The Ham Nomads

27 May 2019. <HK> Hong Kong —

In Hong Kong. We were met at the airport by Alan, who gave us our tickets for Thursday's train ride to Shenzhenbei (on the way to Xi'an). He and his driver took us on a 45 minute chatty high-speed drive from the airport to our hotel. We're staying at the Royal Pacific Hotel in Kowloon for about 3 days. We've arranged various touring options around the city, partly with the Big Bus (a hop on, hop off bus tour of the city).

For lunch today we found a little hideaway Chinese restaurant. We only found it because of a little lady sitting on the pavement, touting for business. The photo gives you an Idea — there are two restaurants/cafés advertised with signage. It's neither of those! There's a little doorway hiding behind the work truck (you have no idea how much roadwork, gas work, who knows what else, is going on in Hong Hong!), and that leads to an elevator up to the seventh floor! The place was packed with Chinese — not a westerner in sight, which in itself is unusual, as Hong Kong seems to be a Mecca for international tourists and businessmen — and we got a very tasty meal (chicken and potato curry with steamed rice) for the princely sum of HKD 57, or about $10 Australian.

Tonight we walked up to the Temple Street Night Market, about a kilometer from our hotel. On the way we walked past and sussed out the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station, the new station from which we will be catching the high speed train to Shenzhen-bei early on Thursday morning, on our way to Xi'an. The station is huge, and eye-catching.

Anyway, the markets were alive, full of shoppers, and smelling of all kinds of exotic foods. Warren was able to buy a set of Sony noise-cancelling headphones, haggling the price down somewhat, but sternly resisting the shop-holders pressure to upgrade to a more expensive model (whose boosted bass would have utterly destroyed the classical music Warren likes to listen to), and also resisting the push to buy a fish-eye lens for the camera he was carrying!

At the end, somewhat footsore, we sat on a couple of stools on the footpath and indulged in some of the local food — some kind of deep-fried battered concoction, which Warren washed down with a little of the local beer. And a couple of ice creams as indulgence!

And then back to the Hotel for a well-earned sleep!