Gotai Ferry into Hong Kong

 
Tuesday 22 July 2008
I didn't think I would be finding Starbucks so attractive, people who could speak English and the coffee was recognisable, even if you didn't get a 'flat white' as we know it. The people there, both behind the counter and fellow customers, were quite helpful in pointing us in the right direction for the Wan Chai Electronic shopping mall/stalls. This involved two sections on the tram and Starbucks happily changed a note to coins for us.

After a moment of puzzlement, standing on the pavement, looking at the street signs after getting off the tram, we wandered through this combined walkway subway entrance and could then see the Wan Chai computer centre. Only thing was, there was only one store open. It was just on 10am and Hong Kong shops generally don't open until that time, staying open until 10pm or later. However by the time we did a circuit of the stalls, the shops were opening and we were being greeted by the various shop owners. Lugging our overnight bags with us (perhaps we should have travelled to our Hotel first to deposit our bags) was a hinderance to us going back to previous quotes and playing them off against one another. Some would offer a 'cash price', saving the 2% (or whatever) transaction fee with credit cards. We ended up looking at a cell phone for Barbara (as it was still too early to consider buying a iPhone). We asked what price a combo deal with the Panasonic TZ25 would be and he quoted a price that sounded good but I'm not sure it was any better than the two packages added together. The camera deal came with spare battery and a 2 Gb SD memory card but at least it was cheaper than in New Zealand and the phone component was quite good.

From our shopping experience we used that nearby subway entrance to catch a train under the harbour to Kowloon. We found assistance from a help desk, who also changed notes to coins and with the relevant ticket from a vending machine away we went. We struck trouble at our destination station, when we both were stopped by the barrier that wouldn't release after we insterted our cards. I retrieved mine but the machine took Barbara's but we could see others were having trouble and going to this help desk. The guy gave us two blue passes and the machine let us through this time.

Up into the sunlight to try and find what street we were in and which way to walk to the hotel. It turned out to be longer than our map reading indicated but we window shopped along the way, thinking it would be worth going back to look at glass frames.