Hong Kong 2

Today started off with a late breakfast at a nearby bakery and cafe. We are starting to figure out how most Hong Kong restaurants seem to work. Go in, get a table, take no more than 30 seconds to decide what you want to eat as you better be ready to order when the waitress comes by, don't ask questions, food comes right away, eat, pay, leave. No dawdling, no dicking around, get in, get out, no harm. It's all about the turnaround time and getting as many butts in a seat as possible throughout the day. We had pineapple buns (with a big chunk of butter in the middle), Hong Kong style french toast (slathered in butter), iced and hot coffee. All excellent. We liked it so much we are going back tomorrow in spite of the surly staff. Maybe we like the abuse a little bit too.
After breakfast we hopped on the subway to get to Victoria Peak, an 1,800 foot mountain with a mountain top lookout on Hong Kong Island . The Hong Kong subway system is apparently the most efficient subway system in the world. It moves 5.2 million people per day and has a 99.9% on-time rate. The trains we were on were 600 feet long and packed. Crazy volume, crazy size, and crazy efficient.
After a tram ride to the top of the peak we enjoyed the views, and the breeze. We headed back down the mountain on a city bus, on a narrow road full of sharp turns and switch backs. If we met another bus making it's way up there was probably no more than 6 inches of space between the two vehicles. Once at the bottom we strolled around for a while, ducking into shops every few minutes to enjoy the air conditioning. I mentioned in yesterday's post about the bamboo scaffolding and I noticed a lot more today. One of the pictures below shows a tall building (I counted 40 stories) with green netting. Inside that netting from bottom to top, is bamboo scaffolding. All warped, crooked, and held together with some type of nylon tie. No thanks.
We made our way down to the waterfront to catch the ferry back to Kowloon. Once on the Kowloon side we stopped and had dinner at a place specializing in noodles. We got a table, checked out the menu as quickly as possible and ordered our food. The waitress walked away before we could order drinks and re-appeared about 20 seconds later with a computer printout of our bill. Our meals were really good but we went without drinks as we were too chicken to order them and have her change our bill. We went up the street to McDonald's after we ate to get something to drink. I'm going to have nightmares about Hong Kong waitresses.Read more