The good thing about flying Cathay is that the connection is in HK, which is pretty centrally located. Almost a year has passed since my last trip back home to Msia, and since I would be stopping in HK anyway, I was considering making a trip from HK to Tokyo since Vic had been posted there till the end of this year. Nothing like Tokyo from an everyday perspective right? However I was planning to utilize my Asiamiles points, and also to take advantage of the Easter holiday weekend -- which is also a holiday in HK. So all of HK wants to fly to Tokyo too -- so much so that the Asiamiles desk even closed the waiting list.
Nevertheless, a backup plan. I'd called Sands since she's now based in HK and she would have hols too, and she'd suggested Seoul, South Korea or Hanoi, Vietnam. It took some back-and-forth-ness, and dithering on both our parts but we finally decided on Seoul. Or maybe it was me, cos there was no way I could pass up a chance to possibly see the spring cherry blossoms, esp since I was going to be in the region at about the right time too.
So, set out from Toronto on the night of Apr 1, arriving HK on Apr 3. Following Sands' instructions, took the Airport Express (it has only 4 stops??) to HK Island. Sands picked me up from there and with her much-improved Cantonese skills, we hailed a cab to her apt on Ladder St in Central.
Spent the day exploring Central and HK Island while Sands went to work. One thing I have to say abt HK -- lots and lots of stairs! Started out with Ladder St and detoured to Cat St which had a lot of antiques for sale. Passed the Man Mo temple on the way to having beef noodles at a well-known stall on Gough St off Hollywood Rd. It was a relatively short wait as I'd narrowly missed the lunchtime crowd and I was just one person -- so I was sat at the nearest vacant seat, sharing the table with a trio of salarymen and two other individual diners.
From there, walked downhill towards the harbour through the Sheung Wan area before ending up at Western Market -- a grand colonial building that nonetheless wasn't very interesting looking inside. Still, stopped for a bowl of black sesame seed soup with tong yuen (glutinous balls filled with ground nuts) before heading back up to where I started via the Central-Mid-Levels escalator -- also the "World's Longest Escalator" as certified by the Guiness Book of Records. As with most records these days... it was actually a series of escalators -- and one of them (which I suspect might've been at the steepest point) was actually not working! Then I had to climb up the superlong flight of stairs on Ladder St that I had earlier walked down. -_- Later on I realized that I had gotten off one escalator too early -- but it was too late by then. Still it was rather interesting to see the restaurants and bars of SoHo (yes, it's really called that) as I was going up.
When Sands got back from work, headed out for dinner -- started out at Lan Kwai Fong where all expat nightlife seemed to be, but then couldn't find anything to our liking. So went to a small but classy restaurant (which I can't remember the name of) on Caine St close to where Sands lived. Dinner was pretty good -- it was a yummy "filet of beef" (Sands got the fish) and we followed that with creme brulee for me and molten chocolate cake for her. Briefed each other on the latest news, continuing till we got back to her place and she packed and we called it a night -- the flight to Seoul would depart the next morn at 9.40am.
