Hong Kong / Japan / Singapore... Hongpan! - March and April 2025 - Page 1

I periodically see this horrific carpet in Melbourne airport getting discussed. It looks like a mass stabbing has occured and they cannot clean it up. Either that or a shark attack, very welcoming.

The view from Adelaide airport, shot through tinted glass with reflections and weird white balance. Nice sunrise today, the 1 hour flight was a bit turbulent leaving Melbourne, which I actually enjoy.

Adelaide airport has had quite a few good upgrades in recent years, I would say it is probably the nicest airport in Australia now, seriously.

In fact even the Virgin lounge is good, the Melbourne and Sydney ones are worse than a 3rd world country zoo, where that country has just undergone a military coup and the starving populace are eating the lions.

Here is my jet still on the ground in Adelaide. Is it an A350 or a dreamliner? I am not sure now. I prefer the older 777 (wider) and especially the A330 (narrower but less abreast seating layout). The marketing of the newer ones are all bullshit, humans per cubic m3 always increases with every new generation jet.

If your kids misbehave in Singapore airport you can put them in a cage. And let them tire themselves out mini trampolining. Probably a lot of injuries have resulted from this.

You still cannot walk the full lap at Singapore airport, I always try, but construction is going on, one day my dream will become a reality. BTW, you can walk a full lap at the criminally underrated Taoyuan airport in Taiwan.

Today's smoking area disguised as a garden of choice is the sunflower garden. This is about the extent of it. There are a group of airport workers behind me smoking and hacking up a lung. Also I had to stand out here for 10 minutes waiting for my camera to de-fog. Going outside from the air conditioned terminal building makes the entire innards of your camera water logged.

And now this is where I am sitting. Same old lounge. It has showers these days though, but since it is a day flight for me today, no need for a shower. And now it is nearly time to board my next flight to Hong Kong, and hope to get on the last airport train into the city so I don't have to figure out the night bus.

Here is the inside of the Hong Kong airport express train. Low effort photo, I am tired.

And since there are photos of my hotel room here, it means they did not cancel my booking. It really is bed time now, but the hotel seems good enough, room is quite big.

It would not be a long day of boring photos if there was not a photo of a toilet. Now, sleep.

Here is a photo of wet streets. Nathan road to be precise. My hotel is on Nathan Road and named after it.

I decided to walk to the garden, and got lost on the way a few times. I am frequently told to stay in my lane and yet I rarely drive.

Hong Kong has many great overpasses for an easy photo opportunity.

Not much open early on Sunday, but the traditional markets were doing well with their blood coloured lighting.

Streets are still wet, stores are still closed.

A typical Hong Kong residential area.

Eventually I made it to the water. That is the new stadium just left of centre where the rugby sevens tournament is on today. It is a sellout and the biggest thing all year in Hong Kong according to airline advertisements, so I was a bit surprised to get my accommodation for the price I did over this weekend. I will avoid that area as it is full of drunken westerners.

The local 'sitting out' area as they are called is a fancy one with a pond full of fish and terrapins. Today is Filipino slave day off, so due to the risk of rain, they erect tents in parks like this and sit inside with karaoke machines. I do not photograph them.

There was a sign saying do not feed the terrapins, and I saw some but they are too hard to photograph without a zoom. Which raises the age old question of, what even is a terrapin and how is it not a turtle or at worst a tortoise?

Some distance away from the above 'sitting out' area park is today's official garden, the Nan Lian garden, complete with no entry fee, so no matter how disappointing it is, I will approve of it.

At first I went into a museum inside the garden grounds, a museum on the history of wooden architecture. I learnt about the history of various ways of joining beams without nails.

The garden was not at all disappointing, I thought it was excellent.

There is a large Buddhist temple and nunnery.

Lotus ponds are always a highlight.

Great trees and an extensive compound for Buddha on prime real estate.

The gold statues inside were some of the largest gold coloured Buddhas I have ever seen, but they do not like you taking photos of those, in case people find out about them on my website and form an elite team of thieves to steal them.

Kyoto, basically.

Last garden pic.

A nearby shopping mall has a donki. So with mini Kyoto in the garden and a donki over the road, there is no reason to ever go to Japan again.

In the bottom of the mall, which I believe was named 'Plaza Hollywood' is the young innovators fair. It seems to have a tent for each school, and they all seem to be innovating in the world of plush toys / trading cards with an online AI component hosted on the block chain. So a fair to come up with new scams that involve various forms of gambling basically.

And it being a non hiking non travelling day, I had time for a real lunch. A great lunch of Sichuan beef cheeks with dry noodle. Very much like Biang Biang but with more numbing than spicy. I was very pleased with my choice. Also it came from a food court literally next door to my hotel, so I will probably go there again at some point.

