Pictures from this trip can be found here.
Last weekend we took a day off of work on Friday, and headed off to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary in Singapore.
Except we never got there.
The trip started off normally enough – we drove to the Kobe airport, took the bay shuttle ferry across the water to the Osaka airport, and got in the check-in line for our flight. We handed over our passports, and the check-in counter staff had some trouble with my passport. I started to get worried when she left the booth to talk with her supervisor, and then we got the bad news.
My passport was due to expire in four months. Singapore requires that you have six months left on your passport to enter the country. So I couldn’t go.
I was shocked – for the life of me I thought that my passport didn’t expire until May or June, but for some reason I never checked it before leaving. I knew about the six month rule – lots of countries have it – but mentally I must have been thinking about the expiration of my foreigner registration card. Anyway, no excuses here – I screwed up and I couldn’t go to Singapore.
Kuniko was cleared to go, and for a while we considered whether it was worth it for her to go and make the best out of the weekend since it was already paid for. In the end we decided that she’d stick around, and we went downstairs to sit on a bench in the airport and think about our options. I called the hotel, and they were nice enough to let us cancel our room without penalty, so there was a glimmer of good news. We got on our smartphones and started looking around.
I did some research and found that unlike Taiwan and China, Hong Kong doesn’t have a six month requirement for passports, and Hong Kong was already on our list. In fact, we were planning to go there in March 2016 anyway. I double-checked with an airline agent to make sure that they would let me enter Hong Kong, and they said no problem. With my phone I bought two tickets on a plane leaving that afternoon, and we were on our way. I also reserved a nice room at the Hyatt Regency, and all that remained was waiting a few hours for our flight.
Kuniko was obviously disappointed because the plan had changed dramatically, but I was just happy that we were going somewhere fun together, and that we didn’t have to sit at home all weekend thinking about how I screwed up our anniversary plans.
We were able to get exit row seats on Jetstar Japan on a non-stop flight to Hong Kong, and after a boring four hour flight we arrived in Hong Kong around 8 pm. We took the high speed rail link all the way to Hong Kong’s Central station, and then found a cab to take us to the top of Victoria Peak.
The view from up there was really impressive. They built a big observation structure up there, and designed the walkways and other buildings to block the view – a subtle way to encourage people to pay up to go out on the observation deck. We did just that, but the fee was worth it. The night was a little cloudy, but the view of the buildings and architecture along Hong Kong Harbor was spectacular. We tried taking pictures with my camera and both of our phones, but because of the wind and the low lighting it was not easy. In addition, before we left on our trip I was working for about 30 minutes on my camera – it has an automatic lens cover that sometimes sticks, resulting in pictures with a dark corner. It has been driving me crazy for years, and I thought I had it fixed finally – unfortunately at the top of the mountain with the beautiful view it was sticking again. What a pain!
After getting our fill of the scenery we looked for a cab to get back to the station. There was a cab nearby waiting, but the driver didn’t speak much English. After we got moving he tried to get us to pay up front in cash instead of using the meter, and was pretty rude about it. We tried to figure out what he was saying, but we never got it. It started feeling weird to me so we had him pull over and we got out. We had to walk five minutes back to the taxi stand, but we found another driver there who spoke English. He offered to drive us down the mountain to the station for 250 Hong Kong dollars, which was pretty steep. We were on a tight schedule, though, and we figured the money was worth the time that we would save – the only other way down was the bus or a tram, all of which had long, long lines.
Back at the train station we took a train under the bay to the Tsian Sha Tsui section of Hong Kong, where I had reserved the hotel. As we walked through the crowded streets I suddenly realized I didn’t have my camera. I checked my pockets, my bag, and then I realized that it had probably been left behind in one of the taxicabs. I don’t know which one, but I hoped it wasn’t the guy that tried to rip us off at first… By this time there was no way that the camera would be recovered. Oh well, I hated that sticky camera lens anyway. The good news was that I only took about 10 pictures before I lost it, so we didn’t lose all our holiday memories.
