Hong Kong is home.
In February, my brother Eric invited Tim and I to join him and his wife (and my mom and dad) on a trip to Hong Kong. I jumped on it, despite the fact that it would be during May (brutal weather in Hong Kong and brutal end-of-school schedules back in Boise). That, and we’d be knee-deep in our home remodel at that point.
We hired a family friend to hold down the fort while we were gone, assured our kids that we still loved them even though we were ditching out on their dance recitals and school presentations, and said sayonara to being mom and dad for six days.
Air travel is brutal. But the fact that I didn’t have to meet any little people’s needs more than made up for the cramped quarters of economy class. Tim and I caught up on a few movies and before we knew it, we were on the other side of the planet.
Eric timed our flights perfectly to land at 7:00 so we’d have just enough time to shuttle to the hotel and fall into our beds from exhaustion. I woke up bright and early and met my dad to take the subway to the Hong Kong temple for an endowment session. Perfect way to start off the trip.
We got back in time to join the others for a light McDonald’s breakfast, and hit the subway again to see the temple with the rest of the clan. We then headed to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum to see the temporary Bruce Lee exhibit before it closed this summer. Fascinating person. Good quotes. And air conditioning. Can’t forget the air conditioning.
Our schedule was flexible, accounting for Eric’s profuse sweating issues and my dad’s knees. It was different from my typical cram-in-as-much-as-you-can style of traveling. But because this trip was as much or more about the people than about the sights, I was more than okay with a less-frenzied pace. Which seemed odd, considering that everyone else in HK was moving at a ridiculously fast pace. While crammed together in small spaces. Like so.
So, while a few of the group took a nap from 4-7 pm (which soon became a habit for all of us), Tim and I explored the neighborhood surrounding our hotel (Tsim Sha Tsui) by visiting the harbor and Kowloon Park. Tim kept commenting on the crowds(“THIS is where you grew up?”) and the heat/humidity (“you LIVED here?”).
We then met up for dinner with old family friends from our Hong Kong days and a trip to the top of the ICC (118 stories high) for a drink at the Ritz-Carlton that cost us as much as a ticket to the observatory would have been. We had a good chuckle over it, but I’d say we made out pretty well. A drink AND a view. For the price of one.
Sunday began with church in Wan Chai. The church sold the building (Kom Tong Hall) that our family met in for Sunday services the entire time we lived there so it was strange to attend church in a souped up 14-story building in a neighborhood like this:
But, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints services vary little from location to location, we were uplifted by the meeting and the humble people who attend the ward there. As a side note, Eric and Renee took an Uber to church and the driver was insistent that there was no church at the address he gave him. I guess a 14-story high rise doesn’t exactly scream “church” but whatev.
Eric arranged for a 4 hour “nostalgia tour” of the island so we could visit various places that were personal to each of us. We jumped in a car and spent the afternoon reliving the glory days in good old Hong Kong.
First stop: Adventist Hospital. My baby sister Jill was born here but since we didn’t participate in that occasion, it was more memorable to Eric and I because of the countless ER visits our family of six kids generated in our years in Hong Kong.
From there, we drove to Shouson Hill, where we lived from 1985 to end of 1988. The house we lived in, a four-story structure with green pagoda roof, had been torn down in the 90’s to make room for apartment buildings. Typical Hong Kong.
Then on to the Hong Kong Country Club at the bottom of Shouson Hill, where we swam our lives away and charged food to our parents’ account.
Repulse Bay, where we swam out to stinky pontoons and dove off into warm, jellyfish infested waters. They’ve made it look more luxurious than I remembered and the grocery store we frequented there – now gone. As was the McDonalds where I spent my 5th birthday.
Further south on the island is HKIS, the elementary school I attended for grades 3-6. Another buildling razed from the ground up and rebuilt. Are we seeing a pattern here?
This place was exactly the same. Chung Hom Kok was our second home in Hong Kong (after Hong Kong Garden in mid-levels). I learned to ride a bike here, lost a few teeth here, explored to my heart’s content here. The community was gated so the best we could get was a picture just outside (and barely inside) the gate.
Eric and I both attended Kellett school during our early school years. Being a British school, we actually started at age four, which I’m sure was a shock to my mom to send her littles off at such a tender age. On a bus, no less.
We enjoyed traveling roads we’d taken day after day after day, passing friends houses where we’d made cherished memories, and taking in sweeping vistas of green jungles and blue ocean around every turn. Tim was stunned at the variety Hong Kong had to offer…until he nodded off for a nap in the back seat, that is. I thoroughly loved taking this trip down memory lane.
Now that it’s months later, what we did on which day gets fuzzy from here on out. I think we got really hungry and got our first dim sum of the trip (to go) and scarfed it down on the Star Ferry. The ride took about 5 minutes tops, a far cry from what it used to be. All that landfill has made the harbor much narrower, and the Star Ferry ride shorter, consequently.
Nap time became a regular thing, weirdly, from about 4-6 p.m. That night we ordered pizza, and I screwed up by ordering the large. When I got there and saw the size of it, I said, “I thought I ordered the large” (in genuine shock). You can guess how they responded. This ain’t a Pizza Hut “large” that’s for sure. We had to hail a cab to get it back home. Laughs all around
The next day, Tim got a bout of what the Chinese like to call La Duzi(“large” pizza, perhaps?) and spent an entire day and a half in our hotel room so he missed out on some of the best. We hit up mid-levels for the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Museum (our former church building). They don’t allow pictures, so all I got was a shot of the courtyard which served as our parking lot for Sunday meetings. We’d pack it full, rim to rim, so that those who got there early and parked at the rear had to wait until everyone else had left in order to leave church. Space is at a premium in Hong Kong. We walked over to Hollywood Road for a bit of shopping and then began the remarkably difficult quest to fill our bellies.
Eric and Renee were uber-savvy, and Mom, Dad and I took the mid-levels escalator into downtown to meet up with them. This is how Hong Kongers commute. The escalator goes down into the Central (the downtown business) district from mid-levels (a residential area just above downtown) until 10:30 a.m. and then it travels up the rest of the day for commuters headed home. Fascinating. Being after 10:30 a.m., we got to take the stairs.
We tried Shake Shack for lunch, but the line was abominably long and, being midday, the heat was brutal, so we opted for the deli just inside our hotel (to which we became “regulars” over our days in Hong Kong). What a view at Shake Shack, though.
That night we took a trip up to Victoria Peak on the famous “Peak Tram” for one of the best views in the city (there are many). Then we made another attempt at Shake Shack. The line was still long but the heat less oppressive so it worked. It was 9:30 at night. Lines are a fact of life in Hong Kong, I guess. Well, that and Shake Shack had just opened its first HK location a week earlier so the novelty hadn’t yet worn off for the locals.
The next day we hit up Stanley market, a famous outdoor shopping area on the opposite side of the island. We rode a double-decker bus out there, which was an experience itself, with windy roads and steep drop-offs on one side of the road. It was pretty much like I remember it, despite being somewhat improved and built up. We had Indian food for lunch and headed back for our traditional nap.
Eric had scheduled a harbor cruise, followed by a fancy shmancy dinner at Tang Court, a three-Michelin star restaurant right in our very hotel so we got dressed up for the event. And it WAS an event. Melt-in-your-mouth meat, if you can imagine that. Each course boasted delicate flavors to satisfy each of our palates. What a way to end our trip.
We flew out the next day, relationships enriched, memories relived and created, and travel bugs satisfied (for now). Thanks to Eric for making it all happen!