Thursday 28 June 2012

Hong Kong to Shanghai on the T100 overnight train

This was my introduction to Chinese trains, and the hard-sleeper berth was much more comfortable than I had thought it might be. In retrospect, that's because the trains from Hong Kong attract a different sort of clientele, because the rolling stock on that route is much more luxurious than most Chinese trains, and because getting tickets was simple and orderly.

Deliciousness
Dim sum from Tim Ho Wan. These signature pork buns are different than your traditional steamed buns: they are baked to a crisp finish, with delicious crispy caramelization on the bottom. So far as signature pork buns go, they blow away David Chang's Momofuku pork buns.

Customs on the train was simple, as you stay in your car and the officials come to you. The train doesn't leave Guangzhou station until after 6:00, which means there isn't a lot of Chinese scenery to see before it gets dark.
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Paddies, mountains, and water dominate.

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The setting sun.

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The scenery whips by in the twilight.

The train arrives in Shanghai around 10:00 am. The last hour or so (i.e., everything since I woke up) is very urban. I arrived in Shanghai well rested.

Wednesday 27 June 2012

A day in Hong Kong: Stanley, Aberdeen, Victoria Peak, and some great dim sum

Stanley and Aberdeen

Everyone says you should visit Stanley and Stanley Market. On day four, my final full day in Hong Kong, I decided to. From Central Hong Kong, the best way to get there is via Bus 6, 6A, or 6X.



As a village, Stanley is interesting and pleasant enough. There are some nice beaches, a temple or two, and some interesting buildings including a beautiful Wellcome supermarket in the old Stanley police station across from the bus depot. Stanley Market, however, is a major disappointment, and can be described as nothing more than a tourist market, selling mainly souvenirs and silly tchocthkes primarily to old, white tourists.

Relaxing at Stanley
Relaxing near Stanley Market.

Altar at Stanley
Small covered altar near Stanley Market.

Bus 52 runs from Stanley to Aberdeen.


Aberdeen is well-known for its seafood and fish market. There are floating restaurants in the bay that are also quite popular.

Aberdeen altar
Altar at Tin Hau temple in Aberdeen, near where the bus drops you off.

Through the temple doorway
Looking out from Tin Hau temple.

There's a fish market on the Hong-Kong side of the bay, a short walk from Tin Hau temple. It's a bunch of warehouse-style buildings willed with huge tanks of fish. I don't know when the selling goes on, but there were very few people or workers there when I was, and you could just wander around from building to building.


From just east of the market you can catch a ferry across the channel to Ap Lei Chau island for a couple of HKD. The ferry will dock at an interesting park.

Fishermen displaying their catch
Next to the ferry pier on Ap Lei Chau island. Lower some money in a basket to these fishermen, and they raise some fish for you.

To get back to the city from Aberdeen, take Bus 70 or 4C. From Ap Lei Chau, take bus 90 from the main road in front of the park, Ap Lei Chau Bridge Road.



Victoria Peak

You can't visit Hong Kong without visiting Victoria Peak. The typical way to visit is by taking the Peak Tram funicular, but you can also take the bus. Tickets for the Tram are 28 HKD one way, and 40 HKD return. You can take Bus 1 (minibus) or 15 (double-decker) for about 9 HKD, and you can catch Bus 15 from the Star Ferry pier. I prefer to walk down to HK via the Old Peak Road (there are stairs that lead to it just behind the Peak Tower).

After returning from Aberdeen, I stopped by Hong Kong MTR station for some dim sum at the much-heralded Tim Ho Wan, then took the bus to Victoria Peak. The tram really is much more scenic.

Michelin-starred dim sum
There's a branch of the Michelin-starred dim sum place, Tim Ho Wan, located in Hong Kong MTR Station. No lines or waiting at this location, and even if the food is a bit better at the main location I was extremely impressed by the food and prices. I came back later and bought some for my train ride to Shanghai.





The peak is dominated by two large buildings that are essentially shopping malls. They don't hold much interest for me, as I prefer to walk around outside. Unfortunately I've never been up there by day, as I believe there is decent hiking available. The city is very scenic by night, when smog and haziness is less of a problem.
There's a pedestrian pathway, Lugard Road, just outside the peak observatory that leads northwest along the side of the mountain, offering great views over Central Hong Kong and Kowloon across the bay.

