Monkey Go Places

Wednesday 29 April 2015

New Territories (新界), Hong Kong // 2015

The only time I hear travelers go to New Territories in Hong Kong is for the famous 'Lou Poh Pen'g' (wife cake) in Yuen Long. I decided to go for something different this trip.

Sai Kung 西貢 / Long Ke Wan 浪茄灣

There is no train to this part of Hong Kong, but there's always bus. We took the red mini bus from outside Kwong Wah Hospital on Dundas Street to Sai Kung main station, which is right next to the Public Pier. 

It was Good Friday, a public holiday in Hong Kong so I guess that's why it was quite a lot of people at the pier. Then, we saw many people looking down at the side of the pier.

Floating market selling fresh seafood! Now, this is where you can buy seafood and claim that it's fresh out of the sea. 

We didn't really spend time at the pier, as our objective was to go to Long Ke Wan from Sai Kung. We went to the taxi stand and found a long line of people queuing for the green taxi! Luckily, there were quite a lot of taxi so we didn't have to wait too long.

After about 30 minutes taxi ride later, we arrived here - Hong Kong Global Geopark of China. The view was breathtaking, even though the weather was quite cloudy that day. I didn't expect to see this kind of view in Hong Kong!

And somehow there were some cows there, and cow dungs here and there (o_O). From here, we continued on the MacLehose Trail for a 30 minutes hike around the hill to get to Long Ke Beach.

After about 15 minutes hike, we finally get a glimpse of where we were heading to. WOW!

The hike was not too bad, there are proper steps. Sometimes there's cow dung on the steps. There's only one part when almost approaching the beach that was quite steep. Going there was ok, but on our way back which is uphill, that was pretty damn tiring. (Disclaimer: I'm totally not into hiking so perhaps some of you might find that it's actually not difficult at all. There were parents with young children who made the hike too. That stretch was about a 10-15 minutes hike. Anyway, if I can make it, you can make it too! This awesome view of the beach is there to motivate you.)

There were already a lot of people camping there when we arrived at the beach as it's a long weekend. Mostly youngsters. This is actually not an official camping ground, there's no facilities at all. So when you need to pee or poop, go natural!
I could sit here all day. I would come camping here every other week if I'm a Hongkie.

The water is clear but doesn't look as blue that day because it was cloudy. Did you know that one of the reason the sea is blue is because it reflects the colour of the sky?

And there were heaps of seaweed! There were also a few guys harvesting oysters near the rocks.  
I wish we could stay longer there but we need to hike back before the sky turns dark for two reasons.

1. The trail will be pitch black as there's no lights or electricity, and we don't have torchlight.
2. Apparently it's quite a challenge to get a taxi to go back to Sai Kung in the evening.

True enough, when we finally get to where we came from, there was already a big bunch of people fighting for taxi. And for whatever reason, they don't queue in a proper line. Everyone just gone in madness and try to fight for a taxi. Thinking it's gonna be hell fighting for taxi with these people, we decided to walk further down to try our luck. 

We got lucky indeed! One taxi guy was driving in but stopped to tell us it's quite impossible for us to flag down a taxi. No one comes to this place at this hour, so taxis won't drive up without passenger. All the taxis that comes up at that time are pre-booked. Perhaps we look helpless and sad enough that he said he could ask his friend to help drive us to Pak Tam Chung (which is about half way to the pier) if we were willing to pay additional HKD50 on top of metre fare. They cannot drive us all the way to Sai Kung pier because they need to come back in time to pick up their passengers who have pre-booked them. That sounds like a good deal considering the current situation, so we agreed to it and he radio call his friend who appeared like 2 seconds later - *POOF!* like magic. When we got to Pak Tam Chung, there was already a taxi waiting for passenger so we got on and get to the pier. 

Monkey Tips: If you have a phone, take down the taxi number and call for pick up when you wanna return. We didn't get a local sim card so we just try our luck. Of course, if we get into a desperate situation, we can always use our Malaysian phone number and make that super expensive roaming call, but we got lucky so that was not necessary.

We actually got back to Sai Kung Public Pier before sky dark. How lucky. 

An old man selling dried seafood produce at the pier.

We took the mini bus back to Causeway Bay. We went over to Hong Kong Island because we wanted to go back for more claypot chicken rice goodness. The bus has a digital metre that show passengers that the bus is not going faster than the permitted speed limit. 

Yuen Long 元朗 / Sha Tin 沙田

WJ got very sick on our last day there. Food poisoning, probably from the milk or the chicken sandwich she bought from 7-11 because that was the only thing me and H didn't eat. So we took her to the doctor, and she rested in the apartment for the rest of the day. Doctor say she should avoid seafood and spicy food. Eat 'humble food'. So, H and I went out to look for 'humble food' to buy back for WJ. 

It was about an hour train ride to Yuen Long. Then, took us some time to find the restaurant, but the it was totally worth the journey.

They opened at 4pm, we got there at about 4.30pm. Meal being prepared for the restaurant staff before busy dinner time.

Now, this is how all chicken congee in the world should be done. It was so good. Congee so smooth and flavourful, chicken was tasty and tender. So best!
We didn't explore Yuen Long, but I would go to Yuen Long again the next time I go to Hong Kong.  Even if there's nothing to see, there's always chicken congee to make me happy.

Sun Kee Claypot Chicken Congee 新記煲仔雞粥
No.42 Yau San Street, Yuen Long, New Territories. Open daily 4pm - 3am.


Later that night, H and I head to Sha Tin for pigeons at this hotel - Lung Wah hotel. This place is so hidden but the moment you get there, the hotel restaurant is full of people! We ordered roasted pigeons and cooked and soy.

I was told to take a taxi there from the MTR station, but when we try to take taxi from Grand Central Plaza, the taxi driver say we should just walk because it's not far, and if he were to drive us, he'll have to make a big round and can only drop us off at opposite road. So we walked through a small and dark lane. As you can see from the picture, there's houses on one side and on the other side is the railway. This lane is so small there's no car, but it doesn't feel unsafe because there are other people walking to, back to their homes i suppose.

A beautiful traditional house near the Sha Tin MTR station.
So yeah, it's less than 1km walk to Lung Wah Hotel from MTR station, so walking there is fine.

And that's it. Our last night in Hong Kong this trip. After dinner, H and I went for a quick shopping at Temple Street.

The next morning, we went for breakfast at Yee Shun Milk Company, then took the bus to the airport. All in all, it was another good trip with awesome food!

No comments:

Post a Comment