A rather bland photo of a street scene, but this is Chungking mansions, the most infamous place remaining in Hong Kong. You can get a 'hotel room' in that building for $10 a night. A lot of dodgy guys hang around out front trying to sell you a suit or watch or some bitcoin. I think I walked through it once in the past, I will give it a miss this time.

I have distinct memories of this underpass that goes to the harbour. No one besides me uses it. They should just name it after me since I have used it on my own about 5 times in 15 years.

Right on the harbour is a pop up ballroom dancing event. There was no rug for me to cut so I chose to move on.

Everyone has seen the harbour, so it is just a token photo from me.

There is my boat! The older one on the right.

I think it still costs about $1 to ride. It must run at a loss. Presumably this means they have no money to perform maintenance. If one of them ever sinks they will cancel the whole thing.

The inside of the ferry is suitably old too.

I photograph the people taking photos.

Photo from a moving ferry almost at dusk, hand held, came out ok.

An Apple store over a highway, I wanted to go in there and ask them why they do not allow custom fonts to be rendered when served from local sites in Safari... but I chose to focus on finding food instead, Apple users can enjoy looking at crap fonts for the rest of their lives. Have I lost everyone?

All the food near the ferry station on the island side was far too expensive, so as mentioned above I travelled back under the harbour by train and was surprised to find myself at the very same Food Republic where I tried pepper lunch for the first time about 15 years ago. I probably did not get kim chi on it that time, but add kim chi, add egg, add mushrooms is my standard order, they did not have any mushrooms.
Now it is time for bed, tomorrows hike might evolve as it happens as there are a lot of trails to choose from.

My path to the trail took me through the middle of scary style apartments. There is another wall exactly the same behind me, completely closing in this courtyard. There were 10 or so the same. Eerily quiet but I think people live here.

That peak will be part of my journey today. There is allegedly a way to go up the face, but I have read that the trail is no longer maintained at all and now very dangerous. Given that it was a bit damp at this point I decided to skip the dangerous path and pick a more well known trail.

Eventually I found a footpath and progress up to the start of the trail was faster.

Do I need to be concerned about getting attacked by a newt? There are no bears here for me to be concerned about.

Every hiking trail in Hong Kong seems to have these warning signs, including the aforementioned Wilson and Maclehose trails advertised by the government. Everyone just ignores the signs.

The first part of the trail was through Samurai graves, with Chinese characteristics.

High bamboo started. This part was fine, when the path later became one foot wide with lower bamboo forming a 4 foot high tunnel, that is when things became a bit more challenging.

First sign of a view. I believe that yacht filled area is called Hebe Haven.

There is a giant weather station / spy satellite communication base behind me. The helicopter pad looks a lot more useable than the Korean ones. A lot more cloud is rolling in than I expected!

Here is some more view. The view shots will end soon once the rain starts.

This is a bit of a detour to 'suicide cliff', it seems to be a suggested place on google maps.

The view from Suicide cliff was decent. Getting cloudier.

That is the distance I now need to double back to push on to the other side of Ma On Shan park.

The thin trail through the bamboo started, still low bamboo at this point, but my legs and feet were already getting wet.

Nice view back from where I had come from.

Here comes the rain.

Getting further away from the spy base. The rain is just on the other side of the hill now.

Probably the best view of the day, you can see across the Harbour to Hong Kong island on the left.

Fog has rolled in now, apparently this is rabbit rock.

This is nothing compared to the overgrown bits from earlier, in those sections I couldn't really get my camera out at all, however this might give you an idea of the remaining trails for the day.

This is part of the Wilson trail, note that it is wider and flatter.

However the trails I followed most of the day were more like this, nice fog.

I knew I was nearly at the end when a brick staircase appeared.

And then of course, I escaped the wet tropical hiking paradise into some more high rises. It was still about another 30 minutes walk back to the train, with wet feet.
First hike over.

Here is the most disappointing market of the evening. I seem to recall being here many years ago and being surprised that it was mainly a sex toy market. Now they mainly have 3d holograms of Chairman Mao.

A nice bit of old Hong Kong. Actually most of this side of Hong Kong is still resisting gentrification.

My emergency dinner, Hokkaido soup curry. I am going to Japan in a weeks time, but nowhere near Hokkaido.

The soup curry came from this mall with the very long escalators. Photo does not make them seem too long, but refer to my previous Hong Kong visits for photos from the top.

Mong Kok has a lot of overpasses for taking the same photos as everyone else.

This is the Fa Yuen street market, it closes early.

I like the old apartments above the market.

Just a standard Hong Kong street. The mini busses are everywhere.

Sometimes you just need an emergency fish in a bag.

Here is the ladies market. Full of nothing but tourists, including me. It used to be really busy and more claustrophobic, I guess it is Monday night. Apparently it is a good idea to hold onto your wallet here.

Here is something you might not see in Australia. A made in Russia store. Pretty interesting stuff inside, but none of it was cheap.

Last photo of the evening, the computer shop street.
Tomorrow I might go to another 'country'.