Hong Kong Travel package: Flight and Hotel Part II

This post is continued from this previous post. For this post, I'm going to be talking more about the interior of Eaton Hotel. As with what we would expect of all hotels, everything is clean and neat! This is the view that we were greeted with when we stepped into the hotel room! The room is of a decent comfortable size. The first thing I noticed when I went into the room was: There were no curtains!! So we asked the staff there about it. We were embarrassed to find out that the things that we thought were special walls decorating the other end of the room were actually wooden panels that could be opened and closed!

Eaton Hotel room view

Eaton Hotel room TV

The bathroom was also of a comfortable size with the basics in place. The is also where you can find the recycling bin that I talked about in this post! The bathroom is also clean and nice. Eaton hotel also practices the policy of not changing the sheets if the pamphlet is placed on them and not changing towels unless they have been thrown to the ground in the toilet!

Eaton hotel bathroom view

Eaton Hotel bathroom view 2

All these so far I had expected but what I had not expected was what we saw in the next picture… The blinds beside the dresser could open to see into the bathroom!!! I'm sure this is one of the cheaper hotel rooms because we got it at a discounted price (see the previous post), but we did not expect this type of surprise! This is definitely not suitable for a group of mixed gender friends going out on a trip together! It would be embarrassing if you were in the shower when your friend of the opposite gender chanced upon what laid behind the blind! I'm pretty sure Eaton hotel has other rooms without this feature but this is just to warn future travelers to take note of these situations that could occur when you are overseas!

Eaton Hotel bathroom view 3

Because the hotel room isn't very big, I appreciated the effort of them trying to prevent making the room seem smaller with bulky furniture lying around. In fact, other than the bed, they only have a transparent chair and a transparent stool tucked at /under the dresser! Pardon my jacket that I hung on the chair. Because they were transparent, the chairs didn't look like they took up any space at all, making the room look that much more spacious!

Chairs in the hotel room

Special amenities of the Eaton Hotel: 

The hotel had a swimming pool which neither me nor my mum used. When we got our room keys, we were also issued with a new set of WiFi password (as compared to the temporary ones given to us at the lobby when we left our baggage). I think that Eaton Hotel provides free WiFi for all its guests! My mum and I used the internet to Skype and WhatsApp our family members at home. The WiFi was quite strong and very stable! I was very satisfied with it!

Just opposite of Eaton Hotel was a chain Cha Can Ting (literally translated as Tea Restaurant) that served really yummy food. The food was really good and the price was very affordable! Here is the brochure that I took from the place! Apparently they do delivery too! It was not necessary for us since the restaurant was just across the road from the hotel. Do keep a lookout for the set meals that have for different periods of time! Those sets usually have quite a large portion at just a small price!

Brochure View 1

Brochure View 2

Brochure View 3

The nearest MTR Station from Eaton Hotel is Jorden Station. This is quite a central station and many attractions /shopping districts like Tsim Sa Tsui are only a few stops away. This Queen Elizabeth Hospital exit is the one you take when you are returning to the hotel.

Exit from Jorden Station to Eatan Hotel

Even if you don't travel to other stations, there are plenty of shops along Nathan Street that you could shop at! The shopping malls have many shops that sell very fashionable clothes. Some HK shops follow Japanese fashion, some follow Korean fashion, but mostly the shops follow their own HK fashion. If you are on a budget, forget about shopping at the departmental store unless you are looking for something that is of certain brands. During the last night of our trip, my mum and I chanced upon a night market that was walking distance from Eaton Hotel while randomly walking along the streets.

In the next part, I'll be talking more about the Airlines part of the package! Stay tuned!

Hong Kong Travel package: Flight and Hotel Part I

I don't know if we were just lucky but I felt that my mum and I got a really good deal for my Hong Kong Trip. I was really impressed with the price of the package and the flight included in the package. For this trip, my mum used the website zuji.com.sg to book the package of the hotel and flight. Altogether, we only paid less than $650 per person for the 3D2N trip's hotel and the flight! Here's a picture of the booking details.

Zuji

The impressive thing is that our hotels and flights weren't just any budget hotel and airline but Eaton Hotel and United Airlines! For that amount of price, if it were up to me, I'd have only have gotten either the flight or the hotel not both! Kuduos to my mum for the awesome sourcing! In the rest of this post, I'll be reviewing my experiences for both the hotel and the airport!

