Hong Kong has never been a destination that I wanted to travel to, simply because I've heard so many bad things about the place. I've heard that the service there is really bad, that Hong Kong people are very rude, that the whole place is old and dirty, and everything there is expensive. Basically, nothing sounded good about Hong Kong, even the food because I don't eat seafood and when people talk about good dimsum, it is usually with reference to seafood.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't looking forward to this trip at all and there were a few times I actually thought about backing out and cancelling it because I just didn't want to spend money in a place I wasn't sure I would enjoy. But I knew that would be really mean to my other 2 friends so ultimately I stuck with the plans and went. There were good things that really surprised me about Hong Kong, and well, there were the bad things as well but we'll talk about them in good time.
We flew by Scoot which was surprisingly the best budget airlines I've ever taken! The seats were really comfortable (even better than the horrible Silkair) and I slept like a baby throughout the the whole duration of the flight.
When we reached Hong Kong and cleared our way through customs, we went to buy our SIM cards which costed us HK $118 for 5GB of data (we got the 8 day pass instead of the 5 day pass) and then bought our octopus cards at the station before boarding the Airport Express over to Hong Kong Island.
Because we reached Hong Kong really early in the morning, our Airbnb apartment wasn't ready for us to check in yet so we decided to place our luggages at Hong Kong MTR station before taking the MTR over to Jordan Station to have breakfast at the Australia Dairy Company.
The Australia Dairy Company is probably the most famous of Hong Kong's cha chan tings and they serve traditional Hong Kong breakfasts of toast, scrambled eggs, macaroni, and of course, tea and coffee.
We were really lucky to secure a table after waiting for only 5 minutes or so. We reached there at about 8am and there was already a pretty long queue.
We ordered the first set of breakfast which came with macaroni soup with ham, toasted bread, scrambled eggs and tea or coffee (of course we opted for the milk tea) and it was HK $32/meal. It was pretty good if I do say so myself! I really liked the macaroni soup (I think I ate macaroni about 4 times in Hong Kong and I was only there for 5 days) and the milk tea. Hong Kong people do the best milk tea.
I would have to say that although I do like Hong Kong breakfasts, the breakfast served at the Australia Dairy Company wasn't anything special. I've been to other cha can tings during my trip in Hong Kong and I feel that all of them pretty much serve the same standard of breakfasts, rendering the one I had at Australia Dairy Company pretty much run-of-the-mill.
My first encounter with "rude" Hong Kong people was here. When we were ushered into the restaurant and to our table, they were really impatient and kept on going "walk faster, walk faster" in Chinese even though we couldn't exactly walk any faster because there wasn't any space for us to walk to our table (there were other people in our way).
As soon as we were seated down, they immediately whipped out their notepad and asked us what we wanted and we had to repeatedly tell them that we haven't decided what we wanted to have yet.
Another thing to note about the Australia Dairy Company compared to other cha can tings is that the people who work there have this need to constantly do something. I say this because every table had a bunch of condiments placed in the center, like sugar, pepper and salt. None of us touched the condiments, yet whenever a staff walks past our table, they feel the unexplainable need to rearrange the condiments. I'm talking about 3 consecutive staff arranging the condiments every single time they walked past our table.
When we were done eating and were going to pay the bill, once again, as soon as we stood up, they told us to "walk faster," then waved good bye to us. This really threw us off balance because on one hand, I felt that they were really rude and impatient with us, even though they knew we were foreigners and weren't accustomed to their way of life, yet they were friendly enough to say good bye to us. I came to the conclusion that basically, they probably weren't being rude but they just didn't know how to say things in a nice, polite way and thus came across as rude and brisk. But I didn't encounter this mixed behaviour in any of the other cha chan tings I visited throughout my trip so I think this mixed behaviour can be attributed solely to the people working at Australia Dairy Company and not any where else.
The "bad" service coupled with the face that the breakfast there was pretty ordinary, makes me feel that a trip to the Australia Dairy Company isn't worth the hype at all. You can probably get better food, and better service at any of Hong Kong's other cha can tings.
Australia Dairy Company
Address:
| G/F, 47-49 Parkes Street, Jordon |
Since we still had quite a bit of time to kill, we decided to go explore around the Tsim Sha Tsui area. It took us about 10 minutes to walk from Jordon over to Tsim Sha Tsui and with the lovely weather in Hong Kong, we were more than willing to walk off our breakfast.
Although we planned to walk around to see 3 different places in the Tsim Sha Tsui area, we only really managed to head to one, which was the Clock Tower. That being said, we were more fascinated with the view of the harbour than we were with the Clock Tower.
At around 11-ish, we made a call to our Airbnb apartment host and she said that we could check in so we went to pick up our luggages and then got a cab over to our apartment.
We got an Airbnb apartment because it was cheaper than getting a hotel, but on hindsight, I would have much preferred to pay a bit more just to get a hotel. Firstly, the apartment was literally a shoe box. Although that was pretty much expected, I really didn't expect it to be THIS tiny. There was barely any floor space left when we had our luggages opened.
