Day 2: Hong Kong vs National Geographic

We started off the day missing the complimentary hotel breakfast - something which has a direct correlation with Deario's sleeping intensity and our late night National Geographic sessions. Doesn't matter though, since there're lots of interesting restaurants near where we are staying at Tsim Sha Tsui, which is apparently well known for affordable food and shopping.

It has been said that dim sum in Hong Kong is in a class of its own compared to that in Singapore. However, after having a meal at a recommended teahouse, I must say that the differences are subtle. Sure, the ingredients are fresher and the variety wider, and we did enjoy a good lunch, but seriously, the level of tastiness isn't all that higher than back home.

I think different people delight in different things when they travel to a foreign land. Some enjoy activities (e.g. rafting, snow-boarding, fishing); some like to sight-see (e.g. nature, places of interest); some indulge in local culture (e.g. people, traditions, conversation). I think that Deario is the kind of traveller who isn't very interested in the culture and people of a country she arrives at but rather, she looks forward to doing activities. In the case of this Hong Kong trip, she looks forward to the rides at Ocean Park (well, she looks forward to food and sleep too but I haven't come up with categories for these yet). I, on the other hand, am always ready to behold the next wondrous nature scenery. For me, it is the forest beyond the horizon, the mountain shrouded in mist, the shores lining the endless sea.

So you must imagine that I was bored with Hong Kong (the location, not the holiday) when all that surrounded me was buildings, narrow streets, and endless traffic and busy people. Hong Kong kind of made me felt constrained and restrained.

Deario and I spent the whole afternoon at the streets and malls along the coastline of Tsim Sha Tsui. Shopping in Hong Kong can be found all over the place while shopping in Singapore is more consolidated at malls. Both countries have as much variety of merchandise and prices are pretty much similar. Deario and I are not really into shopping and our legs couldn't withstand the long hours of walking up and down the streets. We had to take a few tea breaks and in the end, we decided that we are better off watching TV back at our hotel.

On our way back, we decided to give this well-presented and successful dessert franchise called "Xue Liu Shan" a try. Conclusion: over-rated. Moreover, SGD6's pretty steep a price for bland mango smoothie. Philippines maintains its position on my list for the country which serves the best mango smoothie.

Back at the hotel, we spent the night watching back-to-back episodes of National Geographic documentaries and National Geographic Adventure travel journals. Sounds pretty lame for a holiday but these programs are seriously intriguing. The documentary on sightings of a sea dinosaur off Montrey Bay and the documentary on Sahara Desert being a lush coastal forest eons ago were definitely the highlights of the day for me.