Hong Kong Trip Day 1; The Touchdown

(Pardon my lousy picture positioning because i'm tooooo lazy to edit the HTML codes hahah)

So my second week of 2013 started off with my trip to Hong Kong with the family. It wasn't really pre-planned way in advance due to the busy schedules that me, my father and my cousin has, but luckily our leaves were approved. the only downside was, it was announced that the O levels results would be released on 10th January, which wasn't expected since we ALL thought the results would be released in early February but noooo, MOE has decided to release it earlier. So yea, my poor cousin had to endure the agony of anticipating his results whilst we are all enjoying ourselves. heh~

So we caught the 9.30am flight on Singapore Airlines. Yeap, we took SQ since there was some promotion going on. I initially planned to fly via Cathay Pacific, but thanks to dad's colleague, we were told that SQ has better rates, and he was right! To fly by CX will cost us SGD$1k more than flying via SQ.

In-flight entertainment is the thing that I loved most on SQ flights. The last SQ that I took was donkey years ago I guess. Ouh, and our Muslim Meal. The chicken is very bland. Took one bite and left it alone. Only ate the cake and prawn/squid salad? I don't even know what i was eating! Anyway, it was one heck of a "peaceful" journey. I was having a bad flu, the old man behind me keeps on yak and yak and yak-ing to his relative beside him, and mind you, he was very loud! Torturous much. Wished I had brought along my ear plugs, heh.

Helloooooo Hong Kong! I could already feel the chill when i reached the airport. After clearing immigrations, I remembered what my colleague told me, that is .... TO GET ALL THE MAPS AND BROCHURES AVAILABLE! 

On board the airport express! its only 4 stops (including the airport station) away but it's quite a long journey! By the way, it costs HKD100 per person per trip. I wasn't sure about any packages available though. So anyway, my dad bought all of us an "Octopus card", an ez-link counterpart just like in Singapore. No idea why they call it Octopus though. Perhaps because of the network of railway interchanges they have perhaps. Oh, and instead of MRT (like in Singapore), in Hong Kong it's called the MTR, which means "Mass Transit Railway".

Crossing between Lantau Island and Hong Kong Island

This view reminds me SOOO much of PSA Tanjong Pagar / PSA Pasir Panjang.

Hong Kong / Central MTR Station cum interchange. The interchange is SOOO Huge. SOOOO huge they have travellators and even have shops, just like at Citylink Mall/Raffles Xchange/Dhoby Ghout Xchange, only that these shops are located WITHIN the train station itself. Means you have to tap in to gain access to the shops.

Directions to the many, many lines/stations on different types of MTR network.

I can't help it, this looks sooooooo soooo much like Dhoby Ghout interchange, on the way to the North East Line (NEL).
As I update my Hong Kong trip, you'll see how freaky it is that the MTR-MRT network between Singapore & Hong Kong is soooo similar!

So we took the MTR from Central Station via the Tsuen Wan line to Tsim Sha Tsui, where our hotel is located at. Yes, we lugged our luggage as we were told that public transportation in HK is much expensive compared to Singapore. Once at TST (short for Tsim Sha Tsui), we had to hunt for which exit to take. There were sooo many exits! And once we found our exit, we were appalled that there was neither an escalator nor elevator for us to take to get us to ground level. We had to literally drag our luggage up the stairs. Gah! Thank goodness the hotel was just 1 building away. Phew~ 

We then had our rest, I had my short nap as I was on my flu medication, then we set for dinner & to the south side of Kowloon. More next!