DAY 1 HONGKONG

We decided about hongkong trip and booked the tickets first.

Avenue of stars

View from our hotel room

We finalized hotel only 2 days before travel. We were very confused to take the cheap hostels that are available or to take the high end hotels. Finally after considering the costs, breakfast included or not, area of the hotel ,  reviews on trip advisor, we booked the ECO TREE Hotel in Sai Ying Pun.

Read many travel blogs, and accumulated many tips and information.

We reached the airport and we went through immigration. It was fast moving queue. Indians get free visa for 14 days stay. They gave a  ticket for entry and  no stamping.

We inquired about the bus and picked few pamphlets from Tourism kiosk.

Then we bought 2 octopus cards for travel to hotel as we need exact change for the bus fare or octopus card is very convenient to swipe. Octopus card is 150HKD out of which 50HKD is deposit.9$ is deducted for  administrative charges and rest of the deposit and remaining  value on the card is returned to us when the card is returned. You cannot use 1 card for 2 persons, esp. mtr travel. You can use the octopus card in so many places, supermarkets, McDonalds, every ticketing kiosk.



NEGATIVE VALUE – If the balance on the card is positive (HK$1 or above) but insufficient to cover the cost of the next transaction the card can incur a negative value of up to HK$35 which is recovered the next time the card is reloaded. The card cannot be used for any further transaction once a negative balance has accumulated until the card has been reloaded.

 

MTRs are very convenient, but you need the map to decide where to hop  on and hop off, where to change lines, which exit is best suited for your destination. We never took the ding ding tram. But we travelled to the peak via tram, took turbojet to Macau, Bus to hotel from airport, airport express train to airport from hotel, mtr on a daily basis. Hence travelled in all kinds of transport.

From airport we took direct bus City Flyer bus A21  to Connaught place .

From there we  asked the route and walked for 5 mins to Eco tree hotel.

After check in  we slept for 5 hrs. and then ate some snacks refreshed and left for sightseeing!

We took the Metro (MTR) which is next door of the hotel ECO TREE.From Sai Ying Pun we reached Central and then From Central to Mongkok station. I had read in 1 blog that Mongkok has good places to exchange money that give very good rates!!But the shops did not have good rates. We got to see some street performances and took a walk and went back to the MTR station to take the mtr to Tsim sha shui.In Tsim Sha shui,  we walked all through Nathan street trying to find the Promenade where there is music and light show everyday near Harbour at 8 pm.Not many know English and difficult to find the route.

AVENUE OF STARS & SMPHONY OF LIGHTS

A Symphony of Lights – A 13 minutes multimedia show which involves more than 40 buildings along both sides of Victoria Harbour. It is the World’s Largest Permanent Light and Sound show in the Guinness World Records. In addition to the synchronized music during the colored lights, laser beams and searchlights performance, live narration is also available. The show usually starts at 8 pm.

We asked a guy who  spoke Hindi and he asked us to walk all the way back.We walked and after roaming and walking through subway(which was not necessary) we reached Promenade.Then we took our seats and watched the show! We then walked back to Chungking Mansions and saw the rates in the shops there have a very good rate.We changed our money and asked the Indians there for the  directions to Saravana Bhavan and ate dinner there.We saw that the Pharmacy near Chunking Mansion sells cheap water for 5$.This the cheapest we saw in Hongkong.We bought all waterbottles in HongKong from the same shop.

Then we walked back to Avenue of stars and had  a walk there. Returned to Hotel by MTR.