One day in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the biggest hubs in Asia - not only as a financial center, but also as an airport. It has been a transit point for me for some of my travels.

I had always wanted to visit the place when one of my good friends Aashu would be in town. But as luck would have it, it was not possible during my first couple of sojourns with the city - he either was not in town or absolutely busy.

However, during one of my return journeys, I managed to find some time to spend in the city, with Aashu for company. The time available to me, though, was very limited.

I was reaching HK around midnight and I had a flight to catch the next day at 6.30 pm.

After completing all the formalities at the HK airport (one of the smoothest immigrations), I rushed to Aashu's place which was very near Hong Kong station, the last stop of the airport metro.

He was there to receive me and we walked to his home. After chatting for some minutes, I asked him what the plan would be given that I had such little time to spend.

He immediately shot back asking, "Trek pe chalte hai (lets go on a trek)". I asked, "Seriously? Now?". It was then that I  realized that he was serious. I thought, why not and we left immediately.

We were going to the peak via Hatton road, which is also known as the morning trail (or alteast thats what I think it is called).

We began by starting to walk up the streets of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, though situated next to the sea is basically built on hillocks. Hence, the walk up the streets was a steep one and in about 30 minutes or so, we reached the start of the trail.

The Sri Lanka trip - Old friends reconnecting

Now that I am in a mood to write, I think I should use this new-found enthusiasm to write as much as I can.

I was planning a holiday with my friends Puneet and Paras for a long time and we zeroed in on Sri Lanka as the destination. September was the month - not the tourist season, but we decided to go ahead to have a more relaxing trip.

The only things on our wishlist were beaches and Adam's peak - as there was no cricket in the country during out visit.

After some rescheduling to our flight schedules - courtesy the busy consultant Paras, me and Puneet left for Colombo, with Paras expected to join us a day later.

We took the Sri Lankan Airways flight from Mumbai to Colombo.

We had done some basic research on the train network in the country and zeroed in on the railways as our primary mode of transport (which was enough for the places we wanted to cover).

We got down at the airport at around 5.30 am and made our way towards Colombo Fort railway station. Taxis as well as public transport is available for the same but we preferred a taxi which cost us close to 3500-4000 LKR.

The railway network in Sri Lanka is reminiscent of what one would imagine the Indian railway network would have been in the 70s or 80s, though with a lot less crowd. Though, according to me, it still is the most efficient and cost-effective way of traveling in the country.

Colombo Railway station with its old trains

Still using old bulbs to light up the compartments

The first post - Bangkok

I was having a chat with my friend, Tauseef and we were recounting some old memories. Most of them were related to trips we had taken together.

I always wanted to get back to blogging and what better to do it about than the experiences of my travels. Over the past couple of years, I feel that I have traveled more than a decent amount - both in India and internationally. So, there is a fair bit that can be shared.

I would start off this hopefully continuous series of posts with my trip to Bangkok.

Whenever anyone talks about a trip to Thailand, the images that come to mind are beaches, markets, massage places etc. However, my trip was very different from these cliched images that Thailand is connected to. That may partially be due to the purpose of my visit - watch Liverpool in action for the first time in my life, but even in my free time it was a different kind of experience.

I had a total of 2.5 days in Bangkok. I landed at the Bangkok airport around noon, took the metro (which became my primary mode of transport for the next 3 days - very convenient for the places I needed to travel to) and reached my hotel around 3 pm. The hotel was located in Nana, near all the shopping places, so there was plenty of window shopping opportunities for the shopping enthusiasts. I, however was not one of them.

On my way to the hotel, I had seen huge malls about 2 kms from Nana. So, decided to take a walk and spend my evening going around the malls and street shops. One very interesting thing was the presence of worship places right outside malls - and not like in India where it generally is a small structure. It was proper huge statues, most probably maintained by the city or the mall itself.

Temples dedicated to Brahma and Ganesha outside malls