived we decided to directly go to Ngong Ping to visit the Big Buddha, Tian Tan. It's close to the airport and easy to do by bus. We've heard it can be really crowded. But we were actually there before it was even open, so we were first in line to step into the cable-car wich brings you there. It was pretty windy, so some exciting ride!
We've spend a few hours here, went back with the cable-car and collected our luggage from the safebox were we dropped it off. From here it's a short walk to the station and grab the train to Hong Kong city.
The hotel
We stayed in L'hotel Causeway Bay, close to the harbour. We told the travelcompany to just be 'normal' on the accomodations. We prefer to spend our money on excursions/dinner and stuff instead of a room where you just sleep. We checked-in and got the key. The clerk told us it was on the 35th floor, so we joked ans said: ,,Must be nice to look at neighbours wall at that height". When we stepped in the room we didn't know what we saw. We somehow got the executive harbour view suite, WINNING! Here's some pictures of the room and view:
There were two bathrooms, a livingroom and a bedroom; except for the small bathroom all had the amazing view.
Things to do
Offcourse there's a lot to see and do in Hong Kong. In short we did the following:
- Visit the lightshow, it's played every evening and there's no entry fee;
- Wander arround, allways fun to just walk around in a new surrounding;
- Go on the longest escalators in the world close to the Central Market;
- Visit the 10.000 Buddha's at Shatin;
- Eat McDonald's at Christmas;
- Visit Ikea, we were hungry;
- Visit the Peak, go with the old cable-tram. Be in time, lines are long.
Feel free to ask if you want to know more about the activities!:)
Here's some pictures again:
This was our hotel, quite high!
Just an alley in Hong Kong.
I love all the different lights in the streets.
Christmas decoration, different but beautifull!
The light show on the breathtaking skyline.
Just another view on the steets at night.
HK Skyline..
You might recognise this!:)
One of the 10.000 Buddha's.
Yep, there's a lot of them.
Small temple at the Buddha's. We saw them on a Dutch tv-show and just had to go there, amazing!
I hope you enjoyed this travel report, and once again: feel free to ask anything you want about this journey. You might even want to upvote, follow, resteem or whatever!;)
Maybe you're interested in my Champagne report too, you'll find it here:
https://steemit.com/travel/@remco86/visiting-the-champagne-area-in-france-may-2017
Greetings and take care,
Remco86
Welcome to HK, I hope you have enjoyed it but why you ate McDonald's at Christmas? xD
Haha, it was suuuuper crowded in HK; so we just needed something to eat. Was quite fun, knowing lots of people are enjoying fancy dinners haha.
Gave you a follow.
That's hilarious. Me and my GF also visited Hong Kong during Christmas and New Years. Staid until the 3rd of January at the Harbour Grand in Fortress Hill.
Nice, did you enjoy? Do you happen to visit Macau? We tried but we didn't make the reservation of the ferry, bit dumb...;) How was NYE in HK? We celebrated that in Sydney.
Gave you a follow.