My trip to Hongkong, Shenzhen and Macau.(Pic heavy!)

[Lukeskywalker]

My wife's office decided to send a bunch of people to Hongkong,Shenzhen and Macau for achieving certain targets. It took little persuasion from my wife to join her as some more people were also getting their spouses along. Moreover, they are a fun crowd and one can easily get along with them.
Day 1 :
Our Malaysia airline flight departed from our so called Bangalore Intl. airport (Still the old one) at half past midnight. Dinner was at 3 A.M. we reached red eyed at KL intl airport at about 7.25 AM.
The difference between our airport and the KLIA cannot be put into words.
Hope our new upcoming airport will have similar features. We had to take a train from our arrival gate to go to the departure gate of our HongKong flight.
4hrs later, still drowsy we reached Hongkong and were whisked off by bus to our hotel in Kowloon. After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was left free to catch up on lost sleep.
After a short nap woke up in the evening to have a splendid view of the city's famous skyline.

We were now taken for the famous harbour cruise. We joined a horde of chinese tourists onto a big ferry, which then made a slow cruise of the harbour with a chinese guide screaming in cantonese almost breathlessly. He pointed out the landmarks along the shore any of which we could not fathom. But, I must say the view is splendid, but for the verbal
diaorrhea which we were subjected to, the laser light show between buildings, over the bay was out of the world.

After the ferry we were taken to the Victoria's peak, the highest peak in HK, the ride up the peak on the tram was awesome.

The skyscrapers alongside seemed to be built at an impossible angle, this is the effect one gets due to the sharp incline the tram takes.
Once on top, we quickly went to the viewing platform and had a breathtaking view of the city. Wonder how much they spend on electricity.

After an Indian dinner, we went back to our hotel and crashed.

Day 2:
Wake up call at 7, breakfast and then we were off to Hongkong disneyland. This place is again on Lantau island which is where the airport is, the road goes into a tunnel under the bay.

On reaching Disneyland, we were left to explore the place on our own,

we first took the toy train which goes round the place just to get a feel of the place.

It is divided into three parts, Fantasyland, Adventureland and Tommorrowland. First we went to fantasyland and got on to a merry go round, then it was time for the lion king show. A very colourful
description of the entire movie in the form of a skit all in just an hour.

Lunch could be had in any of the many theme restaurants on exchange with a lunch coupon. Lunch was pathetic. After lunch we went into Adventureland. First a visit to Tarzan's tree house which is accessed by a raft,

then an adventure cruise on a boat which takes us through a river with many surprises on the way like tribals taking potshots to crocs lunging
at you.

The next stop was in tomorrowland with a wild futuristic rollercoaster ride in pitch darkness, with horrors along the way. We came out of Tomorrowland just in time to catch the colourful Disney parade at 4 PM.








After the parade it was time to head back. I asked our tour guide if I could break away from the group and go exploring HK on my own. He reluctantly agreed only to be confronted with half the others in the group who wanted to join me.
We went off to the MRT station at Disneyworld, purchased tickets to centre of town and zoomed off in the driverless hi speed train.

Two interchanges later we reached Mongkok area of Hongkong which is the shopping area.Ladies mkt. in Mongkok is similar to our chickpet
only more colourful. Bargaining is the key word and the lady had to buy another bag to stuff in all the shopping.

From Mongkok, we took another train to Jordan, which is where temple st. is located. This is an all night shopping centre and one can buy trinkets and fake watches for ridiculously low prices. I got a fake Brietling for about 600 bucks. Took a cab back to our hotel to end the day. Dinner was by the street amidst unusual fare. We just had the Peking duck.



Day 3:
The entire first half of the day was dedicated to a city tour of Hongkong
which took us to places like Jackie Chan's jewellery showroom (Absolute ripoff), repulse bay (a nice calm beach), the village of fishermen in Aberdeen, which has people living on boats for over 3 generations now.

After lunch we were driven to the railway station to take a train to Shenzhen.

An hour's ride and we disembarked at Lo Wu railway station the border with Hongkong. Cleared immigration and we were across into Shenzhen.
Shenzhen on first appearances reminds one of India, the chaos and noise very similar to home. We were taken to our hotel for check in and soon after we were taken to Splendid China, a theme park which showcases the splendours of china in the form of miniatures.
I'll let the pictures do the talking here.





After a superlative dragon dance performance we were taken back to our hotel and allowed to be on our own. We hit the Dongmen market for another bout of shopping and this place is madness.

Clothes and handbags for throwaway prices. I picked up a huge remote controlled F1 car for my nephew and had to lug it everywhere till I reached Bangalore as it could not fit into any bag.

Day4:
Morning saw our aching bones being dragged into the bus for yet another excursion.
The day started badly with us being reluctantly into jade showrooms and silk emporias. After that we were taken to Windows of the World. Another masterpiece which affirms the fact that the Chinese can replicate almost anything.
This is again a theme park which has every conceivable tourist attraction in the world being replicated on a miniature scale. The replicas sure give the originals a run for their money.Again let the pictures do the talking.









