As usual, I got up earlier than the rest. Today, being Father's day, I expected to see home made cards at our dressing table where the kids usually put them.TJ's card,which was themed after the movie "300," was there. Tasha (wanting to be different this time around) didn't make me one but she baked me a Father's Day cake last night.
I had yet to see James' card and I did after breakfast. He placed his obviously rushed masterpiece beside TJ's card while we were eating.
These simple expressions of their love, though crudely made, were valuable to me and started my day right!
Jaja and I went to the 8:30 Mass shortly after breakfast. The celebrant was an African priest who gave such a long sermon we couldn't understand. We were just glad he didn't go over an hour!
The kids wanted to watch a movie (Fantastic Four) at Greenbelt so we had them ride with us to the airport and after dropping us off, let Dick drive them to Makati.
There weren't many people checking in at the counter yet so we were done quickly. Jaja's team mates were not yet in the airport, so to make sure we were seated in the same row, Jaja reserved seats for them.
It took us just a few minutes at the Immigration and several more past the security check and we were finally inside.
The first item on my agenda was lunch! I bought us some food at Delifrance for our lunch and for baon for Hong Kong in case I got hungry during the trip. While we were eating Jaja got a message from Siegfried that he was already at the airport, so Jaja directed him to where we
were.Our boarding call wasn't till about 2:20 PM so meantime, I passed the time making some sketches for my webcomics,while Jaja and Sieg talked about office stuff.
At around 2 PM the rest of the team,Mau,Tina and Jana showed up. We got our boarding call at around 2:20 and by 3:00 PM we were off to Hong Kong on PR 306.
Sieg,Mau,Jaja and I were seated next to each other in the middle rows. Jana and Tina were together by the window of row 68. Our late lunch was served,and we each did our thing for the remainder of the flight. I continued doing some drawings and managed to complete two sketches copied from the newspaper by the time we started our descent.
We landed at Hong Kong International a little before 5 PM. I started my videocamera rolling soon as we got off the tube and what I saw impressed me.
Besides being bigger than our own Centennial airport, Hong Kong International looked cleaner. We walked quite a distance to get to Immigration,where airport staff were directing people to the shorter lines.
While waiting for our luggage at the Number 2 line,I took some photos of the baggage claim area,got some free maps and videotaped the others in varying poses. It turns out that of the 6 of us, Mau, Jana and Sieg were first timers in Hong Kong.
I had been here before but that was way back in 1959 when my family and I were on the way back to the Philippines, after a two year stay in Bangkok, Thailand. Things were obviously much different now!
After we got our luggage, we were supposed to look for our tour guide and the van that would take us to the Empire Kowloon Hotel. But when we passed by a foreign exchange center, we thought it best to start changing our pesos to HK dollars so we would have local currency already. Jaja and I changed P 2,000 each (HK $440 in all.)
A few minutes later we found our guide, Eric who hurriedly led us to our van. It was another walk of about 5 or so minutes, and along the way I recorded everything that I saw interesting.
Once inside the van,Eric went to business. He first checked if we were all going to the Shenzhen tour tomorrow. The reason he wanted to know was that it would require him to get a group visa for all of us.He also stressed that if we decided to go,we would really go. he didn't want to make arrangements only to find out that people would back out later.
Jaja and I were originally not intent on going since Jaja had been there before and according to her, there wasn't much to see except factories. We were planning to go to Disney instead.
There was also another problem. Mau was supposed to have a phone conference with one of the Australian officers tomorrow,so she needed to be close to a landline so they could talk. However, if she decided to stay behind the van couldn't go back just for her.
After some discussion, the group decided that we would all go touring the city and Shenzhen tomorrow.
While all this was going on I was taking in the scenery and getting my first impressions of Hong Kong today. Noticeable were the many residential buildings backdropped by hills. The roads were wide, and the long span bridge,which reminded me of the bridge I saw at Shanghai, dominated the landscape as we sped our way to the city.
Sieg saw many luxury cars along the way. An Audi TT here, a Ferrari there, and several Beemers hinted at how well off the Hong Kong residents probably were.
When we entered the city, we passed by a section that reminded me of the Escolta of old. Everywhere,there were people walking quickly. Neon signs in Chinese that were positioned one on top of the other brightened the streets asevening started to set in.
It was close to 6 PM when we reached our hotel,which was located at the corner of Kimberly Road and Observatory Road. Eric got our passports and grouped them according to our room assignments before presenting them to the girl at the check in counter. Mau, Jana and Tina were together in Room 1509, while Jaja, Sieg and I were in Room 1809.
Before he left, Eric suggested we catch the Symphony of Lights at the Victoria Harbor which would start at 8 PM. He also reminded us to be at the lobby tomorrow by 8:45 AM.
