My family and I recently went for a 5-day short trip to Hong Kong with a day trip to Shenzhen, and I'll like to jot down my memories for me to look back in a few years and reminscne about them.
Day 1
We took a roughly 4-hour flight from Singapore's Changi Airport to the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) at around 12pm. Before boarding, we had some breakfast at a Hong Kong-style cha chaan ting (茶餐厅) at Changi Airport.
Upon landing, we took the Airport Express from HKIA to Central/Hong Kong station, which took around 24 minutes. We then transferred and took 2 stops on the MTR to Wan Chai station, which was near our hotel. We stayed in the Hopewell hotel, which was conveniently located minutes walk away from the MTR station.
After dinner at a nearby eatery, we made our way to the Wan Chai Harbourfront, through the Exhibition station. It was quite a relaxing walk, especially with the cool breeze and we enjoyed the views.
Nice streets outside Wan Chai MTR station
Day 2
We started off the day with some dim sum at a nearby eatery. Then, we took the MTR to Tung Chung station where we made our way to the Ngong Ping Cable Car. There was quite a queue for the cable car and we waited for easily over an hour. The cable car ride took us 5.7km and lasted 25 minutes to reach Lantau Island, where we had a panaromic view of the nearby buildings and mountains. We then toured the Ngong Ping site and had a short visit to the Po Lin Monastery and iconic 34m Tian Tan Buddha statue. There were quite a lot of eateries there, but they were quite pricey. We had some dessert there, such as sesame paste and beancurd.
We then took a short bus ride to Tai O fishing village and had a short tour around the place, where we walked down the market streets and the waters. There was also a boat ride where you could try to spot pink dolphins, but we unfortunately did not have the time to try that. It was quite a different view of the city landscape of Hong Kong we've seen so far.
edit: that night, we also went around the mong kok/jordan area and visited the night markets in the vicinity (didn't really find most of the stuff there interesting/special though)
View from our hotel room
Day 3
I started the day off with a massive breakfast, which could've easily been brunch. We then took the MTR to the Wong Tai Sin Temple. It was quite crowded, with many small stalls selling joss sticks and providing fortune lot intepretation services. At the entrance of the temple, there's also statues of each of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, where many took photos with.
At night, we went to take The Peak tram, which was a slight uphill walk from the Central MTR station. The tram ride lasted only about 7 minutes long, which was shorter than I expected. However, the view was definitely quite nice as we could look across the city landscape and some mountains. The tram ended inside a mall which I did not expect as well as I thought it would just be like a station. The mall had a surprising number of shops, such as many eateries and even a wax figurine experience store where customers could take pictures with life-sized wax figurines of celebrities. My family and I had some dessert from Tai Cheong Bakery, which we had tried in Singapore before and the egg tarts and wife biscuit (老婆饼) was quite nice. I was initially a bit disappointed that we could not take pictures with the city backdrop as we did not get the more expensive package when purchasing the tram ticket. Fortunately, we discovered that there were exits where we could take pictures with the stunning city backdrop without having to pay a single cent. It was also quite cold outside. The view from there really was amazing as we could overlook the bustling city full of buildings.
There's also some bungalows nearby on the hill, which according to a quick search could cost up to hundreds of millions!
MASSIVE breakfast
Day 4
We started the day off at yet another nearby cha chaan teng, where I had a filling breakfast consisting of a hearty bowl of instant noodles with luncheon meat, two fried eggs, a large pineapple bun (bolo bun) and of course a cup of milk tea. We then made our way to the Kowloon MTR station and had a short walk to the West Kowloon station, where the high speed rail was located. We planned for a day trip to Shenzhen as it's close to Hong Kong. The high speed rail was slightly disappointing as I imagined it to be above ground and contain views of the two cities, but it was mainly underground (or inside a tunnel). The train did reach top speeds of 200kmh, and we soon reached Shenzhen's Futian station in roughly 15 minutes. The station was absolutely massive, and honestly felt more like an airport than a train station. After quite some walking, we reached the mall connected to the station. There was nothing much interesting there, so we took another train to the Laojie (老街) station to get to the Dongmen pedestrain street (东门步行街)， which was somewhat of a shopping district. As we were tourists, we got a token to tap in at the entry gantry and the exit gantry collected the token back.
We first had lunch at nong geng ji (农耕记), which served Hunan cuisine. The food was quite nice, and I particularly enjoyed the pork and their steamed rice.
We walked around for quite a few hours. We got a new 28-inch luggage, originally priced at 400 yuan but got it down to 250 yuan (~47SGD), which was definitely quite a bit cheaper than what we found in branded shops or back in Singapore. I also got a nice pair of sunglasses for 20 yuan (~4SGD) (slight hassling too haha), just because it seemed cool. I expected to get quite a few pairs of clothes and maybe shoes, but unfortuantely many shops there were for food. For those apparel shops, I either didn't like the designs or they were not as cheap as I expected.
I originally planned to make a trip down to Huaqiangbei (华强北) to visit the tech stores, but it was getting late so I unfortunately had to put that off to the next visit. After the shopping, we made our way back to Futian station and it was nearing 6pm by then. We realised the next train back to Hong Kong was at around 6:25pm (if I recall correctly) and the following train was ~1.5 hours after that at around 8pm. We then made a mad rush to the ticketing counter and got our tickets, which took quite a while (probably because we were tourists and there was manual entry and passport scanning at the counter). We then made a dash to the queue to board the train. Security checks were quite fast and we made it on time. Fortunately, the immigration processes was handled back at Hong Kong, otherwise we would definitely have missed that train. Surprisingly, we had ~10 minutes to spare before the train took off! Back at Hong Kong, we went for dinner at a cafe near our hotel and had ended the day afterwards.
Breakfast
Day 5
Last day of the trip :(
We had breakfast at a cafe opposite our hotel, then we got some baked goods downstairs to bring back home.
We went back to the hotel room and cleared up our stuff and finished packing, before checking out.
Then, we took the MTR to Central/Hong Kong station and the Airport Express to HKIA.
Over at HKIA, we retrieved the remaining value in our Octopus' cards in cash and kept the cards as a souvenir.
After checking in at the Scoot counter (which took quite a while due to the queue), we went for lunch.
After that, we walked around the stores for a while as we had some time left before boarding. Then, we went to take the airport train to get to our gate (there were hundreds of gates). Our flight had a slight delay as it arrived late, so we just waited at the departure gates and looked at the outgoing planes.
Finally, we boarded the plane back to Singapore.
Although 4 hours seems short normally, it felt like an eternity on a plane, especially without WiFi. I tried to sleep through the entire journey, but woke up after an hour. I then had some light sleep, but kept waking up and did not really rest well. Fortunately, I had the window seat and could view the sunset.
After slightly less than 4 hours, we finally landed back at Changi Airport and I could not wait to get out of the seat. After dinner at A&W, we booked a MaxiCab and finally reached home at around midnight. zzz
Breakfast
Overall, this was an extremely fun trip. I really enjoyed the cool weather and lower humidity in Hong Kong as compared to Singapore, which made staying outdoors much more enjoyable as I did not sweat at all and felt way more comfortable. I would definitely want to go for other trips and explore the many parts of Hong Kong that we missed out on this time round, such as hiking up the many mountains and exploring the other parts of the city.