Henryblogs

Hong Kong

These are photos from day 3 and day 4. My travel companions were very eager tourists so we got to go quite a few places in 4 days. All photos were shot using an Olympus PEN/E-P1 with a 17mm f/2.8 lens. 17mm is the same coverage of a 35MM lens for full frame camera.

Dim sum; free wifi.

The red stuff is “chicken claws” in the back. I wasn’t a big fan of chicken claws… UNTIL NOW. Hong Kong chicken claws were so awesome, it makes the claws you find in most NY restaurants taste like, well, chicken claw.

“Maxim’s devil cake.” What a name. What’s next, “Maxim’s murderous egg tart?”

Escalator to MTR.

We were going to…

…”Ngong Ping 360’s crystal cabin” where the tram ride was equipped with see-through flooring.

It was 20+ minutes of ride in this kind of fog.

Until we see the Tian Tan Buddha of Lantau Island.

Buddha; fog.

The tram line takes you to the Ngong Ping [tourist] street, where you walk through semi-traditional looking stores selling cheap stuffs before leading to the Buddha statue. This is some sort of tea house.

Tourists doing what tourist do, which is, to take photos of other tourist photographing their family.

The only few redeeming things you find in this “Ngong Ping” street.

Buddha statue amidst the cloud. Since I only had a wide angle lens, so I do what I can with it.

20 to 25 minutes and a few hundred steps of stairs later.

Fei Tian [Flying Apsaras) statues. The Tian Tan Buddha was the largest Buddha statue in the world, made of bronze. It was quite a sight.

On the way back.

This was the other redeeming quality of the Ngong Ping street. Other stores were mostly cheaply made Chinese mainland tourist products.

Riding back into the fog again.

Looking for food. View from over pass.

Found a little cafe store in a more "western" region of Wanchai. This was my order. It was so salty.

My friend's dish.

The dishes were very salty [partly our own fault] so I really wanted some “herbal tea.” I found herbal tea.

Herbal tea place.

Mcdonald’s.

Gasp. It’s red bean pie.

Taxi advertisement.

Riding the Peak Tram to “the Peak,” an earlier British colonial area [the whole of HK was ruled as a British colony for over 150 years].

Madame Tussaud’s HK museum.

Again at the tram station, the building was flooded with cheapie tourist stuffs.

Walking up to the viewing area; a worker sleeping behind a construction partition.

The view of the tram from the top. The building on the left has 2 Porche, 1 Ferrari and 1 Nissan GT-R super car parked at the drive way. Those were ones I can see riding the tram.

Riding the tram back. Pacific Coffee, a chain that looks and tastes like Starbucks.

More taxi top advertisement.

Taxi driver waiting for fare.

Very small hole-in-the-wall-sit-on-the-street food vendor.

One more car light photo…

The taxi driver suggested we try the dim yum restaurant at the airport. It has some of the cheapest dim sum in Hong Kong [it's "50 percent off" at all times].

Tea.

That ends part 2 of 2 of the Hong Kong photos.

Hong Kong

4 days is a brief stay because Hong Kong has a lot to discover. I didn’t visit as many places as a tourist should. But it was a refreshing experience, because the last time I was in Hong Kong it was over 18 years ago.

The following photos were taken with my little carry-around Olympus PEN/E-P1 camera, shot at 16:9 movie ratio, which is my PREFERRED ratio.

The time difference is not 1 hour; more like, 13 hours.

Do you remember that episode of the Simpsons where Bart and gang visited a near by city, and found their fire hydrants in a different color? I KNOW!

Some long exposure on an overpass. This is in Wanchai.

Another long exposure. In some parts of Hong Kong there are a lot of footbridge [overpass] and it makes shooting long exposures of cars driving at night easy to do.

Bamboo scaffolding. I KNOW! And it’s not just for small projects, they BUILT those tall buildings with bamboo scaffolding as well.

Fish market; the white stuff are fish stomachs.

Street vendor.

A girl driving a great condition classic mini.

Back alley smoker.


Taiwan style cold drink; double decker buses.



Still Wanchai, near the ferry to Kowloon. This region is very popular with mainland Chinese tourists because the ferries take them around. This little girl was insisting her mom to take another photo of her in front of this, thing.

Damn, just when I was gonna dry some linens.

It was pretty foggy the few days we were there.

Taking the ferry into Kowloon. I swear I’ve seen these guys in NY subway somewhere.

Ave of the Stars.

Looking back toward Hong Kong island, Wanchai region.


Street vendor selling flashing-spinning-singing-toy-thingies.

Flashing-spinning-singing-toy-thingies.

Bruce Lee; Dynasty wine seller.

Bruce, wat-cha!! wat-cha!! wat-cha!!!!! Lee.

I can’t have enough of these flashing-spinning-singing-toy-thingies. Must… resist…the…light…

“Young man, go to Hong Kong, buy an AK-47, visit high end mall. It’s the future I tell ya!”

There’s always security guards everywhere in Hong Kong. This is some sort of roll call in a high end mall near Ave of the Stars, Kowloon.

30 percent off shoe sales and kissing lovers.

Bunch of tourists waiting for some synchronized light show; It was very underwhelming.

Part of the underwhelming light show.

Temple St street vendor. Blocks of cheap and good knock offs where all prices are just suggestive.

Stir-fried noodle with soy sauce in a dai pai dong. Dai pai dong, or open-air food stall, was once very very popular and easily accessible in many locations of Hong Kong. But now it’s more limited to certain locations. But some of the best food of Hong Kong, I believe, is from Dai pai dong.

Deep fried whole fish.

The infamous “typhoon shelter style fried-crab [garlic and jalapeno].” Most dai pai dong food has great wok hei, aka. “chi of the wok.” It’s a Cantonese term for food cooked under fast and strong fire [close to 400 degree], where you get that crispiness outside and freshness inside. Most none-Cantonese don’t seem to understand “wok hei” when I explained it to them. It has to be tasted, hehe.

Shot of the dai pai dong amidst the street vendors.

A deep fried dai pai dong stand; I ain’t gonna try this one though…

We had too much walking, gonna MTR our way back. We were in the Temple Street area, which is famous for its food and night market. We took the MTR back to Admiralty/Wanchai station in Hong Kong island. The MTR is a high speed closed system with no open tracks [all boarding areas have a plastic wall fending off would-be suicides and other potential mayhem]. And all phone signals work. Although Hong Kong people like to chat on the phone, not many were actually making phone calls while riding.

Part 2 coming soon.