Jon Bellwood: Electronics Hunter or how I got a Mac, Bose headphones and a Swatch Watch.
So from Shenzhen it was on to the last part of my adventure before returning to Vietnam for three weeks. Hong Kong. During my preparation for my trip Hong Kong was a place that had had me more than a touch worried while looking for accommodation; everywhere seemed to be exceptionally overpriced and/or a dump. Given that I would be carrying all my electronics and plenty of valuables staying in a ropey shithole didn’t have me particularly enthused. Thankfully this problem was solved without problem when Linda’s cousin Laura and her husband Don offered to put me up at their place. An exceptionally kind off I was ecstatic to take up.
I came across the border from Shenzhen via the metro, something akin to being able to take the Tube to another country, which seems faintly ridiculous but Shenzhen and Hong Kong are rather close to each other. From there a few Hong Kong metro rides and a taxi later I found myself at Laura and Don’s place. Wow. They live up on the Peak, one of the nicest (and priciest) parts of HK Real Estate in a gorgeous flat. I had my own room, and ensuite, privacy. Something I hadn’t fully had for 7 weeks. Delightful.
I had no real missions in Hong Kong, there are no Great Walls, no Terracotta Warriors, no Petronas Towers or Taj Mahals. Its just an exceptionally cool modern city where lots of people speak English. I had two things to do on my list; go to the Hard Rock Cafe and go electronics shopping.
Item number one worked out exceptionally well, the Hard Rock Cafe Hong Kong had re-opened just three weeks prior to my arrival, I went down one night and enjoyed a quite enjoyable live band and the local specialty burger, marinaded, covered with ground pork, spring onions and plum sauce. Delicious. I picked up a new pin at the Rock Shop on the Peaks, which had the Peak Tram on it, reminding me of my stay and was rather impressed with the whole experience. Though as the band were on the lights were down and I didn’t get a good look at the memorabilia but you can’t have it all ways!
On my second day in Hong Kong I headed down to the Causeway Bay metro stop and found the mall where the Bose headphone shop was located, since trying out Ken’s (my Mum’s partner) Quiet Comfort 15s when they came to visit I had decided some of my own would improve my life immensely – the amount of children I’ve wanted to cause harm to in the confined spaces of aeroplanes over the years has risen to an inconceivable number! So I found the Bose Store and picked up my own set for HKD$2,580, a touch over 200 pounds and they cost 280 in England. Bargains.
From there I headed upstairs toward a book store and by luck found another branch of the Mac Store I was headed to next. This was excellent news as I wouldn’t have the opportunity to get lost finding the other branch. After some last minute soul searching I went with the 13″ Macbook Pro for $9,088, which worked out at 721 pounds. A lovely 278 saving on the 999 pounds on the UK Macstore. I worship at the altar of Hong Kong’s 0% sales tax. I had the helper guy from the shop find me a few cases for my new baby and managed to convince him to knock 50% off a neoprene one that had had something sat on top of it for some time and had some dents in it. Idiot. By the time I got home there wasn’t a single mark on it. Bwahahahaha. This meant I got a 40 pounds case for 17 by the time he scanned the wrong price tag to confound his error. Win.
My last purchase in Hong Kong came on my final day which was a bright orange watch at the Swatch shop. I love it and have being receiving compliments about it ever since, its absolutely lovely, it came in at 500 HKD, a touch less than 40 pounds, saving me less impressively 2 pounds and fifty pence over the UK store. Still every little counts!
Looking at my three purchases I got all three in HK for less than the price of the Mac in the UK. Score.
Macbook/Phones/Watch
Hong Kong: 721 + 205 + 40 = 966 pounds
UK: 999 + 280 + 42.50 = 1321 pounds and fifty pence.
Total saving of 355 pounds. Wow.
Okay lets move on to otherwise in Hong Kong. On the Tuesday evening Laura arrived home and cooked for us, despite her protestations that she isn’t as good a cook as Linda I can only surmise that chef ability runs in the family, she prepared a delightful salad and pasta for us that were absolutely delicious. My first home cooked meal in rather some time was a rather pleasant event.
The next night she took me out to one of their favourite places in the city, Pawn, where we followed a lovely wild mushroom salad with (for the first time in my life) suckling pig and that was absolutely outstanding though im sure eating all the pork fat wasn’t great for me. Still it was like having posh pork scratchings and who doesn’t love pork scratchings? That was topped off with a delightful sticky toffee pudding although sadly they didn’t have Birds custard on the menu. I’m going to consume gallons of the stuff while I’m home it has to be said.
I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Laura and Don (who I hope to meet sometime soon) for putting me up while I was in Hong Kong and being fantastic hosts. =)
Hong Kong was a great place to end my holiday, it was chilled out, there were no language barrier stresses and I got to chill out and relax. Which was needed when I got to my journey back to Vietnam. My flight from Hong Kong to KL had originally been booked around my flights to Japan and would have worked well with those flights. As it was I ended up with an eight hour wait in Kuala Lumpur from 1am to 9am. Great. I had however decided I would spend the night in the 24/7 McD’s with a couple of milkshakes and the free wi-fi.
Except I arrived to find out that the whole airport was being fumigated from midnight to five pm so I instead had the joyous experience of spending my time out in an awfully humid Malaysian night sweating my tits off along with a few other hundred disgruntled people. Nasty.
Anyway I got through all that, eventuality got a Sausage McMuffin around 5:30am and proceeded to make it to my flight to VN at which time I promptly passed out, awoke in VN, found my baggage walked across the road, found Linda, got a lift to her guesthouse and passed out for six hours while she was at work. I was back in the madhouse that is Vietnam, ridiculous traffic and all.
Love and Macs
J. Xx
