My Trip to Hongkong

Most of my blogs are political, so I thought of writing a light memoir of my recent trip to Hongkong and Macau. Hongkong is part of China with a special status and it is self governed as Special Administrative Region(SAR) of China. South-East Asia is full of budget airlines, so I thought of saving some dough by traveling Tiger Airways. This airline reminds me of our good old "Deccan Airways", which died prematurely through the golden hands of our desi Richard Branson. Though I see contrast in these two personalities when it comes to business acumen. I think I am digressing, let's get back to Hongkong :).

It was an early morning flight from Singapore budget terminal. The flight was on time and we boarded comfortably. We flew over South China sea for around 4 hours and landed around 10:30 AM at Hongkong International airport, which is situated in an island and offers a nice view while landing. Looks like the airport is built in a land reclaimed from sea, but I am not sure.

We had googled all the preliminary information about the transport to our hotel and relative cost, so we didn't waste much time and went straight to the taxi stand. The airport has a dedicated help desk for taxis. Since most(read all) taxi drivers don't know English and they know only Cantonese(A Chinese dialect spoken in south China), so the concierge desk will write the destination in a paper and we handed over the same to the cab driver. Taxis in Hongkong are of various colors and they operate in their designated islands. Red taxi can operate in all the islands i.e. Lantau, Kowloon and Hong Kong. We had to go to a place called Jordan in Kowloon island. We stayed in Hotel Largos. We strategically chose this hotel as this was at a stone throwing distance from Jordan MTR station(MTR is the lingo of metro rail service). Jordan is just couple of stations away from the city centre central district of Hong Kong and just one station away from famous Victoria Harbor.


Hong Kong has got amazing sky lines and it resembles a lot like New York, when it comes to its bustling streets, narrow lanes, footpath shops, rush, skylines etc.. Hotel rooms are relatively small in Hongkong unless you rent a suite. We didn't want to waste the day, so we immediately left for Victoria peak. We didn't have any difficulty in reaching there, again thanks to google and its maps. We bought the combined tickets of "the peak tram" and madam tussade. There is a nice little history behind "the peak". This is located at a hill and it offers breath taking views of entire Hongkong and Kowloon island. During 18th century, when Hongkong was a British colony, Britishers used to hire locals and these locals used to carry them to "the peak" on their shoulders in a cart. These carts were very much like Indian Palki(Palki is a traditional hand held cart, used in traditional Indian Marriages to carry brides in old days). Gradually Britisher established a tram service from Hongkong to Victoria Peak. The tram goes up the hill at an inclination of 45 degrees. This was really incredible when you see buildings inclined by 45 degrees. It is a 20 minutes ride to Victoria Peak but you will surely cherish this journey. At the peak we visited the observatory sky tower and saw the islands and hills surrounding these islands. We also saw the madam tussade museum. Another amazing surprise came when the museum staffs greeted us in Hindi and they know quite a bit of Hindi key words and it gives a good feeling to Indian tourists. There were only two Indian celebrities in this Museum, one is Mr. Amitabh Bachchan and other is Mahatma Gandhi. We were exhausted by evening and we came back to hotel and grabbed a quick power nap.

View from "Victoria Tram"

View from "The Peak"

The famous night market was just 5 mins walk from our hotel and we thought of strolling through it and grabbing our dinner there itself. Temple street comes alive during the night and it is open till 1 AM. This place is very much like fashion street in Bombay or Amar Market in Jamshedpur. People haggle and bargain to their own capacity here. This street also offers a lot of local, western and Asian delicacy. There are a few Indian restaurants too, in this area. We enjoyed and waked a lot on our day 1 in Hongkong.

We started our day 2 with Disneyland. It is around 30 minutes by local MTR from Jordan. We had already booked our tickets to Disneyland, so we quickly collected our tickets and got into this major and one of the most visited places in Hongkong. Disneyland is really huge theme park and it offers something or the other for all age groups. There are some amazing shows, fun rides, character parades and thrilling rides. It is very difficult to complete all the attraction in one day. We thought of buying VIP tickets, but came to know that they have scrapped such facility and you now have to stand in queue for every attraction. This was a big let down as it does get annoying to wait almost an hour for every attraction. But we also stood rigid and we did complete all the major attractions and shows. :) The day 2 left us completely tired and we just grabbed our dinner and crashed in our hotel.

The Disney Castle

The Disney Parade

With an exhaustive day 2, we wanted to have some light strolling day 3. So we planned to visit the "Big Buddha" at Lantau island. This is located in a place called Ngong Ping village. We took MTR from Jordan to Tung Chung. This was a 30 minutes ride. We then took the world's longest rope way to Ngong Ping village. The length of the rope way is 5.3 KMs. This is a 25 minutes rope way ride from Tung Chung to Ngong Ping village. The weather was fantastic with light drizzle and as we went up to the hill in rope way it was foggy and it was just beautiful. This reminded us of rainy season in Lonavala and Khandala. The cable ride offered the breath taking views of Hongkong airport and Lantau landscapes. We saw the "Big Buddha" statue and it is further located in a hill top and it is made of brass. This was a nature tour for us.

View from NP360 cable car

Another View from the cable car

The Hongkong Airport

Lantau Landscape

The Big Buddha

Next day, we went to Ocean Park , an ocean theme park. It was quite a rush in the park and we again wanted to cover important attractions, so we saw the omni famous "panda". It looks like a giant teddy bear. We also saw sea lions and penguins. This park also had lot of shows and thrilling rides, which we skipped because of rush. We thought of taking some rest that day. We came back to the hotel and then went to victoria harbor in the evening. The skylines look stunning in the night and we also took the famous ferry from Kowloon to Hongkong island. This is the cheapest tourist attraction perhaps. You cross the island in just HKD 3.4, where as in cab you would have paid at least 50 or 20 by MTR.