Eaton Hotel
This is the first time I am visiting Eaton Hotel. A friend recommended my mum to try out this hotel because she had a good experience there when she was in HK. Eaton hotel is a four star hotel that is located along Nathan Road. If you are familiar with HK, this hotel is just next to Nathan Hotel! My mum and I travelled to the hotel via bus A21 which took around 45 mins. I talked more about the trip to the hotel in this previous post.

First impressions:
Thanks to the display on the bus and our awesome observation skills, we managed to get off at the correct stop. However, we could not find the Hotel! As you can probably see from the picture of the street view on Nathan Road, unless you know what you are looking for, you probably wouldn't know where the hotel is. The entrance to the hotel is located somewhere near the bright signboard. Perhaps it is because I am very used to having the hotels' having big names on signboards that occupies a smaller area, or perhaps it was because we were on the other side of the road where the picture was taken so we couldn't see the signboard with the hotel's name, we did not expect that the building was the hotel we were going to be staying at! I would have expected such a signboard to be an advertisement instead of the name of the hotel!

Traffic View of Eaton Hotel from Nathan Road

This is a closer view of the signboard of the hotel. If they only had a small entrance to the hotel like Park Hotel that my family stayed at during our previous trip, I would have understood the spacial constraints that they face displaying a prominent signboard, but they had the entire corner exposed to the main road!! I felt like it was really a waste of the location the hotel was in. They could have marketed the hotel in a much classier way, using the traditional letters and spotlight method, and saving electricity along the way. (By the way, you can read more about Park Hotel written by Xiaxue here since I'm not going to write much about it.)

Eaton Hotel corner view

So if you are curious about how we found our way, in the end, we ended up asking a shop attendant for the location to the hotel. But believe it or not, we actually almost walked past the hotel to another street. This picture was taken right below the signboard of Eaton Hotel. We were about to walk away from the hotel towards where the photo was taken. Luckily my mum (who saved us again) felt that crossing the road was not right so we walked back where Eaton Hotel was.

Eaton Hotel from the side

If you are going to Eaton hotel, I am hereby going to attempt to explain how to get to the place. First, If you see the scenes in the pictures above, you have walked too far. Walk back towards the direction of the bus stop where you came from. Look for the Starbucks that turns into this street in the picture below with this sign to get into the hotel! The place where the cars turn in is the carpark /concierge. Walk past that. Lastly, when you see a glass door with Eaton Hotel's logo, you have arrived at your destination! Once again, the front door hotel's could have been better marketed. What a pity!

Front door or Eaton Hotel

After we finally managed to find the reception of the hotel, we were still early for our check in. The receptionist was nice enough to hold onto our luggages while we went out to look for lunch and walk around. (When we arrived it was still in the morning!) On top of safe keeping our luggages, the receptionist also gave us a temporary WiFi password for use in the lobby which was really nice of him! The service at the reception is really awesome!

To be continued in part 2…

Hong Kong's care for the elderly and physically disadvantaged

As I have mentioned in previous posts, even though Hong Kong is such a developed and fast paced country, it still has its warm and gentle parts that make it a nice country to live in. As a society, it is quite obvious as a visitor that HK takes measures to help the elderly and the physically disadvantaged. In this post, I'll be writing about the some things I've observed in HK that are geared towards helping this group of people and drawing similarities with what we have in Singapore.

In Hong Kong there is a yellow device attached to most of the pedestrian crossing traffic lights. There are one on each side and there is this circular sign on it. I've no idea what it is but I am guessing it is a device for the physically disadvantaged to use to cross the road. I'd say that because I've seen something similar in Singapore. Some pedestrian crossing traffic lights in Singapore have these devices for the elderly to tap their concession ez-link cards with so that the green man will last longer for them to be able to cross the road in time.

Singapore's tap for longer crossing time machine (Source)

On top of the device, in HK there is also these beeping/ticking sound at these pedestrian crossing to assist the blind crossing the road. When the red man is shown, the beeping sound is not very fast, around 3 beeps every 2 seconds. When the green man is on, the beeping speed increases to around 8 beeps per second. When the green man is flashing, the beeping slows down to 4 beeps per second.

