Hong Kong 2012

Recently I had the chance to go Hong Kong for a product training. To take advantage of this, I naturally extended my stay and went around the famous attractions. Based on my research, you should be able to achieve this in a 5 days 4 nights trip. So that was how I planned out itineraries but of course, mother nature don't usually agrees with anyone's plans and you will have to adjust around her.

I planned to go to :
Disneyland
Ocean Park
Ngong Ping 360
The Peak
Avenue of Stars for the light show
Shenzhen (I just want to abuse my going-to-expire visa)

Seems like nothing much at all right? What you really require are good legs for all the walking, hopefully some good research on how to go those places and a thick face to ask those busy HK citizens. Of course the major attractions you will not have any problems at all because they have many signs and announcements.

In my mind, that's that BUT what is more important for me would be how do you tackle those places especially those that you need to queue up for eg what is a MUST do in Disneyland and Ocean Park? Strangely enough, I did not find much info on this probably because everyone's interest is different which is true in most cases or I just did not have enough time to do it properly. Basically, I would advise for visitors to attend all their shows. I particularly enjoyed Mickey's Philharmagic, Stitch Encounter, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Jungle River Cruise and Festival of Lion King. My advice is to really watch the timing especially those with limited shows. In Disneyland, if you are an avid adventurer, I recommend a task for you to complete =D Visit ALL the different themed restrooms, most people would just want to do their business and get on with enjoying the park. I reckon if I was with my friends, we would most likely take pictures in them, something which seemed to be a tradition when we were still in school XD

Watch the weather for Ngong Ping's cable car, mother nature disrupted my plan by greeting me with a typhoon level 3 but thankfully I had other destinations and was able to spend the day accomplishing another task. If you are able to plan things REALLY well, you can squeeze some destinations into 1 day. I think that requires precision planning and in their mind they know exactly what they want to do at those places even without being or seeing the place yet. I like to discover stuff which are not advertised.

What's next? Food! There are so many recommended food places. What you really need to do is to mark down all the detailed places and plan your route. Oh yeah, another important point when looking for food, LOOK UP! Many of the food places are NOT on the ground floor, some are even underground ... I think in the end, I just managed to go to 1 of my researched shops. Local food places have wisen up and have limited or some not so correct but understandable menus in english. Places which don't have, you have to use your thick face to ask, what makes it worse would be that you look like a chinese BUT can't read any, yes, your's truly is not able to read chinese but to compensate, I can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.

I think I managed to accomplish my tasks of visiting the places which I wanted to go except for the food places. Learned something interesting during the training which we should explore and of course get to experience some Hong Kong culture :)

 Gai Dan Zhai - literally translated as little chicken eggs but most shops use the term eggette

 Fried Char Siew Pau - this taste GREAT!

 Malai Ko - this cake tastes great too

 Fried char siew thingy - nothing special about this

 Ocean Park - good places to learn about conservation and great place if you love sea creatures

 Disneyland - yes, its raining just as I reached =_="

 Set A breakfast - surprisingly set A is basically the same thing in all char chan thengs

 Other sets which are non-beef

 Tried this egg tart just because of its shape :p

 Pineapple bun - unlike other pineapple buns, this bakery really put pineapples in the bun!

 Noodles for dinner

 Giant Buddha as part of Ngong Ping 360's attraction

 This meal is part of an expensive ticket to see what is inside the Buddha, the visit was NOT worth it at all BUT the vegetarian meal was awesome!

 Or Jien HK style - not bad

 Che Zhai Mien - the portion was big BUT the mixture of the ingredients was not to my liking ...

对面海 - literally means Opposite Ocean, winner of the Dragonboat festival at Sai Kung

Normal pineapple bun - these are like Mexican buns but the top are pineapple stuff

 The peak via taxi going up and via bus going down - the queue was so mad that I reckon I won't make it up the hill before nightfall

OK view - just outside a restroom area =_="

 Shenzhen side of the border - gives me bad memories of China

 I did not go out and explore what this place is famous for, its just a place for me to change train.

I took the train so much that I got this.