Victoria panorama
The view from Lugard Road.
Panorama with bushes
The farther you go along Lugard Road, the farther west you see.

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View through the trees, just behind the peak tower.

After walking down from the peak, I took one of the old-fashioned, double-decker trams back to my hostel in Causeway Bay.

Causeway Bay streets from tram
Traffic in Causeway Bay.

Causeway bay pedestrian crossing
View from the tram at a pedestrian crossing in Causeway Bay. My hostel was just off to the left.
 

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Hiking Hong Kong: High Junk Peak to Po Toi O village

After my successful hikes in Busan and Seoul, I thought I would indulge in some of the trails I had read were available in Hong Kong. The NY Times had extolled the options available in the New Territories, and High Junk Peak in particular was highly recommended.

Getting to the start point is pretty easy: take the MTR to Hang Hau station, and then catch minibus 103 from nearby, getting off at Ng Fai Tin. Alternatively, you can also take minibus 103M from a slightly different spot. Minibus 16 also runs the route, but less frequently. Your options should be shown on the map below.



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Hang Hau Man Kuk Lane Park. Hang Hau station is underneath those apartment buildings.

Temple near Hang Hau station
There are some temples and tombs in the hills east of Hung Hua station.

Incense
Incense in front of Tin Hau temple.

I walked to the trailhead instead of taking a bus. Be sure to buy some water at one of the shops around Hang Hau station or at a supermarket on the way to the trail.

Map of the trail, from hiking.gov.hk.

The trail begins
The path plunges immediately into nature, and it would be easy to forget you're mere minutes from skyscraping apartment buildings.

Looking back
Looking back towards the trailhead.

Tall grass
You go in and out of groves of trees and tall grasses the completely obscure all traces of the city.

360° on plateau before High Junk
360° panorama after the first hill.

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The city reminds you of its presence as you go higher and enter open space. It's possible to see all the way to Central Hong Kong and Kowloon.

High Junk Peak
High Junk Peak shows itself.

Tall grass and High Junk
Back into the tall grass.

Starting the ascent
The ascent begins. 

Hiker coming down
Hikers on their way down.


Up the peak
Mid climb.

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Beginning to descend.

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There's a plateau after the initial descent.

Above Po Toi O village
Po Toi O village from the trail.

Tai Miu temple
Tai Miu temple lies at the end of the trail. It took me just under three hours to get here from the start of the trail, and it could be done in much less time if you don't take 150 pictures along the way.

Tai Miu temple is on the right-hand side of the trail, towards Hong Kong. Po Toi O village is on the opposite, left-hand side. It's a small village absolutely filled with seafood restaurants built on stilts over the water, many of which will seat more customers than there are residents in the village: obviously a popular dining destination (but not when I was there, at 5:30 on a Tuesday afternoon). Each restaurant has a display of live seafood out front, and this was the first time I had ever seen mantis shrimp. They look pretty vicious, and they're transported in individual plastic tubes to prevent them from thrashing about. Compared to Jagalchi, the restaurants here seem more hygenic, although the selection is more limited.
Mantis shrimp
Mantis shrimp in Po Toi O.

Getting back from Po Toi O, you can take minibus 16 back to Hang Hau. It only runs once or twice per hour, though.




Peter Lam has some nice pictures of the trail on his blog.

Train tickets for the T100 to Shanghai

After picking up my Chinese visa in the morning and hiking High Junk in the afternoon, I bought my train ticket to Shanghai. Trains to Shanghai and Beijing depart for one of the cities each day, alternating between the two on each day. I was slightly conflicted about which one I should take. The train to Beijing was abetter deal and would save a fairly long and somewhat costly trip between the two cities, as well as save me some travel time for later, especially since I could leave the next day (Shanghai was in two days). On the other hand, I've never been to Shanghai and it seemed like a bit of a shame to bypass it on my way north. Even though I've heard some fairly poor things about Shanghai, I decided I couldn't miss it. (This kind of fear/regret-based decision making doesn't always lead to the best decisions.)

Although the trains from Hong Kong all leave from Hung Hom station in Kowloon, you can also buy your tickets at a secondary MTR tourist office in Admiralty Station, on HK island.

