Jurassic Park invades Cityplaza

There's been a lot of coverage in the news about this exhibition. The bones are from a museum somewhere in China - didn't really care because I didn't even know museums were approved by the government over there, except for the ones extolling how great Mao was.

So, this is just one of the gimmicks shopping malls pull to get people to come - and boy was it a success. We got there early at around 10am in the morning, so there weren't a lot of people around. But by 11am, the place was crowded and people were queuing to get into the exhibition area.

Cityplaza is actually one of the older shopping malls in Hong Kong, and one of the better managed ones. Swire, the British group that manages this place (and also owner of Cathay Pacific) does a good job at it; it seems like their shopping malls are always better managed, better than the ones run by local mega conglomerates anyways, like SHKP and Li Ka Shing.

The shops here are great too. (Check out their website, below.) There's also an ice skating rink. Next door is Jusco, a Japanese department store the size of Walmart, where you can buy just about anything. The decor does seem a bit old fashioned, but most of the place has been through quite a few makeovers. It's like the nostalgia of the 80s shopping malls (with their round columns and abusive use of reflective surfaces) mixed with modern and postmodern add-ons. And the floors of the mall are not oddly numbered; nor were escalators winding traps of no return. It seems like older developers had more sense back then.

The entire place is in the middle of a private housing estate (which also happens to be the best run in Hong Kong, as indicated by the stable property prices even in the face of SARS and the Asian financial crisis, and despite most homes being over 30 years old), which is great if you live here. Maybe someday, I'll get an apartment here. Besides, it's super convenient being just above the Tai Koo MTR station.

Here's another picture of the exhibition space. I counted 11 dinosaur skeletons in total, but there may have been more. You'll also notice the rain coming down on the skylight.

http://www.cityplaza.com.hk/

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head

A very brightly lit street, on which traffic zooms past, somewhere in Tsim Sha Tsui. Hong Kong is famous for all those neon signs hanging over its streets. I just love the night life. This was taken around 8 o'clock in the evening, but let me assure you that come 2am, the street will pretty much be the same.

It's been raining like crazy for the past 7 or 8 days; there were a few bad floods today, in fact. (Those smart ones out there would have noticed the wet streets in the first picture.) Well, like the Americans with their terror alerts and the Australians with their UV warnings, the Hong Kong people have rain warnings. The most severe is black, where people don't have to go to work or school. Red is the second highest, followed but other colors which I'm not all too sure myself. Anyways, I went outside and looked up into the sky, but the cloud dripping its raindrops on my face wasn't red. Quite disappointed, really - but my spirits were already quite dampened by the weather.

APM aka Millennium City 5

Here is yet another great shopping mall to go to if you're on a shopping binge. APM is located at Kwun Tong, and is right above the MTR station of the same name. (See their website below for more details on how to get there.) Its name actually is the combination of AM and PM, as in ante meridiem and post meridiem (which makes it ante post meridiem, whatever that means), and is suppose to be a place where young people can hang out anytime they want - or that is until 2am in the morning, when the security guards chase you away because the mall closes, whichever is earlier.

As with all malls in Hong Kong, a intricate web of escalators link each floor, so as to trap the unsuspecting shopper in the upper floors, forcing them to weave through corridors of shops in order to get out of the mall itself. Notice in the above photo the express escalators crossing over the open, sky-lit foyer, jumping from L1 to L3 and L3 to L5 respectively. Notice also that unlike conventional escalators, these express ones do not come in pairs. No prize for guessing which direction they go.

So, after wondering around aimlessly for a while, I was forced to use the lifts. Above is a picture of the wall paper at one such lift lobby. It's just so retro - kinda reminds me of the iPod commercial, but with more zest.

If you go to see their floor plan at their website, you'll get dizzy indeed. The ground floor is G, but after that, it's all just the twilight zone. Above G is C, and above that is UC. L1 above that is actually the 3rd story, or the 4th floor, technically anyway.

And here is a row of vending machines. Not only do they look cute, but (following the vending machine craze of the Japanese) they sell all sorts of things. Besides the standard snacks, candies and drinks, there's stuffed animals, perfumes and cologne, toys, etc.

Right. So I'll just leave you with their website. This is definitely another shopping mall for all those shopaholics (and non-shopaholics alike) visiting Hong Kong.

http://www.apm-millenniumcity.com/

The Hong Kong Skyline

Warning: Mild suggestive material ahead. Be forewarned, bloody fundies... (I wouldn't want to "offend" you.)

I went to Tsim Sha Tsui today and took some great shots across Victoria Harbor of the Hong Kong skyline. It's just magnificent. I came out of New World Shopping Center and walked along the promenade with all these "star" plaques and cement handprints on the ground. It's suppose to be a Hollywood imitation, but most people there were more interested in the view than the cement slabs on the ground.

In the above photo, you can see the convention center (where the 1997 handover took place) and the triangular Central Plaza tower behind it. Had I been on this side of the harbor during Chinese New Year, it would've been a spectacle, as the entire skyline lit up with pyrotechnics - but I'd been on the other side.

This one's a bit blurry, I know. The rightmost tower with the tall long antenna and the triangular sides jutting out (not the tallest one) is the color-changing tower, which lights up at night in brilliant shades that cycle through the rainbow. I have no idea what it's really called, and I don't think many people do either; I've asked my aunt for the tower's name and she said she just called it the color-changing tower.

