Wan Chai

I moved to HK island. I had arranged to have a couple of nights in a boutique hotel in Wan Chai (Little Bay) for a change of scenery. I'm glad I did, I couldn't bear 5 nights in Mongkok. But first breakfast, and then after that, to compare egg tarts from two shops. It's very important to do these comparisons, you know.


The last time I was in HK, foot passengers crossed Victoria Harbour using a Star Ferry although there was road tunnel already. After that visit, the Tseun Wan MTR line connected HK island with Kowloon. That tells you how long ago it had been.


Wai Chai is visibly less hectic and more upmarket than Mongkok. But space is still at a premium. Can we interest you in a skinny apartment?

I left my backpack with the hotel because it was not check-in time yet and took a tram ride to the Western Market. If you get an upper deck seat, it's a scenic way to view HK. Advertisers have also not failed to notice that they make great moving billboards. I'll create a gallery with many of the specimens I took pictures of.

This market specialises in luxury fabrics. Unfortunately I have no such interests. The interior of the building is historical.

A somewhat unfortunately named business, to Aussies at least.

Central is full of posh shopping centres with famous brand names. I can only afford to look.

It was time for lunch so I went to the Luk Yu Tea House which has been around longer than I have. Some of the waiters look as old as the establishment. There was a murder here in November 2002 when a property tycoon was killed at breakfast by a hitman. Fear not, homicide in HK is quite low by world standards, aggravating crowded shopping centres notwithstanding. More murders happen in HK films than in real life.


The fare was standard and quite good. But there was a twist with siew mai, it came with slices of liver. The only way I like liver is in pâté so I had to leave that.

Then to see the Mid-levels Escalator. This is a chain of public covered escalators going from Central to mid-levels, the side of a hill. Commuters use it to go down to Central in the morning, and for the rest of the day, the direction of the escalator is reversed. I rode the escalator to the end, and then caught a minibus down.

While having an afternoon coffee break in the plaza near Hong Kong terminal, I noticed that many foreign maids (I think) were there relaxing on a Saturday, chatting, texting, or even surfing the web with 3G modems. These workers are very visible in HK, you will see a lot of them on public transport and in shopping centres on weekends and public holidays, when presumably they get time off.


I verified that I could check in my backpack at the Central terminal of the airport service on the day of departure, saving me having to carry it to the airport, and more important, having to store it until the evening.


Then it was time to rest my tired frame in the hotel. This hotel has a nice collection of historic photographs on the wall, from the early days onwards. Life was definitely harder in those days. You wouldn't want to be a coolie then. (It so happens that the Chinese rendition of coolie translates to bitter strength. Quite apt.)