48 Hours in Hong Kong

48 Hours in Hong Kong

By SHARON TONG

Between the feigned enthusiasm of the tour guide and the obnoxious yakking of middle-aged Chinese women, I couldn’t decide which one was going to remind me never to visit China again. After 5 disappointing days in Macau, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, I had decided that this year’s annual Chinese New Year holiday was a complete bust. As I gradually defrosted throughout the 3 hour bus ride from 13°C Guangdong at 8.00am to a region with a more comfortable temperature, I crossed my fingers hoping that our last stop would turn things around. There were two days left in our tour and Hong Kong was my final hope.

Hong Kong is located on the southern coast of the People’s Republic of China. The former British colony consists of three main areas: the new territories, the Kowloon Peninsula, and Hong Kong Island. The tour started off in Mong Kok, an area in the Yau Tsim Mong District on the western part of the Kowloon Peninsula. Mong Kok in Kowloon has been portrayed as the most notorious area in all of Hong Kong...in the movies, at least, when gang fights and spitting images of tattooed men tucking into their hot pots are common associations.

Part of the travel agenda was to let us roam the streets of ‘Ladies Street’ in Mong Kok, unsupervised. Not knowing where to begin, I gazed at the tapestry of the city in the form of vintage billboards, neon lights of hovering signboards publicizing the melange of massage parlours and mahjong dens, as well as street signs with sophisticated English names from its colonial past. This energetic corner of the city was bustling with activity and people, so many of them that the ground was hardly in sight.

Overwhelmed by the flow of shoppers, I decided to yield to its current. I visited a stall which sold authentic traditional Chinese costumes. After almost getting into a brawl with the stall owner, I stopped negotiating and walked away satisfied with my purchase of an imperial samfu aesthetically woven with silk thread of crimson and gold at less than half the price it would have been if it were bought in Malaysia.

“Bargaining is a way of life at retail outlets throughout Hong Kong, with the exception of department stores and clothing chain shops, where the prices marked are the prices paid.” said Marie Claire, a 40-year old Australian attorney who has a legal practice in Kowloon.

She adds that some visitors operate on the theory that you can get the goods for half the price originally quoted. Apparently, many Hong Kong residents believe that if you can bargain something down that low, then you shouldn’t be buying from that shop anyway. If the business is that crooked – and many are, particularly in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist ghetto – it will probably find other ways to cheat you.

I resumed my aimless stroll along the lively streets of Mong Kok, entertained by the orderly commotion of street performers, immigrant Turkish stall owners selling baklava, and hawker food vendors selling local street favourites. Contentedly swaddled in my scarf and windbreaker, the contrast of the warm rays of sunlight defying the wet chill of February created an easeful insulation. The experience was almost therapeutic.

This spirited part of Hong Kong is a food lover’s wildest dreams come true. Generally crowded from day until night, I could spot cafes, restaurants and even snack peddlers at every nook and corner. Speaking of which was when my senses awaken at the sight of hot steam gyrating in the air to the rhythm of our rumbling bellies as fresh food was being cooked on the spot, beckoning to warm our bodies in the frigid weather.

There is nothing more representative of Hong Kong street food than curry fish balls. Cheap, tasty and covered in so much sauce that you can’t actually taste what it’s supposed to be, this humble delight was what I started off with. Standing in front a boiling cauldron of floating balls; I get to pick either the normal ones or the spicy ones for that extra kick. For HKD5/RM2 per stick, you can get 6 bite-sized bouncy fish balls. The texture was rather artificial, but the spicy sauce made up for it.

Moving on to the next stall, I stumbled upon a culinary paradox. To some people, it was repulsive and pungent, yet to street food aficionados, it symbolizes the charisma of Mong Kok. What is that, you ask? Why, it is none other than the infamous Stinky Beancurd, fondly referred to as Chow Tau Foo.

“The Stinky Beancurd is the result of a fermentation process that involves, among other things, milk, fish and meat, and can last up to a couple of months.” said Mr. Chang, the stall vendor of almost 10 years, as he deep fries the fermented beancurds into huge blocks of perfection before slathering them with a thick coat of homemade chilli sauce.

Love it or hate it, it is almost impossible to ignore it. Priced at HKD8/RM3.20 per cube, it is affordable, and tastes a lot better than it smells.

And then there are the organs – a bubbling brown vat of entrails, innards, offal, or whatever you choose to call that stuff, out of which is scooped your prize. There’ll be stomach lining in there for sure. There may also be something that looks like lung and very probably is. But for the most part, whatever it is they’ve got stewing away, will largely be beyond recognition. Still, waste not want not, and if you are killing a cow because you fancy a steak, it’s to the credit of Chinese cuisine that to do away with the less glamorous parts would be considered wasteful beyond comprehension. Thus, it is that a cow’s entrails are scooped out of their boiling brown broth, cut up with scissors into a polystyrene tub, and mixed with peppers, some kind of radish, and a whole lot of sauce, to make the case for one of the bolder choices on the Hong Kong street food menu. Believe it or not, at HKD10/RM4.30 per bowl, it was actually palatable.

Of course, there are countless of other street foods in Mong Kok and its vicinity that I did not manage to cover because we were only given time until 5.00pm to gather at the starting point of Ladies Street before moving as a group to Madame Tussauds wax museum in Hong Kong Island.

