Day Three - Strolling around Nathan Road, Kowloon

We got up around 11am but didn't leave the apartment until after 2pm. We're still wrecked from the travel and jet lag. The sun sets here around 6pm, so we've to take advantage of all available light.

We opted to stay local to Kowloon Island, with the aim to walk up to Mong Kok to see the goldfish/bird and ladies markets. That didn't happen. We didn't take into account the massive shopping street called Nathan Road and the heat (33c with a feels like of 38c, thats 100F).


View Day Three Stroll in a larger map. This is a map showing the route we took from bottom to top. The restaurant and symphony of lights viewing point are also shown

The streets around Kowloon are bustling with all sorts of activities. You got major international brands like Body Shop and H& M sitting along side the many 100's of traditional chinese medicine boutiques with their weird and wonderful displays of dried fish and animal parts. The sights, the sounds and smells are are draining to take in when combined with the heat factor.

We navigated our way along Nathan Road, a 2 mile trek, taking a break half way for some lunch. We'd wanted something traditional, I wanted some Dim Sum, the local favourite. We stumbled across a nice clean restaurant called Joys which had an English menu, so we decided that would do us. You've to indicate the quantities of each item using a pencil and grid on the menu. The items varied from Chicken Dim Sum to calves liver with rice.

Naturally Chicken feet were on the menu. We settled for a selection of Dim Sum, one rice filled, two meat followed by some rice rolls (which might have been desert of sorts) and the vile Chicken with lotus leaf rice. The chicken and rice dish, was indeed vile. They must have had the bird in the kitchen and cut it up into random pieces. Our plate contains unidentifiable parts, including bone and skin. For an anatomy students, it perhaps was a good chance to examine cross sections of the chickens body, but for us, it was too much. Vinnie managed to pick some meat from the plate. I couldn't touch any of it. From the looks of it, stay away from chicken here. We did order two very strange drinks, one a milky black jelly the other milky red bean - both topped with ice shavings. The total cost for the meal was HK$107 (around €9.60).

We never made it to the markets, deciding to head back to the clock tower viewing point along the southern tip of the Island to watch the nightly Symphony of Light show, the worlds longest running permanent light and sound show. Every night at 8pm, the buildings along the water front light up in a light and sound show for some 15 minutes. Using coloured lights and lasers, the harbor is transformed. Speakers are positioned around the viewing areas, otherwise the soundtrack is transmitted on the Radio. It was very beautiful. We've lots of great video footage which will be uploaded at some stage.

Afterwards we walked back to the apartment, which is conviently located 10 mins away. We ventured a slightly different route back taking in a shopping street lined with every designer boutique you could imagine, from the Gucci to Prada. We appear to have all the BIG fashion houses on our door step.

After some rest and refreshing we ventured out for some drinks locally. If we head over to Hong Kong Island we've to take a taxi back. Besides there are plently of places to visit on this side of the water. We started of in an empy Irish bar (naturally) located right beside our hotel. This was followed by three local bars. Smoking is banned in all indoor and most public spaces here, but the local bars on this side declare themselves as members only to get around this. Horrid. The bars we'd visited last night over on Hong Kong Island where more western and - well - smoke free.

We retired to bed around 4am after another horrid chicken burger from McDonalds. Stay away from the Chicken over here! It's not Chicken!!!!