Also, if you can see in the background of the photo below, there are these orangey- yellow zebra crossing. They are slightly elevated to, I assume, help the blind feel and cross the road. These would also be useful for people who are walking sideways from veering off the pedestrian crossing while talking to their friends but I guess that is only an additional benefit to the stripes. (I don't think the government would spend so much money just for that purpose!) These stripes are almost like the speed strips that regulate motorcycle speeds on the roads in Singapore. Below is a picture of the device I talked about earlier the I saw in HK. I'm really curios about what the orange device attached to the traffic light is. If you know what this is please let me know!!

Traffic light beeper

Similar to Singapore's MRT, the seats on the MTR also have priority seats. Of course, they also work in the same way as in Singapore. While Singapore's signs are focused on being subtle and classy, Hong Kong's are very obvious and have vibrant colors. Both styles are nice in their own way, but when I was at Hong Kong, I felt that it was a refreshing change to the ones I see everyday. What I liked about Hong Kong's priority seatings is the bright colors that they used. The smiley face is also really cute!

Singapore's MRT's reserved seats (Source)

Hong Kong's priority seats on the MTR

Similar to the MTR, the buses follow similar style of priority seating as the MTR/ MRT. For Singapore's bus priority seat, the seat is also known by a small sign as seen in the first picture below. On the other hand, Hong Kong's priority seats on public buses take on a bright red color, similar to the MTR's priority seats. While Singapore's priority seat is of the same color as the other seats on the bus, HK's priority seat is the only set of seats in red so its also very obvious to visitors and people who are unfamiliar to the culture in HK that the seats are different from the usual seats. I don't have a preference between the two types of promoting consideration for those who need the seats more. Seeing the vibrant red in the MTR in HK is a refreshing change from the signs in SG but if I live in HK and visited SG, I might like the signs in SG better because of their subtlety.

Singapore's reserved seat on the bus (Source)

Hong Kong's priority seats on the bus

These are the main observations I made about the elderly and disadvantaged care in HK! Overall, i think that the bright red colors used to represent the priority seating might work very effective in guilt-tripping commuters to give up these seats to those who need it more, or even not sit on them entirely. These priority seating arrangement seemed as if it was newly enforced since the stickers in the MTR and the printing and seating on the buses look very new. Perhaps the bright red was used as an initial kickoff for this project because is is a new initiative, or maybe the previous project for priority seating did not work as well therefore this new project was launched, the important thing is that the effort pays off and the target group is able to reap the benefits from the project! So here is the end of my two cents on Hong Kong's care for the elderly or disadvantaged. Hope you have found it insightful.

Anyway if you have noticed, I've added a logo watermark at the bottom of the photos that I took with my Sony Xperia Z phone. I'm super happy with it! It was done by a graphic designer Elliot Chua. Let me know what you think of this new addition!

I'm going to Korea!!!

I am going to Korea!! For my next overseas trip, I'm going to the now very popular location of vacation! This would be my longest trip so far— 54 days! I'll be going to Korea University for a Summer Abroad Program for 6 weeks followed by another week of vacation /graduation trip. If you are an undergraduate who is interested, here's a link to their website.

As you can probably tell, I'm extremely excited about this trip and I have been preparing for it for quite some time now. I'll post more about what I have done for preparations nearer to the date. I'm really looking forward to eat all the food in Korea, and see if I can spot the eatyourkimchi crew in Hongdae or just anywhere around Korea. If you don't know them, they are YouTube celebrities who provide informational insights on living in Korea as a foreigner. You should watch their videos if you have not already. My favorite videos are the FAPFAP (Food Adventure Program For Awesome People). The latest I have watched is the Korean Grilled Meat- Camping Style. They are super entertaining and awesome at what they do!

eatyourkimchi.com

Anyway, perhaps I'm sensitized to information about Korea, I've seen so many companies advertising free trips to Korea ranging from Psy's advertisement for Bibigo advertisement recruiting Psy's one-month chef through video upload and voting, to Singtel's M Countdown KPop Celebrity Lookalike Contest. It seems that there's an increased leverage on SNS (Social Networking Sites) as a medium to promote themselves. If you are interested in winning yourself a free trip to Korea, Singtel's M Countdown Photo Contest is still open till 21 June. The more votes and the more similar you look to the idol of selection will get you a higher chance of winning a 3D2N trip to Korea inclusive of accommodations! All the best if you do /have already submit your photos for the competition!!

I'll update more about my Korea trip soon!

