mahdnc

Soon it was evening time and so we went to the Temple Street Market to look at the merchandise, performers, fortune tellers, and the restaurants. There was one restaurant in particular that had a huge line of people waiting to be seated. With no other restaurant in mind, my wife and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and proceeded to stand in line there. The food was pretty good, but we did not like their specialty dish--oyster pancakes.

We visited the nearby fruit market next:

After our time at the Peninsula, we walked over to Shanghai Street and strolled the street there. There were beautiful banyan trees that lined the street.

That's a good point, there are much more cost effective solutions. I was too lazy to pursue them.

After sleeping in this morning, we took an Uber over to there Peninsula Hotel ($70 HKD) for afternoon tea. My mom said that she went to the Peninsula Hotel for afternoon tea back In the 1950’s when she lived there with her family. She urged us to go. And our guide, Virginia, recommended it as the iconic place to go for afternoon tea. So here we are. Afternoon tea at the Peninsula is done in their lobby. Live music, people to watch, tea, and scones. Life is good. I wish our daughter was here with us as she loves this kind of stuff.

No problem with your questions. That’s why I’m posting this live thread. If I had to do it all over again, I would have called for an Uber XL to get my wife, me, and luggage to the hotel from the cruise pier and avoided a taxi altogether because taxis only take cash. That would also avoid having to get cash immediately at a foreign exchange office at the pier where rates are not likely to be favorable. I asked our guide yesterday how widely accepted credit cards were in Hong Kong. I think it was almost the first question I asked her. Virginia said that the lower end merchants would not likely take credit cards. And if they did, usually the transaction needed to be $200 HKD or higher. Every where else does. The local dum dum restaurant we sent to yesterday took credit cards. Taxis do not take cash. There is another complication with taxis that Americans are not use to: Virginia told us that for various practical reasons, many taxi drivers do not cross from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon and vice versa. It is not a rules or regulatory issue. She said that sometimes it is a familiarity thing because driving on there Kowloon side is very different from Hong Kong Island. She went on further to say that sometimes you have to pay the taxi driver for the tunnel toll for his return trip after dropping you off. She also said that the taxi drivers also have (or sometimes have) symbols on the taxi sign mounted on top of their car to indicate whether they will cross the harbor or not. On the other hand, our guide’s first attempt yesterday to flag down a taxi in Hong Kong island was not successful because the driver wanted to cross the harbor (while we did not). We are Verizon cell phone customers and we are always on our phones. With six days in Singapore + six days in Hong Kong + two days in Bangkok + five days in Vietnam, we knew that the TravelPass option of paying $10 USD per day to access our regular phone plan minutes and data was going to be more expensive than paying $100 USD/month for the International plan which gets us 250 min + 20 GB. So we got the International Plan for both of us. Cell tower WiFi with our phones was pretty good. For us we have found the following WiFi relative performance: hotel WiFi is better than cell phone WiFi ashore which was far better than Solstice’s WiFi.

The service in the hotel has been excellent. And when small problems do come up, their compensation is very generous. When we first checked in to the hotel we waited in our room for over an hour for our bags. When my wife called the front desk to ask about it, the front desk apologized and said that the bags were not on their way to us because they did not properly communicate it to their staff. Because of that, they compensated us with a free breakfast. The front desk contacted us yesterday after we got back from our long tour. The duty manager told us that our in-room safe was broken (disrepair). I was aware of this already as the plastic electronic part (LED + keypad) was starting to separate from the safe door, but I didn't contact anyone about it--so how the hotel knew this is beyond me because the safe is hidden away inside a dedicated drawer). Anyway, for the inconvenience (and maybe because they need extended access to the safe for repair), they moved us out of our standard room and into a much larger corner room with spectacular sweeping views of Kowloon, Victoria Harbour, and Hong Kong Island. We lose seeing the sunset from this room, but I can live with that. We were very appreciative of the upgrade. I will tell you one thing though--in our old room (112th floor) and this new room (111th floor), you can feel the building sway. The building architecture is a bit peculiar. It is designed in a way to double the amount of corner rooms. The drawback to this design is that your window views on the edges include seeing the opposite corner rooms. In the floor plan below, our old room was 27 and our new room is 16 (the top of the photo is roughly north). You take two elevators to get to your room. The first elevator takes you from the ground floor to the 103rd floor where the front desk and concierge are located (photo). That elevator ride is long and and I have to equalize the pressure in my ears 2-3 times during the ride up or down.