We headed for our rooms after that and Jaja, who had our keys all this time, mistakenly told us that our room was 1804. But when Sieg tried to open the door of 1804, the key wouldn't work. A quick check of the key folder showed we were trying to get into the wrong room!
We rested and unpacked our toiletries. I called up Dona and was unsuccessful in my first two tries. I connected on the third try. I told her where we were, and agreed we'd call each other again tomorrow when my schedule was more definite.
After settling down and freshening up a bit,we all met at the lobby and discussed what we ould do next. Since we weren't all that hungry yet, we agreed to walk to the harbor and watch the laserlight show before eating dinner.
Victoria Harbor was about a 20 minute walk away, and according to Eric's directions if we just walked up to the end of Nathan Road we would be able to see the harbor already. Since I was bent on making a documentary of the whole trip I took shots of the whole trek to our destination.
The whole strip of Nathan was awash with light from neon signs, display windows and lighted billboards. There were a lot of foreigners;Europeans,Americans, Aussies and of course, Pinoys, walking along the sidewalks. It seemed that time that all of us were headed for the same thing.
To get to the harbor area we took the subway under Salisbury Road where we saw a musician playing for money. Reminded me of our own Quiapo Underpass.
When we finally reached the place,there were many tourists already seated or standing along the rails waiting for the show to start. We were able to find a vacant spot where we could sit and watch the show.
The Symphony of Lights was something like the light and sound show I had watched before at Epcot Center in Disney World, Florida. In this case, a Chinese musical piece played while the different buildings that lined the harbor opposite where we were,lit up in different colored lights and lasers in time with the music. I was expecting to see the boats crossing the river to also light up, but that didn't happen.
Although this wasn't as impressive as the one I had witnessed at Disney World, nevertheless, it was a good show.
Since it was already about a quarter past eight when the show finished, we needed to get a meal before looking for the night market at Temple Street, which was next on our agenda.
There was a Cafe de Coral nearby, and since some of us were looking for rice we decided to eat there. Although I had heard of Cafe de Coral before I didn't really know what they served until that time. By a consensus vote we chose a spaghetti based seafood dish, a chicken with rice meal, a sweet and sour pork dish and a soup dish, which we all shared.
The food was okay though unusual. For instance, the seafood spaghetti had squash on it and the soup had slices of taro and pork pata bones in it, which reminded Jaja of a local dish called kadios.
The meal was enough to recharge us.
Our next destination point was the night market at Temple Street somewhere in the Jordan Road area. But before we headed for it,Jana and the other girls wanted to have photos taken with Panda bear statues lining up the sidewalk near one of the ferry ports. While we were taking turns photographing each other with the cute-looking statues, we didn't notice that Sieg had gone ahead without us. So after we were done with our pictorial he was nowhere to be found.
Jaja tried contacting him over the cellphone to no avail, so we decided to just head back to the hotel thinking that perhaps he had gone back there.
We retraced our steps and manage to find our way back to Nathan Road. Jaja was able to contact Sieg who, as we guessed it, had gone back to the hotel when he couldn't find us. Ja told him to meet up with us at the corner of Kimberly and Nathan.
While waiting for him, Mau and Tina left us to do some exploring on their own. We waited quite a while for Sieg and when Jaja called him up again, we learned he was in another part of Nathan. Thinking we would pass Mau and Tina along the way we headed for the direction of Sieg. We finally saw Sieg waiting in front of a Body Shop outlet, but we were now missing the other two adventurers.
Jaja managed to contact them by text message and after some minutes we were all reunited in front of the Bossini outlet.
Looking for Temple Street was our next task. We walked towards where we thought it would be but couldn't find it. There was a street that had something like a tiangge but that wasn't it. Tina checked the map I was carrying and said we needed to go the opposite direction.
We stopped by a McD store nearby to use the CR,take a breather and buy some water. Meanwhile,Tina double-checked the map and this time said she was sure where we were supposed to go.
After just a few blocks from the McDonald's we found the Temple Street night market.
The place looked just like the tiangges along Quiapo or Baclaran,only that these were teeming with foreigners looking for bargains. There were two food shops, both specializing in crabs, that were full of tourists.
The girls decided to just leave each one to his/her own and just meet up after an hour at the crab restaurant. I went on my own and walked the whole length of the market but nothing there was interesting so I headed back to the rendezvous point.
I just watched what was going on at the market place and took some photos but after a while my legs started to ache so I texted Jaja that I was going back to the hotel. She caught up with me and said whe'd just go back to where the others were and that we'd just see each other at the hotel.
It was close to twelve when I reached Empire Kowloon. After resting my feet and taking a shower, I turned on the TV to wait up for Jaja and Sieg. They arrived a little past twelve and after cleaning themselves up, we turned in.
End of a long day 1 at Hong Kong.
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