Now, going back to the left, that memorable triangular blade-like tower with the diagonal support beams on it is the Bank of China Tower, which is really a sleek and beautiful work of art which, I feel, will never go out of fashion, not like other buildings. A bit more to the left and you'll notice the also iconic (but now dwarfed) HSBC Tower, the first real skyscraper of Hong Kong which also appears on the back of some of the older bank notes.

Now, all the way to the left is Two IFC (International Finance Center; after 911, I think no one really wanted to call their building the World Trade Center). There's a great shopping mall beneath it. It's currently the tallest tower in the skyline with (you guessed it) 88 floors. Some more conservative quarters have complained of the phallic shape of the building, and this picture (http://www.emporis.com/en/il/im/?id=246348) of the fireworks on Chinese New Year last year certainly didn't help.

But before you Singie fundies out there start complaining, let's not jump the gun. Your skyline isn't exactly so un-pornographic. Take this, for instance (from http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=912), which I think is even more suggestive.

Yeah. You might have more balls, but ours is taller!

Getting around

Getting around in Hong Kong couldn't be simpler. The only problem you'd probably run into are the hoards of people crowding the streets at night, especially the streets Tsim Sha Tsui and Central. Other than that, public transport is both accessible and efficient. Buses run on clockwork schedule and if you prefer something faster, then the MTR and KCR train systems, which connect every part of Hong Kong island, Kowloon and the New Territories. More info at http://www.mtr.com.hk/ and http://www.kcrc.com/. (Above is a picture of the MTR system I took the last time I was here. The updated one has a stop for Disneyland on Lantau Island.)

For payment, all you need is an Octopus card. All you do is to tap it; it has a little RFID chip inside which stores value. They're the same as the EZLink cards in Singapore, only more versatile. (I think this goes to show how slowly Singaporeans adapt new technology, even after Hong Kong's been using this system of electronic money for so many years.) And don't be fooled by it's name, because you can definitely use it in more than eight ways. You can use it on the MTR, the KCR, the Airport Express, buses, mini-buses, the light rails, Island trams, Peak trams, ferries, 7-eleven and other convenience stores, fast food restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, car parks at shopping centers, parking meters on the street (see below for the retro parking meter, and note the orange Octopus logo), video game arcades, Watsons and Mannings stores, gas stations, drinks and snacks vending machines, various schools' canteens and libraries, some wet markets, photocopiers, cinemas, public swimming pools, public recreational centers, Jockey Club outlets, the racecourse, stadiums and sports venues, government departments... the list goes on. You can virtually use it at a million places - anywhere where you can possibly need to pay in small amounts. Some office buildings and swanky condos even program their tenants' Octopus card as a security pass at electronic entrances to the buildings.

Hmm... That guy on the right better come back soon to top up the meter.

Escalators Galore

That's the name of the mall - and I have to say it's the coolest shopping mall ever. It makes the entire Orchard Road stretch seem juvenile. It's 13 floors plus 4 below-ground basement floors. And for some strange reason, the building doesn't follow the English system, and starts counting from L1. Another strange point to note is that it doesn't have a B3, and just goes on to B4 and B5. So, the final tally is 17 floors of pure shopping pleasure!

This was taken some distance from the place. It's located above Mongkok MTR station, so it's easily accessible. The shopping mall is in the shorter building; the taller one's a connected hotel. There's office space somewhere in there too. See the giant glass balls above both buildings? They glow at night and change colors slowly, like that tower on Hong Kong Island, only slower. It's really cool and you can see it from as far as the peak on clear nights.

The place has quite an interesting history. It use to be Hong Kong's red light district. (When I told my aunt I wanted to go there after my friend had told me about the place, she thought I wanted to get a hooker! The only remnants of that left is the sexy CGI babe they use as their mascot.) But the government decided to bulldoze the place and build a splendid shopping mall with hundreds of shops there. And voila!

Here's the escalators at the L4 atrium, which is a great open space (but still inside the building) about 2-3 stories tall, surrounded by glass windows, and full of restaurants and a food court. I went to one of them, Matchtoo, which I reviewed in my flog.

The escalators are boringly long, so much so that you get bored after riding them for a while, being forced to look at the shops passing you on each floor. What a cleaver way to make you shop. Pictured above is the escalator from L4 to L8.

And here, we have the escalators from L8 all the way up to L13 - equally boring. It seems like Hong Kong engineers have a knack for building long escalators. And they find ways to get you up on top too. There's this huge TV screen on L4, you see, and the night I was there, it was broadcasting live from L13 this jazz band that was playing there. (I don't know how often they do this) So people who saw and heard the music on the screen at L4, being curious human beings as we all are, trooped up to L13 via the two sets of escalators.

And what happened when they got to L13? Well, the jazz was nice, but now that they were here, they might as well walk down, instead of going back to L8 directly, because that would just be so boring - again. So they start walking down, only to find out that from L8 to L13, the place is called "The Spiral". Why does this matter? Because the floors are connected in a circular way, and there's only one way to go, because there are no elevators or other escalator for you to skip floors (see floor plan at their website, address below). Kinda like the Ikea concept of keeping your customers moving through your products, only without shortcuts. Well, at least it was good exercise. And the shops were all small business boutiques too, with lots of funky and cute products.

To sum it all off, this place is a must go for any tourist coming to Hong Kong. Even if you don't buy anything, you still will be amazed at the place's architecture.

http://www.langhamplace.com.hk/