Fares are quite cheap, given that it takes 19 hours to Shanghai and 24 hours to Beijing, with the upper bunk in a hard sleeper compartment being 508 HKD to Shanghai, and 574 HKD to Beijing (actually, I think the hard sleepers on these trains only have 4 bunks per compartment, so they are really priced for lower and middle bunks only). And unlike most Chinese trains, it's not that difficult to actually get tickets. I booked two days in advance without any problems (and my cabin wasn't full), whereas in China you need to basically book as far in advance as possible and hope to get lucky.
Hard sleeper on the T100, courtesy wikipedia.

Hard sleeper on these trains (or at least the train I took) are nicer than on any Chinese train I've seen. They are actually enclosed at both ends, with only an open doorway (most hard sleepers have the end of the beds facing the hallway exposed to the hallway), and storage in the space over the hallway. I prefer the upper bunk, since it gives me the option of sleeping in, laying down and reading during the day, instead of simply sitting on the bottom bunk (with the middle bunk folded) with the other passengers during the day. Since this is also the cheapest option, it works for me.

Tourist Junk moored off of avenue of stars
Tourist Junk moored by Avenue of Stars, Kowloon.

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Another ferry shot. I've got dozens more.

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Street level in Causeway Bay, as I walk home after buying my ticket.

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My ticket. There's often a discount outside of the high season, so I paid only 467 HKD and not the listed 519.

Sunday 24 June 2012

Hong Kong: In the Mood For Love

I love Hong Kong. It's one of my favourite cities; it's vibrant and alive in a way that few cities are, with a presence on the streets that is palpable. It's like a more exotic, orderly, politer, and cheaper version of NYC, with better food, better weather, and better scenery. I'm sure a large part of Hong Kong's energy comes from the huge population density, and I suspect this density would make actually living there somewhat difficult. But as a tourist you get to experience a city where it seems like there is something happening on every street, at all hours of the day.
Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express does a good job of expressing the energy and atmosphere of Hong Kong, without putting too much of a gloss on life there, but it's his masterpiece, In the Mood for Love (probably my absolute favourite movie), that really captures the way I feel about Hong Kong: full of nostalgic charm, exotic and alive, gritty and alluring, even if sometimes squalid, yet somehow reserved and formal.

Tensions with Mainland Chinese

On the way from the airport
On the ride into town from the airport, after an uneventful flight. Best seat in the house: top floor, front row, just behind the full-glass windshield that spans the upper deck.

I remember the first time I flew into the Hong Kong region, on a 2006 Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Macau. This was my first experience with mainland Chinese tourists, who distinguished themselves from other passengers through their behaviour, if not their appearance. Upon landing in Macau, but before arriving at the terminal, there was a mad rush of Chinese standing up, grabbing their luggage, and ignoring requests to remain seated. Once the doors opened, there was jostling to get out, and then more jostling to get into the buses that would take us to the terminal. None of it made any sense (how does being first on the bus, or first off the plane, help get you out of the airport any faster?), but it was serious, ruthless business.

Hong Kongers like mainland Chinese less than ever, and this anti-mainland sentiment seems likely to grow as more and more mainlanders visit and Hong Kong youth become more and more politically assertive. Part of it is because they see more of these 'locusts' than ever, and part of it is economic (they are particularly resentful of mainland mothers coming to HK to have anchor babies, as well as things like milk formula and other foods that may be contaminated in China). Much of it is cultural, however, as Hong Kongers resent the way mainlanders don't stand aside on escalators, push into subway cars instead of queuing or letting people off first, the tendency to urinate in public and encourage their kids to do so (including of parents letting their kids pee in subway cars and wondering why people get upset), and generally ill-mannered behaviour.

Scenes from Hong Kong

Tourist attraction at WTC Hong Kong
This dog enjoys his rightful place as the center of attention in front of the HK World Trade Center shopping complex. While Japanese city dogs pretend you don't exist—or pretend they don't exist— this dog acknowledged everyone but accepted their attention as his due.



On my first night in HK I went to the World Trade Center to look for a duffel bag. My old Samsonite duffel was on it's last legs after 20 years of service and multiple repair jobs to sew up blown seams, and instead of buying a cheap bag in Hong Kong or China like I had originally intended to, I decided to get a decent bag from a reputable company. (The fact that I had bought a knockoff camera bag that looked like it was good quality but had started to fall apart after 24 hours convinced me that it's better to spend extra on another bag that might hopefully last 20 years, too.)