After lunch we were directly taken to the ferry terminal for our onward journey to the gambling city of Macau.
The ferry was not a ferry at all. It was a sleek Hydrofoil.

It moved at amazing speed across the South China sea and the ride was just like an airplane.One hour later we were at Macau.
We were checked into the Grand Waldo Hotel, a superb five star hotel with its own in house casino.

Grand Waldo Hotel and Casino

We were asked to check out a casino called the Venetian, it was huge, huge as in we kept getting lost among the tables.Unfortunately photography is strictly prohibited inside casinos.

The Venetian Casino

We went up 5 levels to the food court and this is the picture taken at 10.30 at night:

Artificial illumination makes it seem like early evening in such a splendid manner that you actually feel refreshed. After dinner we blew away some dollars on slot machines and called it quits when losses seemed to grow larger and larger.

Day 5:
After the previous night's gambling we were taken for a city tour of Macau. We saw the Macau tower, temple of A-Ma, ruins of st.Paul etc. Some pics:

Ruins of St. Paul's

Shop in Macau

After the half day tour we were taken to a warehouse selling branded clothes which were according to our guide over produced so sold at discounts. DKNY, CK etc were being sold at about 1000 to 1500 bucks.
After buying some labels we went off to a supermarket called New Yaohans, this is like our lifestyle store magnified some 10 times. By then we were beat and decided to call it a day and reluctantly refused another night out at the casinos.
Day 6:

We took the ferry back to Hongkong airport and then transferred to our connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur. The group returned to bangalore from Kuala Lumpur, but we and another couple had planned on an extension of 4 days in Malaysia.

The Malaysia leg of our tour will continue soon,
Hope you guys like it.

P.S. I put in many more good snaps but was asked to limit it to 20, how do I overcome this?

[Nitin]

Very nice pics! The place with the minature buildings looks similar to the one in Holland. i don't recollect the name,but its pretty much like this. Guess its called Madurodam.
I think you can only attach 20 pics in each post. Do add more pics in a 2nd post.

[surajs]

The pics are awesome and nicely put up too.Waiting for your second post.

[Lukeskywalker]

Ok some more snaps
KLIA

The Airport train

Inter-terminal Transfer

Hongkong Twin tunnel

The IFC Building

Hongkong by Day

One of many

[Samurai]

Oh boy, this is an amazing pictorial, and this was a business trip...

The low light photographs have come out excellent, it can put my dSLR to shame. In fact your lowlight photos (both composition & exposure) are better than your daylight photos. How did you do it, did you have a tripod handy all the time?

[Lukeskywalker]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Oh boy, this is an amazing pictorial, and this was a business trip...

The low light photographs have come out excellent, it can put my dSLR to shame. In fact your lowlight photos (both composition & exposure) are better than your daylight photos. How did you do it, did you have a tripod handy all the time?

Thanks Samurai san, coming from an ace, i'm overwhelmed.
I bought a tripod in HK, but it is still unused.
Just experimented with my sony, and got some good results. Also, never used the flash under most circumstances.
The daylight photos of HK were mostly taken behind window panes (hotel, bus etc).

The snaps of Langkawi are my pride, hope to post them soon.

[Lukeskywalker]

More pics in the order of our travel
The group at Disneyland

Donald and Daisy

Tarzan's tree house

The Disney Train









Disney resort MRT

Hey! No driver!

The Spread

[Lukeskywalker]

Splendid China at night

The colourful train



Our Taj Mahal



Shenzhen City

[Lukeskywalker]

Starting grid of the Macau Grandprix


Streets of Macau


Beauty of Macau

Juice shop


Won it at the Casino !!


Coming up next !! Malaysia- Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi.

[akroy]

Hey Hari, so thats the reason you didnt come to the Nandi Hill meet on 4th Nov...
Excellent Pics Boss, Looks like both of you had a Nice time exploring new places...

Abhi

[Lukeskywalker]

Originally Posted by akroy

Hey Hari, so thats the reason you didnt come to the Nandi Hill meet on 4th Nov...
Excellent Pics Boss, Looks like both of you had a Nice time exploring new places...

Abhi

Precisely Abhi, we returned on the 4th, so couldn't make it thought it was in my backyard.
Anyway, you guys have had a blast too, going by the pics. Nice to hear you enjoyed being a passenger in 'The Optra'.

[BUSA]

Absolute breath taking pics, thanks so much for sharing. Very detailed and well covered

[n_aditya]

Originally Posted by Lukeskywalker

Artificial illumination makes it seem like early evening in such a splendid manner that you actually feel refreshed.

Luke, thanks for the pics man. I loved each and every pic but the one above takes the cake. Looks like a studio set or a painting actually. Wow. Really something.

[benbsb29]

Lovely pics and write-up, Luke. The pics have come out really good.

[vnabhi]

Real breath-taking pics, I must confess. The photo on Venetian Castle looks a lot similar to a casino in Las Vegas with a similar name.
Now we know what spleandors lie in China---never knew that things could be so good. I've spotted a few HK sky scrapers from the airport though.
BTW, where is Macao? Is it a part of China?