So I’m sure at that point Kuniko is wondering if I had some kind of brain disease or sudden onset of alzheimer’s. Where is my normally organized and competent husband? The wheels were off the wagon, folks!
Luckily, from there things started to improve. The hotel was in an interesting neighborhood, and our room was quite nice. We scored a free upgrade and had a great view of the harbor with huge windows across the whole room. The bed and bathroom were spacious as well. It’s good to have a credit card when you need it!
After dropping our stuff off at the hotel we headed out to explore. We ate dinner at a tiny shop that specialized in beef broth noodles, and they treated us very nicely and gave us English menus to order. They even ran across the street to buy us beers (because we didn’t notice they weren’t on their menu).
After dinner we walked around the neighborhood taking in the sights. We were in the nightlife part of Hong Kong, and there was a lot going on. The architecture is pretty impressive, but also I like the modern buildings surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, or the little alleys that led to dinghy shopping arcades. There were so many people out and about (it was still Friday night, after all) and navigating the crowds was getting to be a little tiring.
We went back to our hotel and went to the Chin Chin Bar, which was described as a Chinese lounge bar. There was a foreign lady singing old 80’s tunes in the main lounge but we were able to get a seat outside and avoided most of the kitsch. Our cocktails were typical Asian cocktails – watered down versions of the real thing. But it was nice to sit down for a while and enjoy the warm temperature and the fresh(?) air.
The next day was spent mainly eating. Eating dim sum, noodles, won ton soup, more dim sum, coconut milk, mango and tapioca, fruit juices. My favorite dim sum was a cake made with egg – described as a thousand layer egg cake – steamed cake with layers of salted egg yolk and coconut lotus paste in between layers of steamed flour. A revelation of salty and sweet! We ate and we walked and we ate again. At one place the waiter came to change our dirty tablecloth. He removed the old one, and then spread out a new one – which looked just as dirty. He seemed to notice, so he flipped it over to the other side. But that side was just as dirty as the other two. Finally he just shrugged and put it on the table. The real Chinese experience!
Between the eating we enjoyed the views of the city. Our favorite place was the harborfront on the central island of Hong Kong. It was a financial district with almost no shopping, and so we could get away from the crowds but also enjoy the ocean view, lots of green grass and plenty of space to walk.
The public transportation system in Hong Kong was just as good as the ones where we live, so it was no trouble getting around. We also went across the bay using the White Star ferry, which was much cheaper than the train and more fun, too. We once again covered land, sea and air during our trip.
We slowly walked and ate our way across Hong Kong’s old town until we got to the train station towards the airport. There was a giant Buddha that we both were hoping to see, so we took the train to get there as it would be our last stop before we went to the airport. Unfortunately when we got there, they said that we’d have to wait 45 minutes to board the ropeway, 30 minutes on the ropeway, 30 minutes to look around, and then we’d be behind many people and we would probably have to wait two hours before could catch the ropeway back. The staff said we’d likely miss our flight home. We were disappointed we couldn’t see the Buddha – I had no idea it was such a big attraction – but we’ll probably come back in the future and check it out. Hong Kong is only four hours away from us and it wouldn’t be hard to return someday.
From there we went back to the airport, did a little shopping, and had a drink at an airport bar (we had to explain to the staff the difference between Chardonnay and Shiraz) and then it was a little shopping and home.
The return flight arrived late at night at Kansai airport, so we had to kill four hours waiting for the first boat out. We managed to kill time at the empty airport walking around, drinking coffee at McDonald’s and Burger King, and sleeping a little bit. We caught a ferry around 6 am, and we were at home and in bed sleeping by 8 am.
It wasn’t what we planned, but I really enjoyed seeing Hong Kong – it was slightly different from Taiwan but just as interesting. Most importantly, Kuniko and I could spend time together traveling. We’ll be heading to the USA for Christmas this year, but as soon as I return to Japan in January I’ll be sending in my passport for renewal. Hopefully we can take a little redemption trip to Singapore in March of 2016!