Secondly, the toilet, my goodness. I'm not the pickiest when it comes to toilets. I can deal with semi-clean toilets especially since I was from a uniform group and we had a lot of camps in school. We all know that school toilets are the worst. But I've never felt this grossed out in a toilet as I did with our Airbnb apartment's toilet, and can I just say that our apartment wasn't exactly cheap at all? Thirdly, there wasn't even enough cutleries for 3 of us, neither were there enough cups. Our host said that she would come back with more but she obviously didn't. Whilst we didn't exactly need the extra set of cutleries, it would have been nice to have them especially when the apartment was paid for 3 people, not just 2.
On the bright side, the location was pretty decently located, it was a 2 minute walk away from Sai Yin Pun MTR station which was really convenient for us because we could basically walk to most areas like the Central and Sai Yin Pun MTR station was close to most of the other stations we wanted to go as well.
We booked cablecar tickets to go up to Victoria Peak to catch the sunset so after unpacking (and napping) a bit, we headed back out for a late lunch at Butao Ramen. Yes, I know right. Who goes to Hong Kong to eat ramen? But that was what we did and the ramen at Butao was really pretty decent.
Not surprisingly, there was a queue even though we reached at about 5pm or so. I mean, who eats lunch/dinner at 5pm? But that's Hong Kong for you, every where we went, there were queues.
Because we weren't exactly very hungry, we ordered 2 bowls of ramen to share between the 3 of us.
The first bowl we ordered was the Black King (HK $95). Basing on our signature pork soup stock, we add our specially made "black sauce" and "black ball" to create the Black King. The sauce and the ball are made with black garlic, squid ink, minced pork, vegetables and a tantalizing mixture of seasonings. If you like a strong and distinctive flavour, the Black King might very well be your "bowl of noodles".
My friends both really liked the Black King and whilst I do agree that it is indeed more flavourful than the classic Butao ramen, I just couldn't get the thought of there being squid ink inside the soup to fully enjoy the taste of the broth. If you know me, I don't eat most seafood so the squid ink really turned me off from this.
The second bowl we ordered was the Butao Ramen (HK $85). Our signature pork soup stock (Tonkotsu) is the soul of all our ramen. It is created with ancient Japanese craftsmanship over a long period of time. The long preparation time and top quality ingredients give the soup a full-bodied texture layers of flavors. Truly fresh and savory!
I preferred this bowl of ramen a lot more and I really liked the taste of the broth! It was really rich although it was a tad too salty, but then again, all ramen broth is salty to me. I really liked this bowl a lot more than the Black King.
Butao Ramen
Address:
| 69 Wellington Street, Central |
We made our way to the famous Tai Cheong Bakery because Cheryl has been raving about how amazing the egg tarts here tastes. I'm not the biggest fan of baked goods, not because I don't like them, but just because I never really ever get a craving for them but I really do have to say that the egg tarts here were really delicious! The pastry was really fluffy and creamy and the egg custard was just perfect. At HK $8/egg tart, I found the price a tad high.
Tai Cheong Bakery
Address:
| G/F, 35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central |
After that we went over to the Central MTR station to meet our guide who would bring us over to take the tram up to Victoria Peak. We paid HK $83/person for the "Peak Tram Combo" which allowed us to skip most of the queue for the tram to the Peak, although we did have to queue up like everyone else on the return trip down. (You can check out the tickets HERE.)
The tram ride up was pretty scary because it was really steep and the tram was packed to the brim. We didn't manage to get seats in the tram so we were standing and holding on to the poles for dear life.
If you're acrophobic, i.e. you have a huge fear of heights, like I am, the journey up to the Peak, and the whole stay up there, is probably one of the most terrifying things I've done. I hate heights and I avoid heights avidly because I'm so scared of falling down. If I'm leaning on the barrier, I have irrational thoughts of the barrier coming loose and dropping, taking me with it. However! I do have to say that the views from the Peak was worth all the anxiety I had being up there.
The panoramic views you get of Hong Kong from the Peak were stunning. Despite the fact that it was dreadfully foggy that day, the views of the harbour, the surrounding mountains and the skyline of Hong Kong were breathtaking.
We went up to the Peak with the intention of catching the sun set but it was terribly cold being so high up that we gave up waiting for the sun to set (the views of the sun setting weren't that spectacular to begin with) and instead went over to the other side where we waited for the night lights to come up all over Hong Kong.
We queued up for the tram ride down and since we were at the Central, we decided to head over to the Bonjour and Sasa they had there because the outlets there were a lot larger than the other branches I believe.
I know many people go all out shopping at Bonjour and Sasa but I couldn't shake away the feeling that the items sold there were "fake". Now, I have no proof to say that the items there were fake/imitation goods but I just couldn't help but think why would a proper enterprise be selling sample items and free GWPs (gift with purchases) from larger brands there? I used to work for the brand Lancome so I'm pretty sure the mini travel sized items that were sold there were never actually sold by Lancome. I could be wrong because I've obviously only worked in the Singapore outlets and not all over the world but I just didn't believe in the products these 2 enterprises were selling so I didn't purchase anything at all.
After that we went in search of dinner and we found ourselves in this area where there were a lot of expats. I don't actually know where we were but it was some where near the Central. There were a lot of pubs, Western food, Mexican food, basically the whole place gave off what we have in Singapore, "Holland Village" vibes.
I would really like to head there one day just to have a beer and people-watch but because we were pretty exhausted from our flight and a whole day of exploring that we wanted to just order takeaways to go back to our apartment and crash. We couldn't really find anything we wanted to have so we ended up walking all the way back to our apartment and pigging out on the McDonalds nearby.
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