Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Hong Kong - 24 hours

1. Taikoo Place is a office/retail/residential development on the northeast shore of Hong Kong Island, in an area called Quarry Bay. You have several options to get to Taikoo Place from the Airport. The fastest and easiest is by taxi, which will take about 40 minutes, give or take a bit. Cost about HK$400 give or take a bit.

Next option is the Airport Express Train to Hong Kong Island (30 minutes, about HK$100 or so, there are reduced fare for round trips and tourist fares) and then either a taxi to Taikoo Place (about 10-15 minutes, maybe HK$50) or the subway (MTR) to the Quarry Bay stop (about 15 minutes, not including the underground walk between the Airport Express station and the Central subway station. HK$6 without any discount applied).

Taikoo Place is a huge development of many buildings, so I assume you have the actual building name and street address. (If you take the MTR, it might actually be better to go to the Taikoo MTR stop, but that would depend on which building your meeting is in.) For street maps showing the location of various buildings near the Quarry Bay and Taikoo stops, go to http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/facilities/lm.html and click on Quarry Bay and Taikoo respectively. This may help you figure out which stop is better and which exit door you want.

I assume you will just be bringing your luggage with you to the meeting and/or are a hotel in the Quarry Bay area.

2. If you have never been to Hong Kong, then you might want to do some of the more typical tourist things like going up to the Peak, taking a ride on the Star Ferry, walking the downtown areas of Central, walking the esplanade on the Kowloon side. There are tons of options. See the Fodors guide here for a start, or get a guidebook and read it on the plane. You might search this board for my very long list of reccos called “Cicerone’s Reccos for What the Locals Do for Fun in Hong Kong (Hint: We DON’T Go to those Awful Night Markets....)” at http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...l-night-ma.cfm. Depending on what day you are here, you might go to the horse races at Happy Valley (Wed nights). Also note that your meeting is in a somewhat untoursited area, so you might enjoy just walking around the neighborhood areas away from the skyscrapers, or taking a ride on the double-decker street tram east down Kings Road toward Shau Kei Wan where there is a wet market. There are temples in that area, as well as in the Tin Hau area to the west of Quarry Bay.

It is very safe to be out late. The subway and buses stop around 1 am, but taxis are available at all hours.

3. I see from your profile that you live in Mumbai, so you may want to look for electronics, but other than someplace like Fortress Electronics which is reputable (but fixed priced), I am not sure I can help you much. See http://www.fortress.com.hk (click on “Eng” on top), they give prices for some items. Or try the DG Lifestyle stores which are licensed Apple dealers, see http://www.designergroup.com.hk/newDG/index.html. (They don’t give a world-wide warranty for all their items.). Be very careful of being ripped off. This is especially so along the infamous Nathan Road area in Kowloon. I would not buy from a street stall or street market, stick to an electronics shop and even then be careful. At a minimum, be very sure there are (i) instructions in English and (ii) a world-wide warranty in English. In any event, do some comparison shopping at home first so you know what relative prices are and you can recognize a good price. Bargain hard in the smaller shops.

It’s hard for me to advise on clothes without knowing what your wife likes. If you can give suggestions, I can try to help. I personally would not bother with discount clothes shopping, and would suggest perhaps something funky from Shanghai Tang or Blanc de Chine, see
http://www.shanghaitang.com/shanghaitang/index.jsp and http://www.blancdechine.com/. Or wander the boutique areas of Gough Street and Staunton Street in the Hollywood Road area. (There is always jewelry but that seems very coals-to-Newcastle for someone who lives in Mumbai.) However, there is a huge amount of shopping in City Plaza and Kornhill, just a block or so from Taikoo Place, so you can always just wander the malls there and see if anything interests you.

Shops in Central and close-in areas to that like Admiralty tend to close around 7 (although malls are open a bit later) shops in other areas tend to be open until about 8-9 pm.

4. I don’t think there are any restaurants one “has” to try. (Although quite close to you on Java Road in North Point is the down and dirty but utterly delicious Tung Po Seafood. Open only for dinner.) There are literally hundreds of good restaurants here, including all Chinese cuisines and then all Asian cuisines. They run the gamut from very expensive to very cheap. Some have great views, some have none. It’s really more about what you want. I have a list of restaurant recommendations for Hong Kong which is quite long, I would be happy to e-mail it to you if you want to send me a message at [email protected]. It is broken down by view, no view, area, price and food type/region.

For the love of God and good food, please post your favourite Mumbai restaurants sometime!! I am getting tired of my own list…..