Stealing the trademark from Indonesian famous slang that loosely translated into “are you kidding me?” – as to question the absurdity of ideas.
However goofy it was, I found the term perfectly captured the overall experience me and my friends had during our short visit to HK. The idea of it came simply from free airplane tickets. I don’t know how many times I’ve written this down that minimum-to-zero price of a ticket has always become a thrilling start of an adventure.
As you might’ve remembered – or you fellow readers in the future might’ve heard – that 21st century world had experienced the craziest time of pandemic where people were confined in their houses; healthcare system was in jeopardy; term of remote working was coined; generation Z were obsessed with mental health and well-being. Among others dire matters, it had created a world where across-country travelling was reduced to zero and tourism was practically non-existent.
Post Covid era, where countries had started to open their borders and to boost confidence of international tourists, HK, among other countries, kicked off an initiative of free airplane tickets through its national carrier, Cathay Airways. I learned that there were steps and multiple choices and lottery involved in order to get these freebies. As lucky as my friends were, they managed to go into all those troubles and able to secure the tickets.
As I failed to know the information timely, I bought the tickets on my own at full price #toobad.
Nevertheless, here we go.
I arrived in Hong Kong one day later compared to my friends as moving into a new company created some difficulties to take on longer leave days – new joiner problem. We stayed at cool and chic hotel in Kowloon area called Eaton. Tiktok had contributed a lot to many hotels and restaurant recommendation throughout the trip.
We spend the first day strolling around the old town area visiting an Islamic center at the heart of HK which famously sold halal dimsum. It was good but somehow to our Indonesian-MSG tastebuds they tasted a bit bland and the spices weren’t exactly matched to ours. However, knowing that they were halal, it made the food somehow blissful.
We ventured to the said longest escalator in the world in Central Market area. They were not exactly a one piece item that went hundreds of meters long but rather a compilation of ones closely constructed to one another. We didn’t make to the very end of it as we chose to explore the Market down below it. On the Central Harbourfrount, there’s this famous HK Observation Wheel where we bought ourselves a private gondola so we didn’t get mix up with fellow other tourists. It cost us 160 HKD (IDR 320k). The view from there was amazing! Tens of skyscrapers with wondrous night lights plus the ocean view ended our first day lovely.
I honestly didn’t expect that the weather during our trip there would be that hot. The humidity and intensity of the sun were unparalleled. Oh God how it bore the same resemblance to Jakarta! It was the very temperature where back hometown dwarfed my intention to eating out and rather stayed on my nice air-conditioned cubicle. But now we had to explore the city under that scorching sun. That led to however hot and unfortunate weather to a sweet blessing unfolded in Disneyland.
I have certain fondness of theme park, not from the exhilarating attraction but from the nuance the place brings. Suffice to say that a theme park, whicever that is but especially a Disneyland, is a happy and joyous place. It paints absolute smiles and cements lovely memories to us all, no matter how young or old – valid evidence from the 30s something year-old of us.
Disneyland HK may not has vast complex as Tokyo’s nor it builds the most grandeur castle, but its night fireworks show successfully brought us to tears (I was surprised as you were! I mean firework? Made you cry?!). It was not an understatement that Disney’s influences – their movies, books and soundtracks – had rooted deeply on our childhood core narrative.
As the scorching sun was still there, it delivered a sweet surprise to us: no queue!
No queue in Disneyland!
One attraction to another cost us only maximum of 10 min of waiting, even on some rides we were directly ushered to sit on the roller coaster car. I’d say it was the only theme park where I enjoyed almost its flagship attractions. People in HK seemed reluctant to go to such outdoor place where the temperature was 35+ celcius. But for people of tourist like us we had no choice as tickets have been bought, and I wasn’t kidding when I lamented that stuffs were totally crazy expensive!
I’d consider price as my second takeaways from this whole HK trip (first being the weather). So we had heard that in many survey city-ranking HK often got the top three as the most expensive city in the whole world. The realization of such survey kicked us hardly there to the extent where the expensiveness was matched to European countries’ where I told and complained (duh) in my previous writing in Copenhagen.
Food prices were around 2-2.5x higher compared to Jakarta. That made a cup of local branded coffee that cost around IDR 20k (USD 1.3) to be IDR 50k (USD 3.3). Starbucks brand was definitely a no-go to buy (though I bought it one time and caught the taste was exactly the same, so kudos Starbucks Indonesia!). We often opted for fast food places as our go-to meal such Jolibee and McDonald’s – not exactly cheap but least they were safe bet for the budget.
