Hatrack River Forum: Touring Hong Kong in eleven hours

This is topic Touring Hong Kong in eleven hours in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Howdy all.

I'm flying to southeast Asia in a few weeks, and it turns out that my ugly flight plan includes an eleven and a half hour stopover in Hong Kong.

It's not enough time to do all the sites, obviously, but I don't necessarily want to stay at the airport and pick my nose.

So, any suggestions on things I can do or see while in Hong Kong for less than twelve hours?

Thanks in advance

[ July 28, 2003, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: quidscribis ]

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

I've never been to Hong Kong, so I don't have any advice, but where are you going in SE Asia? How long will you be there? What'll you be doing there? I would *love* to be going to SE Asia. Well, certain parts of it, anyway.

Posted by Olivet (Member # 1104) on :

I hear they have a really cool light clock... but I've never been there.

Good to see you still posting. [Smile]

Have a nice trip. [Smile]

[ July 29, 2003, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Olivet ]

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Yeah, well, there's actually a reason I've been kinda silent. I've been, uh, well, a little pre-occupied with other forms of entertainment and online chatting and things of that nature.

I'm moving - yes, moving - to Sri Lanka to spend the rest of my life with the most wonderful man in the world (for me) who happens to live there. We'll be getting married sometime fairly shortly after I land. [Smile]

So there. Geeks of the world, unite and take over. He's my geek prince, and I'm his geek princess. [Cool]

Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :

Wow! Congratulations! [Smile]

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

uh, yeah. It's definitely a wow.

I'm 35, and quite honestly, thought I would NEVER get married. I really mean NEVER. So, if you're saying wow, whaddya think I'm saying?

Okay, I'm over the shock now. Now I'm in packing up my household and selling everything off to go live in a foreign country, which, by the way, I'm totally looking forward to. I've wanted to see the world for so frikin' long, and I've always wanted to live in other countries and really experience the culture firsthand, not just in a two week tour, so this, for me, is so completely cool.

And I can't hardly wait. And I'm otherwise useless. Quit working weeks ago. Can't get a damn thing done other than focusing on moving.

Posted by strawberrygirl (Member # 5030) on :

Go shopping!

Posted by esl (Member # 3143) on :

"The best things to do in Hong Kong: eat and buy stuff."
-- My beautiful brother

More later, when my parents get back.

Posted by esl (Member # 3143) on :

Parents were no help.

Okay. One of the most memorable parts of Hong Kong for me was the underground. If I were going I would take it to random stops, get out and walk around. And hope I didn't end up in a bad neighborhood. I guess I don't exactly mean random, but somewhere between Sham Shui Po and Causeway Bay.
You can buy a ticket for about ten dollars US and the machines will take money off it according to where you go..

There's a really good Hong Kong food. I've heard it called 'eggettes' in english. They're kinda like waffles in reverse. yum. People sell them off carts like ice cream in the states. You see them every once in a while. The drinks are good too. not from a cart, probably a corner store on the street. There are lots of interesting and yummy mixtures.

You could go shopping. Or just look around. There's Sogo, Festival Walk, and the huge building with tiny electronics shops. Huge malls, funky escalators.

Sorry I'm so scattered.. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Thanks for the response.

Where would you suggest I go for shopping and eating? Anyplace specific?

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

Wow quid, that's fantastic! Congratulations! How did the two of you meet?

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Thanks for the congrats, and yeah, I'm oh, really really happy about it all, too. Oh, heck, I've never been happier in all my life.

I downloaded a program he wrote, had problems getting it to work properly - user error - posted a help me please onto his user forum, and when I still had problems getting the program to work properly, he offered to help me fix it, we got on chat, he helped me configure it properly in about fifteen minutes, and we um, just couldnt' stop chatting with each other. The rest is history.

[ July 30, 2003, 03:17 PM: Message edited by: quidscribis ]

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

[Smile]

What a great story! I love that. Again, congratulations!

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

I've had a suggestion from someone not on this forum that, quite honestly, I can't believe I hadn't thought of, dangling participles or modifiers or something be damned. The Hong Kong Temple. How daft am I? I can only attribute this to the fact that, at the present moment, I have essentially no brain cells left. Yup.

Any other suggestions? I've heard that I really need to have dim sum - anywhere in particular, or is it a pretty safe bet that any restaurant I attack there will be decent?

Oh, and for the record - when all is said and done and we're legally wed, as opposed to just planning things now - we'll have our websites complete with photos and the whole long story, not just 25 words or less. The whole thing is, from my perspective, fairly odd, but what the heck? If it works, it works. Sigh. I haven't stopped grinning in how long?

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Thanks for the ideas, and also, thanks very much for providing the drawbacks of each as well - it'll certainly help me make reasonable choices.

I have no idea what I'll do there at this point, but this has certainly provided me with a good place to start doing more research.

Thanks again.

