My Hong Kong Travel Experience

DAY1

I’ve spent 4 days vacation in Hong Kong and I enjoyed it so much. I decided to blog this to give some tips for those who also plan to visit Hong Kong and I’m going to create a day by day blog entry to make it more detailed. Took a morning flight from the Philippines and surprised we arrived 20 minutes before the actual arrival time. It was indeed a smooth 2 hour travel in a beautiful weather in both countries. Hong Kong International Airport is very huge but you wouldn’t get lost because all the airport signs (English & Chinese) are informative enough to follow. There is also a short train ride going to the Immigration and baggage claim. I am excited to have additional passport stamps, it’s been 3 years since I traveled out of country but when I arrived in Immigration line, I noticed that they are not stamping the passports anymore, they will just hand you a small piece of paper which they call a landing slip where it  indicates how long you can stay in their country. This new policy took in effect since March 19,2013. Oh well, I taped it in my passport page anyway and hoping that it won’t fade since it is printed in a thermal paper.

Airport train used to transfer passenger from arrival hall to Immigration & baggage claim

Hong Kong’s landing slip & Immigration Card

 Since it is my first time to visit Hong Kong, I decided to get a land arrangement so at least someone will guide us during the trip. It took an hour before we get to the hotel and it is great opportunity to do some sight seeing. All cars are right hand drive like Indonesia so it looks kinda different for me. Hong Kong is a small country but they have well maintained roads, nice landscapes, long bridges & tall buildings both for residential & commercial use. Pretty impressive!

One of many residential buildings in Happy Valley, Hong Kong

We finally arrived at The Emperor (Happy Valley) Hotel by 12:30 pm but the check in time is not until 2:00pm, so I completed the check in process, filled up some guests form and get our WiFi access. Keep in mind that the hotel front desk asks for $300HkD per night security deposit and refundable upon checkout. Then we left our luggage, walked round the neighborhood and look for a good place to have lunch. We saw a variety of restaurants, drug store and convenience store.

When in Hong Kong, it is a must to try authentic Chinese cuisine, and we found the “Hong Kong Cuisine” located at 2/F Tsoi Tak Street, Happy Valley. They have great selections of Chinese dishes and luckily, they offered discounted  lunch special for the month of March so we took advantage of it. 🙂 I took photos of the food that we ordered and it is very yummy! The best Chinese food I have ever tasted by far!!! We spent more than what we have budgeted  for lunch but this is worth paying for! I wish they have a branch here in the Philippines though.

Entrance going to 2nd Floor of the Restaurant

Meat Dumplings in Chili Oil, $24.80 HKD (original price, $35 HKD)

Wok Fried Jowl in Spicy Salt, $38.80 HKD (original price, $68 HKD)

Me & My friend Joy with delicious lunch on the table 

Smoked Duck, Sichuan Style (Half), $160 HKD  This is foodgasmic!! so yummy!

Seafood Fried Assorted Rice, $98.90 HKD (original price $148 HKD)

We headed back to the hotel after the very delicious lunch, good start for our first day of the trip. We got to our room and here are my observations:

-The hotel’s elevator is kinda narrow, it must be a challenge for some to have big luggage.

-The room size is average with an elegant gold accent of the bathroom. You can choose either 2 single beds or 1 double beds, for this trip we had 2 single beds

-They have no English channels in their TV listings, so I did not bother turning it on.

-There is only one power outlet!! and it needs to have an adapter. I wasn’t aware that they have three-pin power outlet, so we have to borrow an adapter in housekeeping, seriously!? this became our problem and it’s kinda annoying.

Here are the photos of our room we stayed for 2 nights.

 Hotel’s Main Entrance

Where they are located at

Our room’s window, nice spot to do some photo shoot 🙂

Two single beds of The Emperor Hotel

Shower & Bath Tub, I love the gold accent!

Spacious bathroom counter top

Bathroom amenities

Since our flight is early in the morning, we felt we needed to take some power nap and get ready for some walk to Causeway Bay in the evening. The bus stop is just right across of our hotel and we took mini bus, it’s just a short trip  and we saw Time Square, huge malls and clothing store. This place is busy and it’s looks like New York City of Hong Kong. Stall sign boards are so colorful and vibrant to take photo at night. Very nice and modern place.

The sign 30 is used to determine which mini bus it should stop on this spot

Their convenience store doesn’t have a door?

Busy Night of Causeway Bay

It’s been a long day, we went back to the hotel after dinner and call it night so we’ll have enough energy for the HK City tour & Macau Tour for our Day2 . Stay tuned 😉

**For Filipino travelers, Travel Tax fee is Php 1,620 for International Flights & a Php 550 terminal fee shall be paid at the airport upon departure.

About Hong Kong

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