The flight from Heathrow took around 11 hours and a half, but as I was travelling with one of my oldest friends it went by in a flash. We landed at Hong Kong International at around 5.30 in the evening and grabbed a cab to our boutique hotel in Sai Ying Pun, an old part of town just near the university of Honk Kong on the upper West Side. After a speedy check in we went straight out to explore the area and get acclimatised.
What strikes most visitors first are the dense crowds of people thronging the busy streets. However we had landed just as the Chinese New Year was underway and the roads and alleyways were utterly deserted with just a thick wispy white fog drifting between the towering skyscrapers and the old wooden buildings. It was like a ghost town, we half expected some ethereal sampan to float down the hilly avenues trawling for souls.
Chinese New Year is a big holiday, all the businesses shut and Hong Kong hibernates during the day, coming out in force for the evening to celebrate. As night fell the restaurants began to fill up and the streets came to life with revellers. We found a superb restaurant on one of the main thoroughfares that specialised in duck, with the entire process from butchery to cooking carried out in full view of the diners. The staff spoke no English, which is unusual for Hong Kong, but gave the place an air of authenticity. This was obviously where the locals come and we dined like kings on the most succulent, fresh, sweetened duck fillets with noodles, washed down with Zhian Jing (hot rice wine) and Yum Cha, a zingy green tea.
Fortified by this authentic traditional cuisine we decided to visit Lan Kwai Fong which is the expat area full of bars and nightclubs. The better bars there are Insomnia, where you can sit in the window and watch the world go by, or Mine, which has a reasonable size front terrace with tables and chairs. Quintessentially
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