Posted by Fahim (Member # 5482) on :

Hi everybody .. I should introduce myself .. I'm the guy that quidscribis is marrying [Smile]

She's a special and wonderful person and I love her dearly .. Can't wait for her to get here so that we can be married [Smile]

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Fahim, you mushhead.

Honestly, he's usually much more articulate and witty than he's being here. But we're both online have a webcam type of conversation, and he seems to have no brian cells firing at all when we have that going on. So, yeah, maybe he'll be witty and charming when I go back to sleep.

Posted by Fahim (Member # 5482) on :

It's hard to be witty when the woman of your dreams is right there on your desktop in a cam window and all you can think about is how much you love her and want to be with her, dearest [Smile]

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

Hi Fahim! Congratulations, and welcome to Hatrack!

Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :

That second post was MUCH better. [Smile]

Congratulations!!! This is so cool! [Smile]

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Okay, Fahim, I'll allow that you're redeeming yourself. But then, in person, you are fairly witty and articulate. Or, as in person as we tend to be. Sigh. Okay, okay, it's true, my brian cells are on vacation, too. Better?

And back to the actual Hong Kong portion of this thread - I have several questions - how long does it take to get from the airport to the LDS temple in Hong Kong? And is there a clothing distribution centre there, too? If so, where? In the same lot as the temple, or am I going to have to get lost trying to find it?

Posted by Lissande (Member # 350) on :

This has to be the most backhanded "Dear Hatrack I'm getting married and moving to Sri Lanka" thread I've ever seen. [No No]

Oh yeah, and [Wave]

congratulations!

Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :

Oh, I don't know Lissande, I've seen more backhanded ones. But then again, with the sheer volume of "Dear Hatrack I'm getting married and moving to Sri Lanka" threads that we have around here, I'm sure that you probably just happened to miss the more backhanded ones. [Wink]

Posted by ludosti (Member # 1772) on :

Wow!! Congratulations on your marriage and move!! It sounds like a really exciting time for you!! (((quidscribis)))

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

If it means that much to you, I can start another thread for the sole purpose of announcing the impending marriage. In fact, Fahim and I can then discuss the oddities of our geek relationship in more detail there, too.

Hmmmm. Okay.

Posted by esl (Member # 3143) on :

Sorry I haven't been keeping up..

Dim Sum's a good idea [Smile]

It's hard to get it by yourself though. I got the impression that you're going to be there alone. When there are a lot of people you can try all the dishes you want. The fewer the people, the less you can try without wasting. Hope that makes sense.

If you're not too full I would also suggest you try the porridge/noodle restaurants. My dad likes the noodle soup with wonton. Fish ball noodle soup is a classic. And there's beef noodle soup. They have thin slices of raw beef in a hot bowl of noodle soup. You stick the beef at the bottom for a couple minutes and they're cooked.. O, and the wonton noodle soup is with the thin brown noodles, the other two go with the big fat noodles. There are different words for them in Chinese so it's wierd just saying noodle.

I personally don't like the jade shopping idea but that's because I've done that enough for ten lifetimes. It's boring for me. Nearly every tour in China includes a stop at more than one jade factory, depending on the length of the tour. The only reason the five or six jade stops on my last (8 day I think) tour were bearable was because one of the ladies in our tour was really good at bargaining. It was fun to watch her. If you do go, make sure to bargain. very low.

Congratulations and happy marriage!

Posted by Fahim (Member # 5482) on :

Thanks for the wishes and the welcomes - makes me feel right at home .. Oh wait, that'd mean I'm calling this place an asylum .. oh never mind [Razz]

Lissande, if you thought the announcement of our marriage was oblique, you should have seen the way we got around to telling each other we loved one another [Big Grin]

But don't ask me for the details - it's a long and convoluted story with many a twist and turn [Razz]

Oh yeah, as for my wittiness (or lack thereof), to paraphrase and to misquote Mark Twain, reports of my wittiness are highly exaggerated [Razz]

[ August 07, 2003, 09:46 PM: Message edited by: Fahim ]

Posted by esl (Member # 3143) on :

The Mong Kok stop from the underground has an exit that goes straight to 'lady street'. That was one of the first place we visited last time I went. It's where I got the yummy drinks, down a couple blocks at a corner store.
edit: I wanted to show you what lady street looks like in Chinese but the spacing didn't work out [Grumble]

There's a Crocodile (clothing) store and a lot of cosmetics stores, hence 'lady street'.
O, and the public transportation system is called the Mass Transit Railway (MTR). What I love about it is that anything announced over the intercom is in British English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.

[ August 08, 2003, 03:12 AM: Message edited by: esl ]

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Yeah, y'all can find more details - that which we provide, anyway - over at Geek Prince Marries Geek Princess

Thanks for all the ideas about Hong Kong. I'm flying next week Wednesday, so I'll be spending next week Thursday during the day in Hong Kong, so if anyone has any more ideas, please post them uh, really soon. And thanks again for all the help.