China ’24 Blog. Part One: Hong Kong

When I worked in technical support for a large insurance company, they would regularly send me on IT training courses in London to improve my skill set in order to offer more value to clients. 

As a full time tai chi instructor and owner of a successful martial arts club I regularly send myself on tai chi training courses in China to improve my skill set in order to offer more value to my students.

I’m not big on giving advice but if I were to offer one pearl of wisdom it would be to strive as hard as you need to in order to find what it is that you love and are most passionate about, then focus and dedicate yourself to it for as long as it takes, to make it to the point where you can earn a living from it. Never give up.

(The training courses are much more interesting). 

It’s not a complicated equation, neither is getting good at a martial art. (Start, train hard, don’t quit). Ironically, I was never very good at equations at school, yet I figured this one out and now I am lucky enough to be able to take myself off to China for regular tai chi, language, and culture trips. 

It is always an amazing experience but I have become accustomed to China travel to a degree, so this was a trip I was very much looking forward to, as I was accompanied by my eldest step-son Sam on his first trip outside of Europe.

(I will soon start taking groups of students on training and cultural trips, so it’s kind of a trial run to ensure I can take someone else to China and bring them back in one piece. As I write this on our penultimate day…so far so good!).

 

Hong Kong

I always think that despite being 6000 miles away, Hong Kong has a degree of familiarity about it. From the busses and road markings, to a common language and air conditioned Western malls. 

So I thought it a good first stop on our trip to ease Sam into the Chinese lifestyle, as well as the July temperature! 

Via a 5 hour layover in Beijing airport, we landed in Hong Kong around midnight. Arriving near our hotel and exiting the subway an hour or so later. I always love that first moment of stepping out from the air conditioning onto the street as the hot, sticky, humid air envelops you, in the midst of the sights and sounds of downtown Hong Kong. You realise you are a long way from home.

Sam knows me very well, so there were no qualms about getting up for tai chi in the park at 7am, as we got to bed and set alarms around 2.30am.

Day one in Hong Kong was great fun and action-packed! 

First stop was a short walk to Kowloon Park (a tai chi enthusiast should always book hotels near a park!). I love Kowloon Park, the large banyan trees, exotic birds including pink flamingoes, the contrast of nature set to a backdrop of the city, locals practicing tai chi all over the place. 

I know a good spot called Kung Fu Corner, so we parked ourselves there for an hour and did some practice, as ever to the surprise of the locals, before our training was cut short by a torrential downpour of warm tropical rain. 

After heading back to the hotel for a lovely breakfast, where else would two martial arts enthusiasts head to next, other than the Bruce Lee statue on the harbour?

 

What the pictures never show you is that right next to the statue is a Starbucks, but with the temperature already soaring to well over 30 degrees and the humidity very high, we were most grateful for some cold iced tea.

Day or night, I always love spending time down by Hong Kong harbour, the views are amazing and there is always something going on. This time we stumbled across a martial arts and dance festival, so hung around there for a while, sadly we had just missed a 1000 person tai chi demonstration but there was still plenty to look at and friendly people working there keen to chat. 

One very Hong Kong thing to do in Hong Kong is to take the Star Ferry over the harbour from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, which is what we did next. Sam has many abilities, one of them is to fall asleep within about 2 nanoseconds of sitting on any mode of transport, so I alone enjoyed the views as we headed towards the island. 

Once on we had crossed over to the island our plan was to go up to Victoria Peak, where you can observe the whole of Hong Kong from a height of over 500m. Yet walking from the ferry to the central area there is a huge Apple Store, which we went to have a look in. We are both fans of Apple products and the air conditioned mall was a welcome detour at that time.

At the store, Sam booked himself in for a 30 minute trial of the Apple Vision headset, which apparently very good. 

Back out of the Matrix we found our way to the tram which takes you up  ‘The Peak’. 

The tram is another icon of traditional Hong Kong but unfortunately it is also a mode of transportation, so Sam didn’t get to see much of it.

The views from the top are also iconic and the weather gods blessed us with clear views . We also spent a bit of time laughing at people posing for photos before heading inside just as the heavens opened again.

 

Back down at street level we visited a temple before getting the subway back to the hotel for a short rest.

Our evening started once the light had faded and we headed back down the the harbour for the light show. Watching from Kowloon, the skyscrapers on Hong Kong island light up in a synchronised display. It is very impressive but I feel a bit bad about this one as it used to be a lot better… and I had been bigging it up to Sam all day!

I’ve got a few favourite things to do in Hong Kong but maybe topping them all are the night markets around Temple Street. The streets are alive with neon lights, noises, smells, people bustling everywhere. You can take your pick from food stalls and restaurants galore but I was very happy to see one still there that I had visited in 2019, so we took a table by the road and watched the world go by as we ate some of the best local food on offer. 

Travel in Hong Kong and China is not always plain sailing and we’d both made amateur mistakes of not bedding in new footwear for long enough before walking nearly 40,000 steps in them in around 35 degrees for a whole day. So with our feet in bits, we got ourselves to a foot massage parlour and had a very well deserved treatment. 

A couple of beers and games of pool in a bar near our hotel finished off the day before heading back to the hotel for a good asleep! 

 

Day two in Hong Kong was a little less action packed, but no less enjoyable. Needing to sleep off a bit of jet lag, we rested and relaxed in the morning and in the afternoon headed to the south of Hong Kong island to one of the beaches.

A new experience for me, my time in Hong Kong has always been spent in the city but after a 30 minute bus ride we found ourselves at a very nice beach, not crowded at all, lovely views, with good sand and water. 

It was a very nice relaxing contrast to the activity of the previous day. Even the loud speaker warnings of “Don’t swim too close to the shark protection net” didn’t stress us too much. Needless to say, there was nowhere we were going to go ANYWHERE near the shark protection net. I remember catching tadpoles in a ‘net’, it doesn’t seem to be something that I would confidently use to contain a shark! 

 

After our return journey we decided that the food and location of the restaurant the previus day was too good to not go and sample again.

So the end of our two day adventure in Hong Kong was rounded up… the next morning we would be heading into China.