We saw another beautiful sunset from our room last night:

When the tram is going up, the side with the view of the city is on the right hand side (starboard). The left side has views of brush. When going down, you want the benches on the left side for the view of the city. On the way down we took the benches in the front car because they faced forward going down. The others benches faced backwards. Some people really like riding backwards because there is supposed to be a cool optical illusion. When we lined up to get the front car seats going down in the very next tram, we found that there was no queue/line control. It’s a bit like lining up for a subway door (although for this tram, passengers enter on one side of the car and exit on the opposite side). While waiting, people pushed past us presumably to line up to get the seats we wanted. Then they encouraged other members in their group to come up with them. When I looked behind us, I realized we went from fourth/fifth person in line and became last in line for the front car—the crowd behind us had now all moved ahead of us. So I told my wife that we should go around the crowd in front of us to try to reclaim our place in line which we did. The tram ride is around 1.4 km long and took about ten minutes Also note that there are two waiting lines at the lower tram terminal station. The first line is to buy tickets and then when you walk past that line, there is a second line to get on the tram itself. If you buy tram tickets ahead of time online, you can skip the first line saving some time. Alternatively you can use your Octopus Card (which is like a subway pass that you load money into) to pay for the tram ride which also allows you to skip there first line. Our guide purchased our tram tickets for us ahead of time and then we paid her back. She just purchased the tram only tickets as we skipped all the combination offers (such as buying a combo that included Sky Terrace admission).

How cool is that?!

I will stop now and post the rest of the tour tomorrow. Good night from Hong Kong.

I need to circle back and talk about the dim sum lunch mentioned two posts earlier. The lunch was the highlight of the day for me. It is not a restaurant that is tourist friendly and requires an education in local habits and customs--an education that our guide was able to provide. In fact if my wife and I had showed up to this particular restaurant by ourselves, we would have run away after 2 minutes. The system for seating is a free for all. You are not seated by a restaurant employee nor is there a line to wait to be seated. You have to share a table with others. The custom for getting a seat when the restaurant is full is to stand behind a seat that you think will be vacated. To increase our odds for gettig a seat, our guide had my wife and I stake out seats at two different tables while she looked around for a potential 3rd table. I didn't know whether to be annoyed at our guide for not setting up something in advance or to be appreciative of this very foreign experience (in the end it was the latter for me). A regular local patron of the restaurant recognized our guide and, voila, in short order we had 3 seats at a table crammed in a corner. Virginia's seat was next to a tea kettle of hot water and she asked if she could hang her bag on the back of my chair lest the bag get melted by the hot tea kettle if she hung it on the back of hers. Another gentleman seated in the corner was also a regular patron. He recognized the Celebrity logo on my tee shirt and mentioned that he saw Solstice the day before from his home. Then Virginia proceeded to teach us how to properly clean our chopsticks, cup, and spoon using hot tea that is poured into a larger bowl which is used as a tiny wash basin. I was so amazed (and a bit horrified) that we had to do all this that I forgot to take photos. Our guide explained that she was taking us to a place so authentic with the locals that we would never have gone on our own as tourists--so I totally got it as far as why we were there. It was like we had a family member from Hong Kong taking us to a local restaurant that she frequents. I had the presence of mind to take out my iPhone and I immediately started a FaceTime video call with my parents who lived in Hong Kong in the 1940's and 50's. They now live in Kentucky and it was late in the evening for them when I called. The restaurant was so loud that I didn't (and couldn't) bother to talk to my parents to tell them why I called (they knew I was in Hong Kong). I just engaged the camera in the back of the phone and let them watch the scenery in the restaurant, the people, the carts, the chaos, our table, and us washing our cups and eventually getting our dim sum. In their 90's and no longer able to travel, I wanted to give them a live view of their old home and perhaps a glimpse of their life in the past. Although I could not hear what my mom was saying, I could see her watching intently with very wide eyes. That moment was the highlight of the tour and my day.

We took the famous and historic Star Ferry back to Kowloon. The ride across Victoria Harbour was fairly quick but with lots of fine views. We got a nice view of our hotel which is housed in the upper floors of the tallest building in Hong Kong--the International Commerce Centre. We also saw the cruise ship, Vasco de Gama (Nicko Cruises) which we saw in Singapore and Halong Bay.

Virginia then took us to a dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong Island. It is a very authentic restaurant pretty much frequented by locals.

