Jobelle and I once had the chance to choose our flight schedules on our way back to Manila from LA. Since we have connecting flights with lay over in Hong Kong, we decided to stay on this island for 10 hours before boarding our connecting plane back to Manila. However, due to our busy schedules with work and stuff, we forgot one crucial task for this side trip -- we forgot to do research on how to go around Hong Kong considering our limited time. 😫 You could just imagine what happened to us - lost!

Upon arriving in Hong Kong's massive airport and passing through customs and immigration, we bought round trip MTR tickets going to mainland HK and then back to the airport. This is a very convenient transport for transit tourists like us.

Once on the main island, this is where our misadventures started. We relied on the information we got from the tourist support kiosk at the airport who told us that everything is walking distance. We got lost on the streets with no specific place to go looking for the longest escalator that she mentioned. Luckily, we chanced upon a Hop-On-Hop-Off tourist bus. This brought us into the heart of the main island where we ended up gawking up to their towering skyscrapers. I was amazed but actually got scared at the same time. What would happen if an earthquake suddenly strikes and I am surrounded with tall buildings?? Di ba? Just imagine it. 😱

With Hong Kong food, sad to say we were still unlucky. We ended up eating at a cafe when we were lost. Food was not even a Hong Kong specialty. But since the last food we ate was plane food and they have free wifi, we had no choice. We were able to do a bit of research though on where to go and decided to head to Mong Kok, a famous street market in Kowloon. The tourist bus we took stopped at a pier where we boarded a ferry going to Kowloon.

I thought we were already on the right tracks but turned out we were lost once again. We wandered the streets looking for a busy street market with many people but ended up to a street with rich looking people lining up to luxury shops. That was definitely not what we were looking for.

After being tired asking around and people pointing us to nowhere, we decided to take a taxi going to Mong Kok. However he dropped us to a place which doesn't look like a street market. We ended up walking and walking again until we gave up. We were already tired. My back was already hurting, I was carrying with me on my backpack a laptop which I don't want to leave at a storage in the airport. Besides, we only have a few hours left before our flight. So we decided to look for a train station which will lead us back to the airport.

On the station, we saw a map and found out that what we were looking for was just on the other side. 😵 Sobrang nakakainis lang naman. Had we did some research prior to our flight, we would have known that its just a train ride away from the airport. Ugh! Since we still have time to spare, we did some hurried shopping buying pasalubongs before heading back to the airport.

This was one stressful trip for us. A lesson learned is to always be prepared when travelling to a new place. This would definitely save you from what we have experienced. 😅