For those who know me or been following me, you know by now that Hong Kong is one of my fave place to visit. So it was really quite a shame that the last time I was here was 6 years ago in 2018 with my wife for a short 3 day visit. So naturally I was quite excited to be visiting once more. In fact, what better location for my very 1st international travel since the pandemic started than to visit the place I call “Home Kong” (No, I am not a native of HK).
Ever since our parents passed away, my sisters and I had been talking and planning to travel internationally together for a while. But for one reason or another, nothing ever came to fruition until one day in the office, during our break, we were once more talking about it and my youngest sister said, “If we want this to happen then, let’s stop talking and just do it. Let’s book tickets now since there is a long weekend coming up in a month and a half’s time”. So right then and there we booked our flights and hotel rooms. Initially, it was supposed to be a “GOblings” – Go siblings trip – just my 3 sisters (my 2 other sisters couldn’t make it) and I. But then my youngest niece wanted to tag along and so I decided to bring my 2 sons along (I had enough milage on Cathay Pacific for the 3 of us) so I can have the opportunity to for a bonding trip with my sons. We were supposed to travel for 3 days/2 nights, but my sons and I felt it was too short so I had to rebook our outgoing flight to a day earlier and was forced to use up all my milage points to book business class seats for the outgoing flight because that were the only ones available. . For this trip we stayed at the Park Lane Hotel in Causeway Bay and because it was a long weekend holiday in the Philippines, there were a lot of Filipino travelers. In fact, everyone checking in the hotel at the same time as we, were from the Philippines and majority shared the same travel dates as us.
BTW All the photos are clickable and I took a lot of them 😀
Upon arriving at the city, I noticed that a lot of things and places remained the same but at the same time a lot has changed. So many familiar shops, cafes and restaurants were closed but a lot of new ones opened up. And since we travelled there late August, the weather was very hot and humid. Because we flew in quite early from our red eye flight, we couldn’t check in to our hotel yet so we had time to walk around Causeway Bay and reorient ourselves. We spent the morning wandering around, had coffee and brunch before finally checking in and resting for a while (We left for the airport 1:30am in Manila and had little to no sleep the night before.)
After waking up from our nap, we decided to head across the harbor to Kowloon to visit the Tsim Sha Tsui district – specifically Tom Lee Music, Habour City and then have dinner there before checking out the Symphony of Lights at the Victoria Harbor (8pm). I must admit that I was a little disappointed at the current iteration of the Symphony of Lights. It wasn’t as nice as the ones I viewed in 2017 and 2018.
The next day my sisters and my niece arrived, and we started our 3 days of food tripping, shopping and sightseeing all over Hong Kong. I logged in an average of at least 22K steps a day each day I was there. So despite going on a food trip, I actually managed to lose weight. 😀
Hong Kong is truly a feast for the senses, from its bright colorful store signs and countless shops, to the cacophony of sounds from the hustle and bustle of this highly urbanized city and of course, any trip to Hong Kong will not be complete without feasting on its famous Cantonese cuisine. We visited Michelin Star awarded dim sum + roast goose restaurants, cafes and coffee shops where all the food and coffee smells as good as they tasted.
On Sunday morning, my sons and I also had the opportunity to worship with my uncle and his family (they live in HK) at their church. What made this trip truly memorable was because not only was it the 1st time for me to have a bonding trip with my sons and also my 1st time to travel with my sisters internationally after 30 years, but I also had the opportunity to meet, have lunch and spend time with my high school classmate who lives and works in HK. The last time we met was 35 years ago. 🙂
Alas as with all good things, it has to come to an end. I truly enjoyed my short trip to Hong Kong and God willing I will be back someday to HOME KONG.
I brought along my Fuji X100VI with the WCL as my only camera for this trip. I shot with JPG + RAW and ended up not touching the RAW files because I was very pleased with the JPG shots using the Cuban Ace Film Recipe. All images were lightly edited in Lightroom Classic.
Cuban Ace Fuji Recipe by Osan Bilgi
Dynamic Range: 400%
D-Range Priority: Off
Film Sim: Reala Ace
Grain Effect: Strong, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Strong
Color Chrome Blue Effect: Strong
White-balance: Auto WB Shift: R:4 B:-5
Highlights: -2
Shadows: +1.5
NR: -4 Color: +1
Sharpness: 0
Clarity: -4
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Daniel's Lighthouse 