We then took the tram to Victoria Peak for a panoramic view of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. This was a special request by me to visit not just because it is a major tourist attraction, but also because my mom and dad had their first date there over 60 years ago. Because she knew I liked to take photographs, she made sure we was sitting on the correct side of the tram to get a good view and photo (going up and down). Getting the best seats can be somewhat of a free for all which she warned us about. As we were seated and waiting for the tram to start, Ceri (@Bloss20) was also on the tram and she saw us first and came by to say hi. That was a very nice coincidence and nice of her to say hi. We previously enjoyed the company of Ceri and her family during guided tours of two different ports in Vietnam. Virginia offered us the option to pay to go to the Sky Terrace which we declined as we decided to go to the viewpoints that did not cost extra but were essentially as good. In the photo below, Hong Kong Island is in the foreground, Victoria Harbour is in the middle, and Kowloon is in the background. the hotel we are staying at is the very tall skyscraper in the background all the way to the left. Compared to the rest of the ports that we visited so far (including Singapore) Hong Kong weather is quite cool (high of 70 degF) and when we were at Victoria Peak, it was even chillier. I regretted not bring my sweatshirt with me (left it in the hotel room), but I survived.

For today we had pre-arranged for a guide through Tours By Locals to do a full day tour to get us oriented to the city in preparation for our 5 nights in Hong Kong. The cost for the tour was $798 USD which is pretty expensive however the guide we hired had an excellent resume'. Virginia took us on the MRT to Hong Kong Island and taught us how to buy and use the Octopus Card. She educated us on the MRT system itself and some tips that will help us cut down on rookie/tourist mistakes. Our first stop was at Statue Square where there used to be statues of British royalty leftover from the British colonial period. All of the statues were removed by the Japanese however one statue was ultimately returned back to the square (one of the founders of the Hong Kong bank, HSBC): On the east side of the square stands the old Supreme Court built during the colonial period. The building is in the photo below right behind the fountain. Our guide (Virginia) pointed out the various tall buildings and discussed their history and how feng shui was incorporated in their external design. We also saw an interesting scaled map composed of lights on the ground which among other things, showed the Hong Kong Island shoreline which changed over time because of land reclamation.

The smoking guidelines that I published were for Solstice. Solstice Deck 12 is where the pool is located (screenshot below). That would be equivalent to Deck 14 on Reflection.

After we checked in yesterday, we went to a food truck center in West Kowloon for a quick lunch. Then we went to the M+ Museum which is a modern art museum located within easy walking distance from our hotel. Although I am not an art enthusiast, I found some of the exhibits interesting. And of course there were interesting architectural elements.

Good night from Hong Kong....

I never was able to go back to Guest Relations to re-ask your S2S question about bags in Singapore. Sorry about that.

Incidentally, here is a time lapse video of our sail into Hong Kong before sunrise: link

We had a view of the beautiful Hong Kong sunset from our room--pretty much right at the same time that Solstice pulled away from the dock. For a while, I thought that our hotel room would afford us a view of Solstice as she sailed out of Hong Kong. But after looking at our track coming into Hong Kong (screenshot below), I see that we approached the pier from the east. Our hotel is west of the pier. Darn, we will not see Solstice sail by us after all. Looks like I will have to wait until Apr 2025 to see her again when we board her in Sydney to do the 17 night Transpacific sailing to Honolulu.

I was not happy with the internet overall. Although I haven't done it, I will post the speed test results for the different days that I measured it. Some days were ok, many were not. Note that our sailing between Halong Bay and Hong Kong (includes the At Sea Day) was affected by Starlink not always being available while we were in Chinese Territorial waters. Here were the images on the iLounge desktops (alternated with the login instructions). So that should be affecting you right now. Run up to the iLounge on Deck 6 and talk to one of the techs there for a clearer explanation.

10:45 am: All Solstice debarkation groups were called ("everyone off the ship!"). 10:52 am: We are in line to go through immigration 11:00 am: We arrive at baggage claim to get our 3 suitcases in Group 27 which are really easy to find. 11:08 am: We exit the terminal and line up in the long taxi queue line. It's long, but it is moving 11:20 am: We get to the front of the line only to find out the taxis here in modern day Hong Kong take cash only, no credit cards! There are no nearby ATMs, I am directed to a currency exchange office which is just inside the terminal from where we are. There is a small line at the currency exchange. I give them $100 USD and receive $740 HKD. 11:37 am: We get into our taxi (van). We are taken to the Ritz Carlton in West Kowloon ($142 HKD). 11:55 am: We are dropped off at the hotel and we check in. 12:14 pm: We are in our room. It has a beautiful view of the harbor.

It is 10:44 am and Group 41 has been called.