The WTC Hong Kong has both Patagonia and North face shops, and I had narrowed my choice to either the North Face Base Camp or the Patagonia Black Hole, both of which are duffels with backpack straps. The only problem is that the Patagonia medium is 60 liters while the North Face medium is 72 liters (the other sizes are identical, however), and although I liked the Patagonia more I wasn't sure if it would be big enough. In Hong Kong most stores don't allow you to return things for a refund, however, so I couldn't buy the Patagonia and return it if my stuff didn't fit. As I didn't feel like bringing my bag in and unpacking it in the store to see if it fit, I eventually went with the North Face. Luckily, I found a place in Mong Kok that had them on sale—and in nice colours, too—so I ended up paying about the US price for the bag. (Like everything else, these bags were cheaper in the US than in Hong Kong, despite HK's proximity to the factories and its low tax regime.)
International Finance Center
The International Finance Center dominates the are near the Star Ferry pier.

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Sir Norman Foster's iconic HSBC Tower. The building is essentially on stilts so pedestrians can walk under the building, in a gesture towards good Feng Shui.

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The Bank of China Tower, by I.M. Pei, is also iconic but supposedly has bad Feng Shui and was aggressively oriented towards the HSBC tower. There's got to be some irony in the British-designed building having good Feng Shui and the Chinese designed building having bad Feng Shui.

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BoC Tower at upper right and three other towers.

This was the first time I had stayed on the Hong Kong side, at an eminently forgettable hostel in Causeway Bay, just around the corner from Ikea. The next morning I saw some more of the island, walking over to the Mid-Levels and taking the escalators while checking out Hollywood Road and the like. I also did some window shopping looking for CF cards for my camera and battery chargers. Hey, DX.com is based in Hong Kong and CF cards are made in Shenzhen, so how hard could it be, right? Very hard, it turns out. The CF cards in the electronics and photo malls in the area were charging about double the price that Amazon.com does.

I eventually figured out where you can get electronics for cheap in Hong Kong—the electronics markets just east of Sham Po Shui MTR station, like Golden Arcade—but it took me a fair amount of trouble, and even the no-haggle prices at the shops there were no better than you get at Amazon. Even these shops were unable to provide the one product I was looking for from DX.com: a USB-powered AA charger. This is why you should save yourself time, money, and hassle and buy before you leave.

Lippo Towers
The Lippo Towers, by American architect Paul Rudolph. I'm not a big fan, but learning that some people call them "The Koala Tree" makes them feel more humanistic and whimsical than I've ever thought of them before.

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The space under the HSBC Tower has been commandeered by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Occupy Protests with Filippina workers under HSBC
On Sundays the Occupiers in their tents are joined by Filippina domestic workers, who have historically picnicked all around Central Hong Kong on their day off: if there's an open space, they'll put down their blankets and chew the fat.

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Typical apartment buildings in the Mid Levels. The Mid-Levels escalator is an escalator-strewn pathway facilitating commuter traffic up and down the neighbourhood. In the morning the escalators run downhill, and after the morning rush they switch to uphill.

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Walking down from the top of the escalators.

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Well east of the Mid Levels. These buildings are built on slopes so steep that the southern entrance of a building might be on the tenth floor, and the northern side the ground floor.

On my second day I dropped off my visa application in the morning, did my electronics shopping, and visited some familiar areas of Kowloon: the ladies' market, the goldfish street, and the bird garden (which is next to an attractive alley of florists).

Hello Slurpee my old friend
I'm a Slurpee addict. Is it sad that I had the locations of a few of the 7-Elevens that sold Slurpees memorized from 2009 and 2006? Unfortunately, not shown on the map above.

Ladies Market
Ladies' Market.

Browsing on goldfish street
Window shopping on goldfish street.

Night market looking south
Temple Street Market.

Marching band practice by pool
Marching band practice in Kowloon Park, just off Nathan Road.

Hong Kong island by night
Hong Kong Island from Kowloon.

Hong Kong island by night - panorama
The entire Hong Kong bayfront.

Star Ferry head-on and Central
Star Ferry pulling in to Kowloon.