Day 2 “Adventure is Out There”
When the alarm went off at 4.30am I had managed to snatch a couple of hours sleep but realised I still felt totally awful. Swallowed more drugs and shuffled down to the foyer for a 5am pick up exceedingly grateful, that unlike other Singapore stopovers, I wasn’t facing 14 hours on a plane to Europe.
The bus came early but we had to do the detour to the V Hotel where we waited, and we waited, and we waited. The bus driver was in the foyer and waving his hands about and on the phone....and finally couples drifted down to the reception desk to check out and into the bus. Around 14 people! No wonder the driver looked concerned with the lobby empty. I overheard one elderly lady say to her hubby – “don’t know why he was so cross, they said the bus would be here at 5.30 and we came down at 5.30, it’s not our fault he was early”. I restrained from saying (in my feeling crappy, please let’s get to the airport where there are toilets, mood) that means being ready to board by 5.30, not still to check out – and what happened to the courtesy of being ready 5 mins early…anyway. Bus loaded, off we went for a quick trip to the airport, quick immigration, and DH and DD grabbed some breakfast snacks while I sank into a chair relieved the drugs had now kicked in and I was feeling a modicum better.
I distracted myself on the 3.5 hr flight to Hong Kong watching Inside Out - a fun movie and listening to an audio book I had started on the way to Singapore when my eyes kept closing. Breakfast looked nice but of course I passed. We landed a little late, at around 12.45, and heading to immigration, they had staff carrying out random temperature checks for Ebola. I was a little concerned my temp might be up if I was tested, and I knew I didn’t have anything serious, but luckily we weren’t stopped.
We had lots of business to do in the airport before leaving: to the opposite left of the doors from customs visit the CTS desk and buy discounted
Disneyland and Ocean Park tix – check; at the next door counter buy our Octopus Cards – check; find a shop selling Discover Hong Kong Tourist sim cards – ToTo – took a bit longer to find as this and a similar store were back across the concourse adjacent to the customs doors – check. (DH was impressed with service here - the guy swiftly installed the sim, set it up, checked it was working and handed it back ready to go in 2 mins flat – it would have taken poor DH 30 mins of fiddling to get it right). Then we headed off to find the number 21 Airport Bus. For us this was the cheapest transfer. If we had been staying at a hotel serviced by the free shuttles run by the Airport Express train we might have chosen that option but we were nowhere near any of the routes and compared to around $190 plus cab from station to hotel, the bus cost HK$8 each! There were plenty of directional signs and it took us only 5 mins to reach the bus stop with buses coming every 10-15 mins. The bus was a comfortable double decker with luggage storage on entry level and TV monitors upstairs so you could even keep an eye on your bags. We headed straight upstairs. An LED screen at the front cycling between English and Cantonese and an announcement, advised each upcoming stop. I had printed out the timetable before leaving (in case of phone issues) so knew the stop we wanted and the couple before. From Prince Edward the bus goes straight down Nathan Rd to Tsim Shai Tsui (hereafter called TST). We sent a text to our AirBnB host that we had arrived but was on a later bus than we had talked about as all our business at the airport had seemed to take longer than I had predicted.
Because it was turning into this sort of holiday, the text from our host back to us said the current occupant had not vacated the apartment and he was there now investigating. Oh no, I thought. Though by now I was feeling much better I just wanted to arrive and have a bit of a rest. Subsequent emails to and fro explained there had been an error and we overlapped by one day and he was terribly sorry but he had booked us two rooms in an adjacent hotel for the night, a brand new Travelodge Express, which would include breakfast, and he would meet us at a bus stop, one stop earlier than planned, to take us there. It really was no issue as it was all resolved while we were travelling in on the bus and I credit him that while an error was made, it was fixed satisfactorily and promptly with no drama. The trip took a bit less than an hour and it was interesting looking at the sea and mountains and suburbs. My shutter failed to open properly for this one but this was an interesting bridge.
Another view from the window
We got off at the stop as told and within 5 mins our host arrived, full of more apologies and led us across the road and down a few blocks pointing out all sorts of useful, interesting things along the way. The hotel was in a street just up from the apartment and a little further back from Nathan Rd and was very new. Our host insisted on coming with us to our rooms to make sure they were satisfactory. He said they were nearly full so he was pleased he had been able to find us a hotel so close. As the rooms only slept 2 adults and DD was an adult, she had her own room on a different floor. He also went through the map he gives all visitors showing local places to eat and shop and sightsee. The only annoying thing of all of this was having to come back the following day to do the apartment handover which meant jugging some of my plans but my not being A1 was affecting this anyway. We arranged to meet at 4pm the following day in the hotel foyer.
The foyer of our unexpected hotel, Holiday Inn Express Dundas
DD's room (apologies taken after it had been slept in!) Ours was identical but reverse image.
Views from the room looking west
We swapped spare keys with DD as the lifts required key card access to get to each floor as well as room so we could visit each other and had a quiet hour’s rest in the cool air con. Bliss. Then we met up and headed out for some exploration and dinner for DH and DD. I was starting to feel a little hungry but some plain crackers in the room had triggered new stomach cramps so I figured food was not yet an option for me – sigh!
This area of Kowloon is still very traditional with whole streets devoted to a particular activity. The street our hotel was in, Dundas, was “hardware St” – and we were fascinated walking past all the little shops side by side full of screws, and nuts and bolts, or threaded rods, or as in this pic, manually rewinding motors (now we know where they get sent from Aus! NB I see from the clock this was taken another day).
Back on Nathan Rd I led us a little north to Tung Choi St and the Ladies Market which was starting to get into full swing. We noticed it was a lot cooler and less humid here compared to Singapore which was lovely. The Ladies Market was fine to walk through (and at this time of day – I guess about 5.30pm) not quite so frantic than later at night but we saw nothing that enticed us to part with our $. In fact, it reminded us of markets selling cheap items here, think of some of the stalls you see at the Queen Vic markets or Paddy’s markets: lots of mobile phone cases and swing tags, stationery, various plastic and rip-off toys, cheap jewellery, fake watches, belts, women’s purses and knock off bags, kids bags made in the shape of animal faces or colourful backpacks, lots of T shirts like I heart HK, cheap leather goods and various tops but these were mostly winter weight as it’s coming into their winter and was not what we were looking for. I was hoping to find some cheap happy pants like DD bought in Cambodia and Vietnam but didn’t see any. The street seemed very long and DH was soon getting restless and hungry!
A pic of a stall
We swung around and walked part-way down parallel Fa Yuen St which also has market stalls but then headed across to Nathan Rd and started walking south. Randomly we chose a ramen noodle shop which DD fancied eating. We later discovered it is part of a chain of ramen shops in Asia, Ajisen Ramen. I am told it was OK though the ramen was a bit oily. DH had a big plate of fried rice and I sipped our complimentary green tea and watched!
