GAMD: 25-January-2023; A day in Hong Kong
oooh.... TRAVEL! Although it's just to next-door Hong Kong, I did go through immigration, an-hour-long transport, needed foreign money, and so, this is my SECOND travel since the pandemic. (First was a quick 2-day to Shunde, China, which, after that, everything went to hell and we had a draconian closed-border policy).
Usual morning view.
Walk the doggies. Frankie was particularly eager today! Because Max wasn't feeling too well, we decided to let him walk nearby the home area instead of driving out, so Dad and Sis handled the elders, and I took Frankie up the hill to a very posh area of town (only the rich live there). He saw a children's park and wanted to go in, but it was no dogs allowed!
Max indeed wasn't too well since he didn't want to eat. I arranged for a vet appointment later in the afternoon so Dad can take him there.
I had my breakfast which was a leftover half cup of yoghurt and I mixed in a bit of a passion fruit honey thing. Didn't dare eat too much lest the ferry ride be bumpy and I throw up.
I got myself ready. I would later regret these loose-ish pants because, I forgot my own rule #1 with dressing for travels is either skirts or tight pants. Nothing narcissistic. It's because... public toilets are never clean and if I am wearing loose-ish pants, then when I take them off and squat then the hems are going to touch the dirty toilet floors!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I used a mobile ticketing platform thing and they printed an instant ticket. Then I walked along the corridor... so nostalgic!
And then when I saw it was the Tri-cat... ugh... I knew immediately it was going to be a bumpy ride. And indeed, the ride was bumpy. Ooooh and yeah. Another of my preferences is wearing a hoodie because, dirty headrests!
On the way, my friend asked if I knew whether they can change the time for the return ticket, so I tried to muck around with the booking system, and found out no, you can't change it, and that oops I bought the wrong ticket back. We had agreed on a 9pm return but apparently I bought a 9.30pm return. ohwell.
Arrived Hong Kong!
Our agreed meeting point was at the IFC in Hong Kong island, it's connected to the ferry terminal with a footbridge. I actually had wet eyes when I saw this "Wing On" sign. It was tears of nostalgia. As a kid, whenever we went to Hong Kong, that was the first department store we saw. LOL.
Met up with my friend, we went on the MTR (underground subway) and made our way to the exhibition location, a place called M+ and a I-guess new(ish) developed leisure area. People were putting up tents to spend the afternoon outdoors. The background in this photo below is actually a reverse from the skyline photo above: The one above was Hong Kong island looking towards Kowloon, and this one below is Kowloon looking towards Hong Kong island.
The reason for coming here is to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. Sorry to trigger anyone's trypophobia in the following photos. There's one of a dress (full-body) thing of... I don't know, pasta, that just gives me the goosebumps.... LOL
Pssst! It's this one! EEEEK!!!
Now this is super interesting. This is not official Yayoi Kusama gift shop item. This is, I can only say, bootleg item. It's by some Hong Kong artist that has used "Kusama" influence, but used her imagery as well. I dunno if it's licensed or not, but. Meh. And selling for the exorbitant amount of $9800 HKD ($1250 USD).
It's still weird that you can take photos in an exhibition. After this, we went out to one of the al fresco restaurants and had a late lunch. We decided to eat light as it was late and we were planning to hop on an earlier ferry, so looking to get an early dinner too. We went to the Central Market. It used to be a wet market, that closed down for many years. Now they've refurbished it and implemented a lot of "small, indie shops" to push for maintaining the cultural heritage. It was pretty interesting. There was something similar at the PMQ (refurbished and repurposed police dormitories), but for PMQ you have to walk uphill. Central Market is just on low level land, so... easy to get to!
Random Harry Potter shop spotted LOL.
These "red lamps" are classic to wet markets. It was nice for them to implement that into the interior design.
There was an eco-friendly shop that did the "no bags, no packing" thing. Sold their stuff by weight, but you either had to bring your own container or use a paperbag.
I had a coconut ice cream. It tasted more like a light salted caramel though.
This is another shop I found quite interesting. These are very "old" designs of Chinese mugs. Usually it's written 萬壽無疆, and it's usually to wish people for a long live without bounds. They've "modernized" it and used the design on thermos bottles and other things. The funnier thing is some of them do not have the words 萬壽無疆, but instead have some 4-character sayings that's hilarious.
We soon decided to get dinner, it was nice. Sorry, only a shot of my apple mojito mocktail. After dinner we hunted for Chinese sweet soup dessert, and I finally got a pretty good black sesame, peanut and walnut "soup".
We then went to the ferry terminal, I managed to get on the stand-by line and got the one and only remaining seat of the 9pm so got to go back to Macau with my friends. I was soooooo tired though, so did not shoot any more photos. The ferry ride was not bumpy at night (weird). But when I got home, apparently my cousin was visiting, and so I couldn't just wash up and go to bed. They eventually left at midnight, and then I went to bed.