Madame Tussauds Hong Kong, part of the renowned chain of wax museums founded by Marie Tussaud of France, is located at the Peak Tower on Hong Kong Island. It is the first and one of the only two permanent Madame Tussauds museums in Asia, the other being the Shanghai branch, which opened in 2006. The Hong Kong branch houses nearly 100 wax figures of internationally known personalities, with Asian figures taking up more than a third of the total, sixteen of which were Hong Kongers.

Playing make-believe with the star-studded cast of Madame Tussaud’s house of wax was one of the highlights of my trip. There were many visitors, both local and foreign, posing animatedly beside the lifelike models of Michael Jackson, Amitabh Bachan, Audrey Hepburn, David Beckham, President Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, William Shakespeare, Yao Meng, Adolf Hitler and many other popular figures from various continents and eras. In fact, the wax figures are featured in a range of themed settings such as Hong Kong Glamour, Hollywood Glamour, Music Icons, Historical and National Heroes, as well as The Champions and World Premiere.

The wax museum was occupied by a diversity of visitors. There were pre-pubescent girls who giggled exuberantly as they posed beside the very realistic Robert Pattinson, better known as Edward Cullen, the heart throb vampire from the Twilight Saga, and there were men of all ages who formed a beeline waiting for their turn to pose with the wax prototype of Angelina Jolie. There were also others who made long, lingering observations on every sculpture, possibly trying to fathom how Tussaud turned wax into people. From every crease and wrinkle, to every eye lash and strand of hair, the amount of detail that Tussaud had put into her masterpieces was simply humbling and inspiring.

After a good forty minutes marvelling at Tussaud’s creations, I was lead to the observation deck; the rooftop of Peak Tower. At this altitude, we were exposed to the most breath-taking view of Hong Kong after dark. Looking over the Victoria Harbour directly at the Hong Kong Island skyline, the endless cosmos were bejewelled with stars twinkling into constellations, and the skyscrapers and apartment towers were outlined by the illumination of their windows and advertising lights. In other words, it was a postcard view of Hong Kong at night. I stood in awe beholding the face of Asia’s New York in all of its splendour while leaning gently against the rails as the violent night breeze rearranged my hair. People were capturing the moment with their cameras, but I wanted the memory imprinted through my eyes.

Shortly after, we were summoned by our tour guide to the ground floor of Peak Tower. He made a quick headcount and dismisses us for the day. After a 35-minute bus ride to the Regal Kowloon Hotel, I dragged my heavy feet to the appointed room and knocked out instantly. Having no recollection of the night other than sleep, I woke up in the afternoon from the fatigue of travel with the promise of dimsum. In Hong Kong, dimsum is known as har gao siew mai, said one of the waitresses of Regal Court with a perplexed look on her face when I requested for dimsum. Favourably for me, the people of Hong Kong conversed in Cantonese, a dialect which I am familiar with, unlike the residents of China and Macau who spoke mostly in Mandarin.

Our feast consisted of dainty prawn dumplings, silky flat rice noodles called chee cheong fun which was served with a sweet sauce, egg tarts, salted egg buns, rice porridge and youtiao, also known as the Chinese breadstick. These decadent side dishes can be found in Malaysian dimsum shops as well, but the ones in Hong Kong were slightly different, though they taste just as good as the ones back home.

Dimsum is a meal to be experienced and savoured, leisurely alternating between sips of steaming jasmine tea and casual pleasantries. However, I was too hungry to follow that social protocol. So I gobbled down the exquisite little dumplings to my heart’s content before heading on to the final location in our itinerary – The Avenue of Stars.

The Avenue of Stars, modelled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is a promenade located along the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui. It honours celebrities of the Hong Kong film and music industry, some of which include the giants of Hong Kong showbiz such as Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun Fatt, Sam Hui, Stephen Chow and Aaron Kwok. This promenade is one of the busiest and most scenic ports in the world and is home to some of the territory’s premier arts institutions, such as the Museum of Art, and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. The remaining hours were spent sauntering up and down the promenade and reviewing the cemented handprints of Hong Kong celebrities plastered along the pathway.

As the sun began to set the clouds ablaze with various shades of crimson while torching the sea with tints of scarlet as it drew closer to the horizon, I knew that our trip to Hong Kong has come to an end. The tour guide gave us 20 minutes to immortalize the moment in our smartphones before heading to the airport. Needless to say, the sunset was majestic. I gazed at the descending fireball as it slowly retreated to make room for its nocturnal counterpart; the glorious beams patting the surface of our faces in the process, as if to say goodbye.

The hours that I’ve spent in Hong Kong have been numbered from the moment I arrived, which is ironic because I never thought I’d be saying this at the point of arrival, not for the same reasons, at least. These last 48 hours in Hong Kong have salvaged every reason I had left to enjoy my holiday abroad. Mostly because she is nothing like her sister countries, Macau and China, where the people are rude, the environment is filthy, and the food tastes horrible. What’s more is the advantage of tax-free shopping, making Hong Kong the ideal place to be for shopaholics like me. Unfortunately, visiting the shopping complexes wasn’t in the agenda of our tour, which gives me an excuse to visit this bustling metropolis again.

All in all, Hong Kong offers some of the world’s most intense shopping, sight-seeing and dining experiences. It is the embodiment of Yin and Yang, the Chinese concept of balance. This is evident through its neighbourhoods that resonate with Chinese and colonial tradition, as well as its soaring skylines that look boldly towards the future. This interaction of culture and civilization is the main reason why I am sold out on Hong Kong and will definitely return to explore the malls and futuristic architecture of Hong Kong’s main business districts as well as the national parks outside its urban areas. Looks like our tour guide managed to save the best for last.