I recently had a chance to go visit Hong Kong for the Openstack Summit 2013. Well to be honest, i recognize the name Hong Kong from a very long time. We always heard of HK as a city that produces quite a few gadgets infact, in Silliguri, West Bengal - we even have a market called "Hong Kong Market". They sale all sorts of electronics/gadgets/watches/shoes etc over there for cheaper prices of supposedly famous brands. So when i heard about the summit, i went to youtube and played some videos about HK. To be honest, i had this perception that i would come back from HK with a lot of gadgets and possibly a few watches - coz i like fancy watches. Still, i wasn't too excited about it and the feeling sort of aggravated coz my flight tickets were booked on the night of Diwali. I mean i know Diwali is not as BIG in BLR for me than compared to at home but over the years i have made friends and frenzy to come to terms with it and i would always want to be in some part of India during that time.
I was convincing myself over ONLY a 6 day trip. With a heavy heart, i reached the Bangalore Intl Aiport on 3rd Novemeber 00:00 hours. It's a pain to keep reciepts of all the travels you make esp for a guy who's as messy as me but i kept reminding myself to not loose anything. My flight was booked in Cathay Pacific. I had heard good reviews of it and thought as much till i reached the airport and found out that it's actually operated by Dragon Air. I met one of my colleagues at the airport. He was travelling to Beijing. Beijing is in Mainland China and HK falls under the chinese administration. Regrets about leaving on Diwali night clubbed with a cramped leg space plus the timing of the flight - all made into a clear counting hours back to return.
I had heard about the HK airport being beautiful, so i woke up just before landing. It was a 5:30 hours flight from BLR. The airport was indeed beautiful. The aircraft actually gives you a feeling that you are landing on water with mountains surrounding a scenic view. At the immigration, they asked me fewer questions than they asked me before leaving India and O yes - no where in the HK airport they stamp your passport. I didn't quite understand why. Anyway, i had another colleague coming from hyderabad whom i had never seen in India but finding Indians in HK airport shouldn't have been a hard problem - only if i knew it would be. I got the US dollars converted into Hong Kong dollars and headed for the hotel. I had booked Holiday Inn. We took a cab from the airport and hence began the journey through the mountains and sea shores to our hotel which was at Tim Tsha Tsui in the Kowloon district.
I was surprised by real estate i could see from the taxi window. They have built bridges on the ocean (i know most of them have) but the infrastructure gave you a feeling that land is not easy to come by in HK and hence they made use of every inch of land they have there. They have ressidential complexes that go beyond 40 stories easily. As we stepped into the city, the traffic took over. It felt like India for a while but then i realized that the traffic actually moves in the city and people follow lane disciplines. Around 40kms from the airport and we reached the hotel. The hotel itself was a 18 storyed one. Now given that i come from India - i am not used to sky scrappers. We reached around 12:30 HK time, and i was still feeling very sleepy and hungry at the same time. I looked up the menu in my room and they had Indian dishes listed in the menu - but skipping through them i ordered for a veg fried rice. I had tasted chinese food in Canada and i knew i wasn't a big fan of the authentic chinese food (mind you, i love the tibetian /chinese food we get here in India - the so called "Indian Chinese" food). The fried rice was indeed - a bit exotic but it was good to satisfy my need for a brunch. In the evening we took a stroll out on the roads around the hotel and i saw only watch stores. Watches that definitely were out of range for me. Rado, Rolex, Omega and what not. We took a walk towards the hardbor. It was beautiful.
We came back to the hotel early - with no signs of "having fun" in HK but we decided that we would hop around the city on the next day. My colleague told me about this huge building called the ICC tower - which offered a 260 degree view of the city. It has 118 floors and is the third tallest building (wrt number of floors) in the world. We kept speculating - coz we saw another one which looked very similar to that...In my next post i shall try to portray my experiences in HK in the next few days before i came back. For now it's a wrap!
I was convincing myself over ONLY a 6 day trip. With a heavy heart, i reached the Bangalore Intl Aiport on 3rd Novemeber 00:00 hours. It's a pain to keep reciepts of all the travels you make esp for a guy who's as messy as me but i kept reminding myself to not loose anything. My flight was booked in Cathay Pacific. I had heard good reviews of it and thought as much till i reached the airport and found out that it's actually operated by Dragon Air. I met one of my colleagues at the airport. He was travelling to Beijing. Beijing is in Mainland China and HK falls under the chinese administration. Regrets about leaving on Diwali night clubbed with a cramped leg space plus the timing of the flight - all made into a clear counting hours back to return.
I had heard about the HK airport being beautiful, so i woke up just before landing. It was a 5:30 hours flight from BLR. The airport was indeed beautiful. The aircraft actually gives you a feeling that you are landing on water with mountains surrounding a scenic view. At the immigration, they asked me fewer questions than they asked me before leaving India and O yes - no where in the HK airport they stamp your passport. I didn't quite understand why. Anyway, i had another colleague coming from hyderabad whom i had never seen in India but finding Indians in HK airport shouldn't have been a hard problem - only if i knew it would be. I got the US dollars converted into Hong Kong dollars and headed for the hotel. I had booked Holiday Inn. We took a cab from the airport and hence began the journey through the mountains and sea shores to our hotel which was at Tim Tsha Tsui in the Kowloon district.
I was surprised by real estate i could see from the taxi window. They have built bridges on the ocean (i know most of them have) but the infrastructure gave you a feeling that land is not easy to come by in HK and hence they made use of every inch of land they have there. They have ressidential complexes that go beyond 40 stories easily. As we stepped into the city, the traffic took over. It felt like India for a while but then i realized that the traffic actually moves in the city and people follow lane disciplines. Around 40kms from the airport and we reached the hotel. The hotel itself was a 18 storyed one. Now given that i come from India - i am not used to sky scrappers. We reached around 12:30 HK time, and i was still feeling very sleepy and hungry at the same time. I looked up the menu in my room and they had Indian dishes listed in the menu - but skipping through them i ordered for a veg fried rice. I had tasted chinese food in Canada and i knew i wasn't a big fan of the authentic chinese food (mind you, i love the tibetian /chinese food we get here in India - the so called "Indian Chinese" food). The fried rice was indeed - a bit exotic but it was good to satisfy my need for a brunch. In the evening we took a stroll out on the roads around the hotel and i saw only watch stores. Watches that definitely were out of range for me. Rado, Rolex, Omega and what not. We took a walk towards the hardbor. It was beautiful.
We came back to the hotel early - with no signs of "having fun" in HK but we decided that we would hop around the city on the next day. My colleague told me about this huge building called the ICC tower - which offered a 260 degree view of the city. It has 118 floors and is the third tallest building (wrt number of floors) in the world. We kept speculating - coz we saw another one which looked very similar to that...In my next post i shall try to portray my experiences in HK in the next few days before i came back. For now it's a wrap!
