Hong Kong - skyscrapers and ladyboys

Wednesday, September 24th - written by Alan:

I woke up in my hotel with the wind still howling and rain pouring outside. It feels a bit weird to be staying on my own for the first time so far on the trip as Priscilla is staying with Ben and Steph with Louisa. My hotel room is very cozy but perfectly fine as I plan to spend very little time there anyway.

After deciding that the weather outside wasn't likely to improve any time soon I decided to get ready to head over and meet Priscilla at Ben's place. I discovered Ben's place is up a massive hill - the sensible option would have been to catch a taxi but as I am not sensible I decided to walk up. Fortunately with the passing typhoon the temperature is a few degrees cooler at the moment so I was not the usual sweaty mess when I got to the top.

After avoiding the rain at Ben's place for a while we headed out to meet with Elaine for lunch. Elaine is an old co-worker of Priscilla's from her time at PwC. She is originally from Hong Kong, but moved to the states in middle school. Elaine returned to Hong Kong on a tour a couple of months ago. Elaine took us to a local place near her office in Central. We had to brave the rain for a short while but fortunately didn't get too soaked largely thanks to our matching rain jackets. Much to Priscilla's annoyance I bought the same version of north face jacket as her for the trip....I don't think my excuse that we both obviously have great style is cutting it with her! We do at least have different colors.

For lunch we had curry which was very good. We also tried toasted buns spread with condensed milk which was very tasty.

After lunch we went in search for a place to burn photos to cd as we have almost run out of memory having taken so many photos. We found out it was pretty expensive so we just ended up buying new memory cards for not much more. Now we have lots of extra room for photos so we can bore you all even more with our photos when we get home!

Later we met up with Steph and Louisa and headed with them over to Kowloon. The plan was to go for afternoon tea at the Peninsula hotel. The place is pretty posh and Priscilla was bit worried she wasn't dressed up enough in her shorts and hiking shoes. Sure enough the maitre d turned us away, however funnily enough Priscilla would have been dressed fine - it was Steph and Lou in their flips and me in my shorts that fell foul of the dress code. Apparently it is fine for women to wear shorts but not men - very sexist I think!

Plan B was to head to the waterfront to see the view of the famous Hong Kong skyline. The buildings are very impressive. Apparently the tallest one was in the Dark Knight movie (I think I must have been sleeping because I can't remember).

Afterwards we took the Star Ferry back across the bay from Kowloon to Hong Kong island. The trip only costs HK$2 which is about 25 cents. On the way we had a debate about the difference between a typhoon and a hurricane. After a bit of googling on the blackberry Priscilla informed us that they are both the same but hurricanes originate in the atlantic while typhoons originate in the pacific. So we experienced the equivalent of a pretty strong hurricane as it was level 8 typhoon out of a scale of 10.

After a bit more shopping we went our various ways for a bit of rest before dinner. We were having dinner with Elaine and Ben at a French place called Le Fauchon in SoHo. Yes there is also a SoHo in Hong Kong. Here it stands for south of hollywood road.

One of Lou's friends from business school who is also visiting Hong Kong joined us for dinner. His name is Alistair and he is also from Scotland. Steph and Priscilla liked to point out that he was a fake scot like me because he does not have a scottish accent, instead an english one.

We all decided to do the three course dinner option. Priscilla, Steph and Ben opted for starter, soup and main courses while Elaine, Alastair and I opted for starter, main and dessert. The food was all great.

After dinner we headed to Lan Kwai Fong which is one of the main areas for nightlife. First off we went to a fancy lounge called Founders. It was also fancy prices so we stuck to beers. Of course as usual we decided to lower the tone by playing drinking games there too. This time it was the finger game. I was on very good form and did not lose a single game after many rounds. This did not escape everyones attention but fortunately it is pretty difficult to gang up on people in the finger game. Only on the last round we played did I finally lose.

Louisa met us straight from class, so she didn't eat yet. Thus, we went to a local pizza place to grab a bite. Steph and Louisa ordered hoegardens which came in massive hoegarden pint glasses. I was a bit miffed as my carlsberg came in a much smaller glass.

We then headed on to another bar nearby which was a bit less posh. As it was getting quite late and it was a wednesday night, things had started to quiet down but not for us. There were only a few other customers in the bar, including some pretty sketchy looking ladies being hit on by some tourists. On closer inspection we figured that one of the girls looked a bit manly. Steph tried to egg me on to chat up the other girl but I declined. Priscilla reckoned that even this girl might also be a guy, but Steph was convinced she was the real thing. In the end Priscilla asked the bartender and it turns out she was right. Good thing I didn't try and chat her up! The bartender was called Phil and he told Priscilla that the ladyboys were regulars at the pub. He also told us that the guys knew they were hooking up with dudes and left with them in a cab anyways. Can we say desperate? Ha ha!

It was getting late and they started to close down the bar. We thought this might be a signal to leave, but in fact it meant we were in for a lock in party. We had only ordered one round of drinks Phil was nice enough to make us several rounds of shooters for free. He also let us pick and choose the soundtrack from the ipod. So we ended up having a pretty fun party with Phil and the solitary other remaining customer called Ben. Around 3am we finally called it quits and headed home together in a taxi.