Dan had pre-booked us a combined ticket for the MTR (HK tube network) and airport return so having collected that, we jumped on the train to the city.The immediate impressions were one of water, and islands. The train takes you from Lantau island, which is where the new airport is (no scary landings between skyscrapers for us, like you used to have to at the old airport!)
Viewed from the train are mind-boggling groups of apartments, clinging to the edges of the coastline. The tallest blocks of flats I have ever seen. Then 6 or 7 blocks together. All clustered on the edge of the water. I can't even begin to think how many flats there must be in each one!!!
Still, there was a lot of coastline untouched - I'd expected it to be much more populated. Seemed like the population was corralled into the clusters of blocks of flats...leaving the rest of the land to the jungle!
We arrived into a station called Hong Kong (if you were in any doubt!) and we had to change here to 'Central' - we had just arrived and started looking round to get our bearings for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, and then someone came up and offered us help. They explained that we had to walk down a long tunnel in order to get to Central.
This actually became a theme of our trip; as soon as we stopped to look around/find our way, someone would come up to us and offer help! Initially we were wary - what where they after - were they the 'decoy' for some form of pick-pocket gang? Errrm, no, actually they were just offering help! This was Chinese and European people alike. It was so refreshing that in the mega hustle and bustle of this hectic city - people still had the small town attitude of wanting to help a stranger. Isn't that nice?
When we came out of the tube station - we had a 5 minute walk to the hotel - I'd studied the route on google maps so I "knew" the way. It was getting on for 6pm and the streets were in total mad rush hour. It was mental (and exciting!). Thousands of people on the streets. Millions of smells from lots and lots of small restaurants.
It was all so fab....and foreign.
We were in Hong Kong!
Here are all the other posts on our Hong Kong trip
So excited to see your pics! I did a couple of those scary landings on the way to and from Japan. I had a window seat both times and literally thought we were going to a) fall off the end of the runway into the water b) land on the patio of an apartment block!
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