Hong Kong, day one

By mutual agreement, Miss H and I decided not to do much today. I was exhausted from my losing battle against Singapore's confounded autocracy, and my other half had just come off a startlingly harsh week at work (and a long flight). So we went to bed early the night of Saturday, August 2, and had a lovely lie-in Sunday morning. 

The weather was a factor as well. I hadn't expected Hong Kong to be the hottest, most humid, most stinkingly sweltering destination on my journey, but that it was. We could hardly breathe. The heat and wet were living things, clawing at your throat, clamping your clothes against your body, blocking your pores like some invisible blob monster. I've always been prone to sweating when the temperature's anywhere above 70 degrees, and whenever the humidity's above 40 percent. You can imagine how I felt in Hong Kong, with the temperature hovering around 85 and the humidity at 81%. Even Miss H was melting. 

Nonetheless, we hadn't come all this way just to sit in our air-conditioned room. We practically sprinted the ten feet between the hotel lobby and the entrance to North Point MTR station, and then we were on our way to Central and the IFC Mall. 

The view from the roof deck. We'd been planning to have cocktails up there, but the prices were exorbitant.

Pepero is the Korean version of Pocky, a Japanese biscuit stick covered with chocolate. So weird seeing it labeled in English in Hong Kong...

We did a bit of shopping (Victoria's Secret, Dymocks Bookstore, Godiva) and ate a hefty lunch of salads, sandwiches, and smoothies. Then we went to see The Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D. It cost about $15 per person—not including the glasses!—but what the hell, it was a date. In Hong Kong. 

Back at our hotel—ibis North Point—we switched rooms. I'd gotten one of the cheapest double rooms, but 1901 was a closet-sized space with a view of the building behind. So we paid an extra hundred HK$ (about $12.89 US) per day and moved our stuff up to 2504, which had a gorgeous view of Victoria Harbor and Kowloon.