The tallest building of Hongkong, The ICC

View of Hongkong Central district from Victoria Harbor

Another view from Victoria Harbor

Hongkong downtown in the night

A view from Ocean Park

Next day we checked out from the hotel around 11 AM and came straight to Hongkong Macau Ferry terminal. We took the ferry and reached Macau around 2 PM. This was an hour ferry ride.

Macau again is a self governed SAR of China and offers visa on arrivals for Indians. Macau was a Portuguese colony before it became part of China in 1999. This place is a real mix of Asian rush and European culture. With narrow streets, old churches, Portuguese sign boards, they give you a notion that you are in Portugal but Chinese rush and hustle bustle brings you back to Asia. This place is also called "Las Vegas" of the east. There are almost all major casinos here. We didn't have much plan for Macau. We went to observatory deck of famous Macau Tower. This was situated at 58th and 61st floors. We also saw people doing bungy jumping from 61st floor. This is the highest bungy jumping platform in the world. This was insane jumping from such a height. We then went to a venetian casino resort. This resort is one of the famous tourist attractions because it is a Venice theme resort and they have replicated the Venice city, with water, streets, boats etc. you can also hire the boat service too, but we skipped it as it was too costly. We then hopped through couple of casinos in the night before heading back to the hotel. Next morning the plan was to see old Macau. We saw the famous Senado Square and ruins of St. Paul church. This is one of the oldest churches of Macau and it was built in 16th century before getting destroyed in fire. So it is just the facade of the church left now and it is really beautiful and very well maintained. This is also one of the UNESCO world heritage sites. We mostly roamed around in cabs and they are cheap too. None of the taxi drivers know English, so we always used to carry a map with English and Cantonese written on it. We just used to point the destination on the map and the taxi driver will read it and drop us there. This was great fun to explore a city where common people just don't understand the language you speak.

Overall the trip was a bit hectic but great fun.

The Macau Tower

A view from Macau Tower

Inside the Venetian Resort

Senado Square

Ruins of St. Paul's Church

An Open letter to Manmohan Singh

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

When I was a school going kid, you suddenly became a hero by becoming India's economic reformer. You were hailed by media for bringing India out of her woes and putting her into a fast track of growth. As a kid, we didn't know that much economics so we didn't bother much but as we grew and gradually came into college, we realized how you changed our lives by throwing plethora of global opportunities which middle class Indians could just dreamt off a decade ago. This is the reason why our generation too treated you as a messiah for leading us to the new horizon. We all had mixed reaction for your first term as PM, we all blamed coalition constraints for majority of stuck plans. General election of 2009 resulted in some fruitful results for you and all Indians had very high hopes and expectations. The celebration was very much apparent when we saw upper circuit getting imposed in BSE. I had never heard nor seen any upper circuit incidents in a stock market, till then. This itself is a big testimony of high hopes. But I am sorry to say that hope or expectation is fading with every passing month of this tenure.

With various media reports and insiders' information, it is now no secret that you don't have any control in cabinet, though you officially head it. This itself is a big let down for Indian citizens. Being the biggest democracy of the world, we surely expect our PM to be on top of everything and also have things or people, under him, under control. We surely expect our PM to come forward and address the nation more frequently. This surely should not be the biannual national events on national days. It is not only your duty but our right to hear the reactions and action points from you on all important national and international issues, which concern India. We need little more dynamism when it comes to communication between PMO and common man. This will surely not only come through PMO press releases rather it will be more effective, when our PM, himself, comes in the open and addresses the media and nation more frequently. This is hard to believe that you don't think so or you don't want to do so.

The other important issue, which concerns now every Indian is lack of accountability in our government. Couple of days back, there were two back to back major grid failures. Rather than asserting root cause or giving assurances to the citizen that why it happened and what are you doing to prevent such occurrences in the future, the minister got a promotion and he was handed over one of the most important portfolios of the country. The usual blame game began in India but we are still in the dark. As soon as Mr. Shinde resumed charge of home ministry, we heard the news of bomb blast in Pune. Not sure, if this is again taken seriously. Post 26/11, we have seen at least two or three low intensity blasts, for eg: Delhi high court blast, German bakery blast etc.. But none of these cases were closed and investigators are still groping in dark. This just shows that perpetrators of such heinous crimes can easily out smart our intelligence agencies. One of the biggest failure here is that we failed big time in exerting diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, though we have enough evidence against them for the state's involvement in 26/11. I still remember the incident where our foreign affairs minister Mr. SM Krishna was accused of calling Delhi frequently during his visit to Pakistan. I am not sure if it is true or not but the joint press conference clearly showed that our neighbor had a better prepared and confident foreign affairs minster. This was a big diplomatic failure and Mr. Krishna should have been sacked after such a sloppy performance. I don't want to get into corruption discussion. You may be very much aware of that, unless it is totally wrong, which we don't think. A progressive Railway minister loses his job, when he thinks of increasing the railway fare to modernize railways and increase safety measures. That too, it happens when the cost of traveling to railway station from home has increased manifold. May be you disagree but ordinary citizens do feel it with actual market inflation is much more than that of government's data. We all have seen India's dwindling performance in industrial output and it is now alarming. Not to mention some other important issues such as Naxalism, Internal security etc.

I think above points are just tip of the iceberg, and they are good enough to convince any responsible government that they now need to buckle their shoes and get into a professional and accountable lot.

Thanks,