Hope you enjoyed my traveling day! :-)
Usual morning view.
Walk the doggies. Frankie was particularly eager today! Because Max wasn't feeling too well, we decided to let him walk nearby the home area instead of driving out, so Dad and Sis handled the elders, and I took Frankie up the hill to a very posh area of town (only the rich live there). He saw a children's park and wanted to go in, but it was no dogs allowed!
Max indeed wasn't too well since he didn't want to eat. I arranged for a vet appointment later in the afternoon so Dad can take him there.
I had my breakfast which was a leftover half cup of yoghurt and I mixed in a bit of a passion fruit honey thing. Didn't dare eat too much lest the ferry ride be bumpy and I throw up.
I got myself ready. I would later regret these loose-ish pants because, I forgot my own rule #1 with dressing for travels is either skirts or tight pants. Nothing narcissistic. It's because... public toilets are never clean and if I am wearing loose-ish pants, then when I take them off and squat then the hems are going to touch the dirty toilet floors!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I used a mobile ticketing platform thing and they printed an instant ticket. Then I walked along the corridor... so nostalgic!
And then when I saw it was the Tri-cat... ugh... I knew immediately it was going to be a bumpy ride. And indeed, the ride was bumpy. Ooooh and yeah. Another of my preferences is wearing a hoodie because, dirty headrests!
On the way, my friend asked if I knew whether they can change the time for the return ticket, so I tried to muck around with the booking system, and found out no, you can't change it, and that oops I bought the wrong ticket back. We had agreed on a 9pm return but apparently I bought a 9.30pm return. ohwell.
Arrived Hong Kong!
Our agreed meeting point was at the IFC in Hong Kong island, it's connected to the ferry terminal with a footbridge. I actually had wet eyes when I saw this "Wing On" sign. It was tears of nostalgia. As a kid, whenever we went to Hong Kong, that was the first department store we saw. LOL.
Met up with my friend, we went on the MTR (underground subway) and made our way to the exhibition location, a place called M+ and a I-guess new(ish) developed leisure area. People were putting up tents to spend the afternoon outdoors. The background in this photo below is actually a reverse from the skyline photo above: The one above was Hong Kong island looking towards Kowloon, and this one below is Kowloon looking towards Hong Kong island.
The reason for coming here is to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. Sorry to trigger anyone's trypophobia in the following photos. There's one of a dress (full-body) thing of... I don't know, pasta, that just gives me the goosebumps.... LOL
Pssst! It's this one! EEEEK!!!
Now this is super interesting. This is not official Yayoi Kusama gift shop item. This is, I can only say, bootleg item. It's by some Hong Kong artist that has used "Kusama" influence, but used her imagery as well. I dunno if it's licensed or not, but. Meh. And selling for the exorbitant amount of $9800 HKD ($1250 USD).
It's still weird that you can take photos in an exhibition. After this, we went out to one of the al fresco restaurants and had a late lunch. We decided to eat light as it was late and we were planning to hop on an earlier ferry, so looking to get an early dinner too. We went to the Central Market. It used to be a wet market, that closed down for many years. Now they've refurbished it and implemented a lot of "small, indie shops" to push for maintaining the cultural heritage. It was pretty interesting. There was something similar at the PMQ (refurbished and repurposed police dormitories), but for PMQ you have to walk uphill. Central Market is just on low level land, so... easy to get to!
Random Harry Potter shop spotted LOL.
These "red lamps" are classic to wet markets. It was nice for them to implement that into the interior design.
There was an eco-friendly shop that did the "no bags, no packing" thing. Sold their stuff by weight, but you either had to bring your own container or use a paperbag.
I had a coconut ice cream. It tasted more like a light salted caramel though.
This is another shop I found quite interesting. These are very "old" designs of Chinese mugs. Usually it's written 萬壽無疆, and it's usually to wish people for a long live without bounds. They've "modernized" it and used the design on thermos bottles and other things. The funnier thing is some of them do not have the words 萬壽無疆, but instead have some 4-character sayings that's hilarious.
We soon decided to get dinner, it was nice. Sorry, only a shot of my apple mojito mocktail. After dinner we hunted for Chinese sweet soup dessert, and I finally got a pretty good black sesame, peanut and walnut "soup".
We then went to the ferry terminal, I managed to get on the stand-by line and got the one and only remaining seat of the 9pm so got to go back to Macau with my friends. I was soooooo tired though, so did not shoot any more photos. The ferry ride was not bumpy at night (weird). But when I got home, apparently my cousin was visiting, and so I couldn't just wash up and go to bed. They eventually left at midnight, and then I went to bed.
Hope you enjoyed my traveling day! :-)