My Hong Kong Trip - Part 1

After serving the Bank for over 4 years, finally it was my time to go for overseas courses. And just my luck, all those waiting in patience finally landed me a trip to Hong Kong for 2 weeks for a computer forensics course. Wohoo!!! Now that's what i'm talking about overseas trip baby. 14 days as oppose to 3 days for an overseas course. All that waiting finally paid of.

I was scheduled to departure for the course on 15th June 08, the same date as Father's Day. Though i was looking forward to go on this trip, it did made me kinda sad to leave behind my daughter for so long and especially on father's day. It did cross my mind to bring her along as wifey was tagging along with me for a week. But finally we decided not to take her along due to certain reason such as we don't know what it's like in Hong Kong, acessibility of Halal Food, weather and also she is still quite too small to remember things and places. It would have made our trip more difficult as we had that extra baggage. Plus, i don't think wifey could manage to bring her back to KL with her bags and a small child on an airplane just by herself. And for those reason, she had to stay behind. If she was a bit older, then we might have brought her along.

We departed from home around 6.30am, stop by at Rumah Kent to pick Papa up. He promised to send us to KL Sentral. We finally reached KL Sentral around 6.55am. We were quite saddened to leave Sofea behind, and at the same time i think she had an instinct that she was going to be left as she was quite gloomy that morning and not her usual ceria self. After checking in our bags at KLIA, we had breakfast and finally board the plane. It was a MAS Boeing 777-200. My first time on such a plane. It was equipped with the lcd screen where you could watch movies, play game, or listen to songs. The 3 hours 25 min sure was quite jiffy as we were entertained all the way.
After finally reaching Hong Kong airport, we finally took the Airport Express to the Hong Kong MTR station. The Airport Express Train is the equivalent to our KLIA ERL express. The journey taken to ride the train was around 30min. After reaching the Hong Kong MTR station, we had to walk to the next station with our bags along to the Central station. The station was quite far i guess though we only walked inside the station passage way. I have never seen so many crowd in a train station before. Plus the Hong Konger's were really walking at a fast speed, young and old, men and women. After finally reaching at the correct station, we took the MTR to the Wan Chai station stop which in theory, the closest one to the Hotel. Well at first it does seemed quite far a walk, but as time progresses, i guess it's not that far :)

We finally checked in to the Wesley and given the room 2012. Our first impression of the room was, what a small room. The room at Sri Malaysia was wayyyy bigger than this one. But after analyzing the buildings nearby, i guess the size is quite standard as all the buildings seems to be very tall but narrow, due to lack of space.

After relaxing in the room for a while, it's time to explore the Jungle out there to find ourselves the basic survival stuff, food. We decided to try the Causeway Bay area and find some of the Halal restaurant food that we had printed out. Finally we found a middle east shop with Halal food, but was shock down to our knees when we saw the price of the foods. It's like nothing we have ever seen before. Not even the hotel prices in KL could match them. At first ee thought that this particular shop was expensive so we went on for search at an Indonesian restaurat called Warung Malang.

They sell nasi campur, the usual that we always have in Malaysia. We ordered 2 nasi campur and 2 drinks. The cashier finally counted and said sembilan setengah nine and a half. Now this made more sense, so wifey gave her a HKD100. But to my shock and laughter (in my heart) she returned back only HKD5. What the devil??? Did you mean to say that 2 nasi campur and 2 drinks cost us HKD95 or RM 40. Back at KL, RM40 could easily support you for the next 3-4 days of complete meal, but here is just a 2 person meal??? I was already missing my D'Tebing Rm5 value meal and i don't think RM5 is enough for you to buy food in Hong Kong. True enough as we stroll down the street peaking at eating outlet there was, the price at Warung Malang was considered a standar price. Damn

Click picture to reveal the actual price!

This is not the warung malang price, but from Shalimar.

How lucky am i to stay in Malaysia

After leaving the restaurant, we had a walk along Causeway Bay area and went inside the Times Square shopping mall. I have never seen so many people walking about and this is the first time that the number of human is more than the number of cars. There were very few cars on the road. For people, It was like a traffic jam but a jam that was filled with human beings walking about. It was like a Jusco member day sale, only at a bigger place.
Petrol price in HK = HKD17.43 (RM 7.32) per liter as compared to Malaysia RM 2.70 (HKD 6.42)

I guess we're not worse off

After finished with the shopping mall, we finally walked back to the hotel, which suprisingly was a long way back. We did however stop at a few supermarket to see whether they are any Malaysia products available for sale. Sadly, i couldn't find any Maggi mee, but suprisingly Ayam Brand products were available. Go Cap Ayam!!! In Hong Kong, you have to be careful on the product on sale as they might contain lembu pendek ingridients.

After reaching the hotel and experiencing what the city is like, we doze of to sleep after watching tv. Luckily they were a few english channel available such as Star World, NGC, Fox News and 2 other more channel.