Hong Kong's Environmentally Friendly Culture

One thing I was really impressed by Hong Kong during my trip was their recycling culture. Placing recycling bins around may be a superficial method of portraying their commitment to saving the environment but I did not just see that in HK. What I felt was an entire culture that supported recycling and reduction of waste.

Even within the hotel, recycling was promoted by placing little recycling bins below the general waste bin! The design of the bins is so unique that I couldn't resist taking a picture of them! They have a really cute shape and even stack up so as to take up less space! You can see in the second pictures below that they are really small and only take up a tiny corner of under the sink! This incorporation of recycling bins not only showed the emphasis HK has on recycling, but also acted as a quirky decorative addition to the hotel room!

Recycling bins in my hotel room

Which is below the sink

My mum and I shopped A LOT this trip. The picture below was just our stash from the first day of the shopping spree.

Shopping bags from the first day of shopping

I was completely exhausted just after half a day of shopping. I knocked out once we returned to the hotel at around 4pm on the first day. We only alighted at around 11am! We reached the hotel around 12pm so we only shopped for 3-4 hours. I didn't know that shopping would render me this tired.

Me all tired out from the shopping

But I digress. The point is that we walked around a lot of different shops, from cheap to middle range budget shops and one thing that stuck me was most of these shops would ask if we needed a bag for our purchases. Some wouldn't even give a bag if none were requested and others would only provide a bag for a fee. This assumption that shoppers might not need a bag, or perhaps even to the extent of assuming that shoppers generally do not need a bag to carry their purchases was quite a refreshing experience. Needless to say, it also promotes recycling since majority of the shoppers would already have bags to contain their purchases!

Initially, I had wanted to show the collection of all the purchases we made throughout the trip by displaying all the plastic bags like the first picture I posted, BUT, I felt really bad for "collecting" so many plastic bags on the first day that I unpacked the loot in the evening and folded the bags so that we could reuse them the next day. The following days we spent in HK, we recycled the plastic bags we got on the first day so that we didn't need any more new ones. I think we only took one more plastic bag for all our purchases. Plus one for being a good global citizen!

I later found out that HK seldom gives out plastic bags, unless it was for clothes. Even when shopping for clothes. It was not uncommon to see shoppers pulling small to medium sized luggages to carry their purchases. It is quite a smart move to bring along luggages to shop since the en masse of all the items bought is really heavy! I experienced that feeling every single day of the trip! At the end of all the shopping, my arms would be hurting from carrying our purchases around the whole day! Perhaps the next time when I go to HK to shop, I'd bring along a smaller luggage to pull along while I shop so that I would have an easier time carrying everything.

In every building, it is not uncommon to see recycling bins sitting together beside where a general waste bin would be. It isn't just the hotels and the large shopping malls that have these bins, almost every building I went to had at least one of these recycling bins lying around. These bins have greatly increased the convenience of recycling and hence added to this culture of recycling.

Recycling bins at the airport

I was rather impressed that Hong Kong's science centre devotes an entire section of the place to conservation of the environment called the "Jockey Club Environmental Conservation Gallery". That wasn't all, different environmentally friendly tips and information were littered throughout the entire building. I felt that this was a great way to educate right at the start from when citizens are young so that they would grow up with the awareness of the importance of recycling.

If that is not enough reason to believe in HK's sincerity in committing to saving the environment, i have one last piece of evidence to prove it. When I got back to Singapore, I was looking up on information about HK when I saw something that really touched me. At the bottom of the tourism promotion website there was a small label to remind visitors to "consider the environmental before printing the page". Whats the reason why I was so impressed? Firstly, the tourism page was fully colored so in placing this label, it could potentially save the use of A LOT of ink! Secondly, I have never seen any website before this that thought of the environment impact a website could create due to its colors! Honestly, I was really impressed and touched! Do check out the website for yourselves! I've linked the caption of the screenshot to the website I got it from.

Screenshot Credit

I found out afterwards during a conversation with my mum's friend who lives in HK that the government had imposed a fee on trash bags with the rational of using that as a payment for the collection of trash. Indirectly, this has increased the incentive for recycling items at home as you now save money by not throwing away too much trash. This forced recycling has resulted in a positive impact in the conservation of resources. I guess this is probably because recycling is a habit that can be inculcated? If that's the case, it certainly is good news for countries who have only just embarked on their journey in environmental sustainability!

All pictures were taken by my Xperia Z phone.