What are my advices for travelers? Install apps which can help guide you around, preferably those that do not need Internet connection. What I used (on Android) HKMTR by Gary Wang (not the official one from MTR), Discover Hong Kong by the Tourism Board, Mobile BusInfo by Studio Kuma, TripAdvisor's Hong Kong app and of course who can live without Google Maps offline?

Must get Octopus card BUT watch your spending, I think I spent HKD300 just to go around to all the places. Most of the fares are around HKD10 and around half that for short distances.

Wear shoes that won't kill your heels and breathable. Walking around can and will take a toll on your main transportation. If you choose to, you can get competitively priced shoes at Mongkok.

For places to stay, IF you have the money, its really worth the difference :) Else you are in for a culture shock and I do pray that you are not claustrophobic. 

Follow the queue, if you don't and you look like a Chinese, you are gonna get some sounding because Chinese (from China)  really love to cut queues ... For all their hectic lifestyle, surprisingly HK people queue up for buses and trains. In Disneyland/Ocean Park on a normal day, a queue can be anywhere between 15 - 60 minutes depending on the show/ride. This will affect even the most meticulously planned iteneraries.

Cash and credit card :p For me the food was quite expensive as each meal would cost me at least RM10+. Make sure you have the currency conversion memorized in your head because you will need it especially for shopaholics who do watch out for their money. It is really a haven for shoppers, so many interestingly priced stuff.

Yummy Ice Cream Sandwich?

Those of you who are using Androids would definitely know what the above title means. Everybody have been waiting for it to arrive and when it does, its a frantic manic dash to get it into your device. My device behaved strangely from the first day I got it. Many people would blame that its a I9100G issue but I just want my smartphone to be functioning properly without the stupid talk about its hardware and supposedly inferior quality to its cousin.

I must admit that I would love to see an improvement to my device by upgrading to ICS. Interestingly, I did see a difference and its much smoother than any of the roms I used before. As mentioned, its a manic dash and I could not wait for Malaysian version to be released, I flashed the Indian version and it worked perfectly. To my dismay, the Malaysian version was released the very next day I flashed the Indian one =_="

So being a faithful citizen, I wanted to stay true to my country by flashing to the Malaysian version. I tried it this morning and the weird thing was that it failed! @_@" I was like, I'm fucked ... The phone can't get into download mode, I'm really screwed ...

I was stuck on a screen with the logo phone-warning sign-PC and the supposed way of plugging in a USB jig would bring you to download mode also did not work and its just stuck at that screen. I was sweating although it was quite cold in office today. I could not find a solution which actually tells me what to do exactly so I experimented. I hope my listed steps can hopefully recover your phone too. Btw, don't panic just yet and try out what I did :)

In XDA-developers, it was informed that if you got this error with ICS, you are quiet screwed and not to mention stuck with pretty much no idea how to proceed. I read somewhere that you need to re-partition your phone because something screwed up (duh!) during flashing. This means that your phone does not have a rom to boot to or something is missing to allow you to continue to recovery mode.

With that understanding, I checked back my PC on what I have. Thankfully I have :

a) Odin
b) A working pit file
c) An old sure working official Samsung rom.

With that, I started my journey back to ICS :

1) Fire up Odin, plug in your phone and pray that you get the yellow box ie phone detected despite NOT being in download mode.
2) Select pit file and PDA as the rom. I think the pit and the rom MUST be compatible with each other. You don't want to screw up any further.
3) With the default selections, press Start and start praying! To my surprise the update progress bar was moving along like it was in download mode!
4) If all goes well, you should get a pass on Odin and your phone will be rebooted into the old rom.
5) Amen. Your phone is breathing again, now to get it back to terms with the rest of the world.
6) I went into download mode again and flashed the Indian ICS
7) Based on my previous experience, its best to reset to factory
8) This part is optional BUT I wanted to restore all my apps from Titanium Backup so I rooted my phone. Unfortunately for me, the non-counter increasing method does not work because somehow the CWM just does not work after it replaced the default version.
9) After half a morning of sweating and praying, my phone is back to ICS and I'm restoring my apps just in time for lunch =D

For my fellow I9100G users, I hope you will not encounter what I went through. If you did, you can try the above and I wish you a speedy recovery.

p/s : Damn Samsung removed the more flexible ICS lockscreen BUT that is easily rectified by installing other launchers which allows lockscreen customization.