My recent travel abroad was to join the Grand Prix in Hong Kong last August 7-9, 2015. The preparation for the tournament was somewhat decent but the card pool that was passed to me was below average. I was able to reach

the record of 4-1 before plunging into the remaining rounds. The final record was 4-5.

I just enjoyed the rest of the trip and the good thing was Herbert made it to Day 2 with a 7-2 record. I thought I wanted to share with you guys the pictures that I took during the first day of the Grand Prix. The embedding code of the Facebook album is somewhat not functional at this time so you can just click here on the link to the FB page.

This is quite an old event but nevertheless I am sharing this to you guys. Just last September, my girlfriend and I travelled to Hong Kong for a week to celebrate my birthday. It was my first time to visit the place and we had a lot of tourist spots to visit in the list. We stayed at a hostel in Mong Kok, with a somewhat good distance with the top tourist spots.

We had arrived Hong Kong Monday morning at around 9am from Clark Airport. I had to travel the day before to Manila to meet up with her then we went to Clark right away. We had to stay overnight in Clark as our flight schedule is 7 in the morning.

Good thing it was just a quick one and a half hour travel, and we had enough time to find the hostel. The directions are correct, but after arriving at the said street, we had a hard time finding the correct block no. and the building.

It was also hard to ask for directions as most of the Chinese there don’t speak English. We finally able to ask for help from a Filipina working there, which she was able to show us the correct street block. The next problem is to find which building is the hostel. By accident, we were able to see a sign from a small entrance the name of hostel. We inquired inside and were very happy to know that we were at the correct place.

Their front desk was at the 14 floor and the room they assigned to us is at the 13th. I guessed they were not as superstitious as we Filipinos are. The room, though small as I expected, was quite okay. There is a TV and free wifi access and the bathroom have a heater installed, good features for a regular hostel.

We rested the whole afternoon, and explored the streets at around dinner. It was a good coincidence that the Ladies’ Market is just across the main street so we would not have to worry about on where to buy pasalubong and souvenirs. On that first night, an old lady already convinced me to buy shirts from her shop. I don’t really consider buying at that time but bought anyway.

Day 2

First on our list of tour places is the Ngong Ping Cable Car. According to Wiki, Ngong Ping Cable Car is a 5.7 kilometres (3.5 mi) long bi-cable gondola lift system (referred to by its operators as a “cable car”) linking between Tung Chung (where it connects the MTR Tung Chung station) and Ngong Ping (where the Po Lin Monastery and Tian Tan Buddha are located). Between the two terminals at Tung Chung and Ngong Ping, the lift system runs across the southern shore of the Hong Kong International Airport island and Nei Lak Shan, with eight towers including the stations. I guess all of these explained the place.

We arrived just in time for the opening and it was a weekday so there are little to moderate tourists at the site.

I’ll just let the photo slideshow below illustrate our endeavors that day. Enjoy!

Stay tuned for part two blog post of the trip. Until next time.