To Hong Kong and beyond!!! - Day 4

Monday was forecasted to be Hong Kong's coldest day of the season. And early on Monday morning, my friend GS and me had to cancel plans to goto Lantau Island to see the Giant Bronze Buddha thanks to the rainy whims of the weather Gods. Instead we slept in late and went for an early lunch at the Branto @ Lock Road - an Indian restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. (Aye Kay recommends Branto by the way).

Post lunch was visits to a shopping centre on the water front - Harbour City adjascent to the Ocean Terminal Center. Infact at the time we were there, Queen Elizabeth 2 was anchored in Hong Kong. Oh the ship was huge. I haven't been this close to a luxury liner before :-P so it was pretty damn impressive. A lazy round around the shopping center was followed by an even lazier walk around the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui thinking, with amazement, of the differences between Singapore and Hong Kong. Later in the evening GS and NMK were seen off (the 2 of them left a day before Packan and me).

Packan and me then made our way down to Hollywood Road - so named for the fact that almost all English movies shot in Hong Kong shoot atleast a scene somewhere along this road. Hollywood Road, one of Hong Kong's ladder streets, is also popular for antique shops. The ladder streets are an interesting concept - much of the inland part of Hong Kong is hilly, and given the lack of overall space in the island, hills couldn't be an excuse for not inhabiting the area. Then again, going up and down steep slopes isn't a very appealing option for most people. The solution, streets which are completely made of steps rather than the convention vehicle-friendly roads :-) Cool concept, yeah? Well, it goes a step further. One of the roads up the slope has a complete covered escalator from Hong Kong Central all the way to the Mid-Levels. Known as the Central-Mid-Levels escalators (ain't that a creative name :-P), this is the longest outdoor, covered escalators in the world. But there was space to build only 1 set of escalators. So during the morning peak hours until 10am, the entire length of the escalators are moving downwards to facilitate people movement towards Central, and after 10am the escalators move upwards to help people against having to walk up the slopes.

Soho is yet another street in the mid-levels, and is a popular place to go for food & beverages. It is a really tiny area, so most of the restaurants are really small, and can seat probably at max about 15-20 people at a time, but we could see practically every conceivable cuisine around. We had dinner at an interesting looking Mexican joint called 'Taco Loco'. I just found out that Soho actually stands for 'South Of HOllywood road'.

The evening was rounded off with a visit to the Night Market at Temple Street in Mongkok. For those familiar to Chinatown in Kuala Lampur, Temple Street is pretty much the same. An ideal place to look for 'genuine imitation' products :-) Luckily the rain that had been coming down since afternoon finally stopped soon after we got to Mongkok, giving us the freeodm to look around night market at leisure. A couple of cheap watches and a jacket were what brought my last night in Hong Kong to a close.