Side note: most of restaurant had pork in their cooking, which made it harder to look for a place with the least amount on it. We considered and hoped – Bismillah, in the name of Allah – that fried chicken place such McDonald’s as safer mean.
The rocketed and expensive price trend followed to our next day in Macau. As famous as it was for a city of gambling, it created this perception that money ran more liquid there allowing supply-demand law thrived. The bigger the demand, the higher the price. It made Macau even more expensive to HK (eg. we did direct 1-to-1 comparison for Shake Shack between HK and Macau).
Little did we know that entering Macau was the exact equivalent of entering a new country. It came with the all hassle of immigration queues, baggage screenings and security checks. It made us giggle to remember how my friends were in some way got minor discriminative treatment from people there, especially as they were using hijab. People mistook them as TKI (Tenaga Kerja Indonesia – Indonesia workforce who’s sent abroad, many of them in HK, that mostly work as blue collar, house maids or nannies). During our immigration check, for example, the security guards were eager to check their hand carries and ushered them into the foreigner locket – while me, easily mistaken as local people, was being left alone.
We visited The Venetian for its famous indoor Venice-vibe complete with its venetian boat rent. As it’s practically a huge mall with tens of unique shops we ended up spending half the day there, plus to straighten out our mood for the hot weather outside. The mall/casino/hotel complex was vast and it offered miniature landmarks all around the world: Eiffel Tower, Big Bang, Grand Canal of Venice, etc.
It left us with short amount of time to see the Ruins of Saint Paul. Sitting atop a small hill, the remnants of what was the largest Catholic church in Asia looming rather eerily – especially at night. In 1835, the church was destroyed by a fire burning most of the building except the stone frontispiece. It now stood as singular wall bringing resemblance to an odd book-stand amid modern stores around it. The juxtaposition of a historic 17thcentury cathedral against shiny bright neon logo of 21st century modern stores of Uniqlo, Adidas was rather striking. A demonstration of tourism capitalization where profit wins over timeworn records.
Afterwards, despite the heavy and tired legs, we insisted to peek on the other famous nightlife of Macau: a Casino. I was rather anxious as my fellow friends were wearing Hijab and whether the guard were going to throw us out or not – though indeed there was no intention for us to gamble with our already little amount of money – especially it was well-know that Islam strongly condemned the act of gambling.
We managed to pass the guard, thankfully, but people were not allowed to record or took any photo inside. It was new knowledge to us to savour on people eagerness (and, probably hopefulness) to move their fortune through coin machine and card playing. One blackjack table was swarmed by dozens of people while the other was of just two or three player, not sure which one that would’ve brought better odds.
That was basically all. All what we did in Macau.
The next day was our last, in the morning we busied to pack our luggage to catch on the ferry ride back to HK. Our flight back to Jakarta was from HK. We were in a situation where we haven’t bought any souvenirs (from Indonesian stand point it’s customary and almost mandatory) while we couldn’t find any luggage storage in HK. The one that we found was in airport and it was counterproductive to go back and forth. Having no other option in our hand, we dragged our luggage across town in the not-so-friendly luggage pedestrian. We had several stops along the way: me who needed to go to Apple store to pick up some orders, my friend who needed to buy souvenirs, and us who were hungry and craving for Shake Shack.
Upon our reflection on the flight back home – where our plane suddenly had technical issues that made us had to change aircraft – we realized that we shouldn’t have bothered to stay overnight in Macau. We could have easily made a one day trip and could have left our luggage and stuff behind in our cozy HK hotel. We thought by doing so it would’ve given us more spacious time to explore Macau, where to our dismay we only managed to drag our legs up until 10 pm.
This epiphany was then confirmed by our friends who had visited HK/Macau before. That would have saved us much time and energy.
It dawns on us, however, that those could have’s and should have’s are in essence why we do travelling in the first place. Takeaways that we learn when we move ourselves towards the fringe of our comfort ground. Things that go wrong and unexpected are in a way expected, otherwise it will void the joy and laughter from the whole experience. No matter how scorching hot the weather was, how expensive our food was, how many times we cursed on the situation (in good and respectful way) and no matter how tacky it probably sounds: we had great time in the company of those we treasured the most.
-R
Some photos were taken using iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, if you noticed some drops in quality.
Journey on Journal 