Hongkong - The City of My Dream (Part 2)

Here we are in Hongkong, the map in our hands is our only friend. I usually set my itinerary before I went on the trip. So basically, I need to know each place location and mark it on my map. After gathering all the information on each place, I could determine which places are within the same district or near by to other place that I wanted to visit. This way, I could visit few places in one day.

Hongkong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC)
Let's we start day 1, Have you ever seen a Mandarin movie that shows a turtle-shape building? Well, that's the HKCEC. I always wanted to see the building up close cause I like its shape, so I decided to put HKCEC in my itinerary. I took a MTR from Causeway Bay (where I stayed in Hongkong) to Wan Chai MTR Station (it's one station away) then took Exit A5, from which I walked to HKCEC, it's not actually a walking distance (it's actually quite far) but I didn't know which bus to take so I walked anyway. As it turns out, it's fun walking in Hongkong. You will rarely walk in an actual pedestrian sidewalks, cause Hongkong designs its city to accommodate its citizen. Everyone walks from one point to another or they took MTR, so you'll be walking through malls, office buildings, even hotels. If you're walking outside of a building then you'll be walking in a pedestrian walks above the street. You'll see lots of interesting things and you'll feel how exciting their way of life really is, cause everyone seems in a fast-forward mode, they all walk and move fast. There's no event in HKCEC on the day I visited, it doesn't really matter cause I only want to see it anyway. Since it's located in a pier, you could enjoy Kowloon's view from it and I end up having plenty of amazing pictures from the place, completely worth the long walk. You could also see a flag-raising ceremony in the Golden Bauhinia Square, it's exactly in front of HKCEC and held every morning on 7.50 am. Since I'm not a morning person, I scratch the ceremony from my itinerary.

Hongkong Park and The Peak
From HKCEC, I plan to go to The Peak (also known as Victoria Peak). Again, I walked to Wan Chai station, then I took a MTR to Admiralty station (it's only one station away from Wan Chai). I continue the journey by foot (again. Basically, you will do lots of walking here in Hongkong) to Peak Tram Station from which I'd took a tram up hill. On the way, I stopped by at Hongkong Park, I saw and took pictures of the famous Bank of China Building from the park, I saw a couple having a Pre-Wedding photo session, I fed the birds and the ducks, I sat under huge trees and relaxed. An experience that I could never get in my home town.

The que line for Peak Tram is very long and it's even getting longer by the hour cause lots of people wanted to go up hill and saw the Hongkong view at night. A little tip from me, If you also want to go to Madame Tussauds Museum of Wax, then I suggest that you buy a combo ticket of The Peak Tram and Madame Tussauds. The price is the same but they have a special line and it's rather short que line. The ticket for the tram is HK$ 33 for round trip and HK$ 22 for single trip, the ticket for Madame Tussauds is HK$ 130/person. Going on the tram it self already exciting because the hill is very steep and we could enjoy Hongkong view from it.

The Peak has lots of cozy and cool restaurants where you could enjoy lunch or dinner, they have a game station (powered by EA Games), they have souvenir shops, they also have other stores, there's a Hard Rock Cafe Merchandise shop if you're a collector, and plenty others. But you have to go to the Sky Terrace to enjoy the view from the top and you have to pay HK$ 20 to enter Sky Terrace but you're welcome to stay as long as you want where you could take pictures or use binocular (you have to pay HK$ 5 for 3 minutes of usage).

Madame Tussauds Museum of Wax
You may already familiar with this museum, it consists of wax figurines. They made the figurines of famous people from all over the world. They have The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Andi Lau, even Albert Einstein and Barack Obama. They recently added a new feature to the museum, it kinda like a scary walk where you would walk in a dark alley and be scared with wax figurines and even real people. You will not go home empty handed cause it would seems that you've took pictures with lots of celebrities.

St. John's Cathedral
I made a promise that I would visit the Cathedral in every country that I visited. So, I especially search for one in Hongkong, turns out it's just a block away from the Peak Tram station. It's a beautiful building, inside and out, but IMHO, I still love Jakarta's Cathedral better.

I still want to share few other places, but please let me continue this in part 3.

If you need more information from the above places, try visit:
www.hkcec.com
www.thepeak.com.hk
www.madame-tussauds.com.hk
www.stjohnscathedral.org.hk


Happy walking travelers...

Cheers,
MissCandyBar
=)