A Google Group for this blog!

Let's take the most fascinating adventures in Hong Kong! We are Hong Kong guys. We want to promote Hong Kong tourism and provide you the most valuable information about our culture, foods, places and many more. Enjoy it!

The Google Group for this blog is located at:
http://groups.google.com/group/hktour/topics

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Fare System Merge - MTR System

The fare system of MTR was finally merge on 28th September, 2008. People using "Single Journey Ticket" are not necessary to purchase another ticket when they travel between original MTR lines and ex-KCR lines.

Three "Interchange" station were merge and people are not necessary to pass through the "Gates" for "interchange" between two networks.

Tourists, normally use Single Journey Ticket or Tourist Day Pass are mostly benefit from this policy. You can directly choose the destination from the ticket vender machine, even you want to travel from MTR to ex-KCR.

Moreover, Tourist can purchase "Tourist Day Pass" at HK$55 for unlimited travel within most of the new MTR network for 24 consecutive hours. Moreover, an tourist version Octopus is also available for tourist, which contains 1 or 2 journey of Airport Express and a 3 consecutive days day pass for MTR network.

More information can be found at the official web site: http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/train/products_index.html

Picture: MTR Tourist Day Pass (original from MTR Web site http://www.mtr.com.hk)

20,000th Hits Celebrate

The hit rate of this blog reach 20,000 today.

Hope you will enjoy visiting Hong Kong, we'll try our best to bring your more about the city, please communicate with us via the Cbox. As a group of people growing up in this city, we'll try our best to answer your question about visting Hong Kong. Thank you all of your support.

Learn Chinese at MIT Open Courseware.

Have you ever think what is the most popular spoken language in the world?

According to the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) the top spoken language by population is Chinese (Mandarin).

In Hong Kong, you may hear that (if you know Mandarin) there are a lot of people talking in Mandarin on the streets, restaurants and shopping malls. The reason is that there are a lot of tourists coming from China. The Chinese tourists talk in their native language, Mandarin.

So, it is beneficial to you if you can speak a little bit of Mandarin or at least understand what they say.

I found a website from MIT providing free online Chinese learning course at
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Foreign-Languages-and-Literatures/21F-101Spring-2006/CourseHome/index.htm


Enjoy it.

10,000th Hits Celebrate

The hit rate of this blog reach 10,000 today. Thank you all of your support.

We'll keep on posting new articles about Hong Kong. Hope you will enjoy visiting Hong Kong.

Cable Car [Latest news]

It was reported via media recently, the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car is supposed to have trial run during these couple of weeks. If the trial run is smooth, the cable car will reopen at 31st December. Stay tuned.



Updated: In this afternoon (18th December). MTR announced that Ngong Ping 360 will be start to operate at 10am, 31st December, 2007.

Bird's Nest / Dried Seafood

Famous dried seafood and bird's nest can be found in Hong Kong.

Dried abalone 鮑片
Dried mushroom 冬菇
Dried scallop 元貝
Dried whelk 螺片
Fish maws 花膠
Nostoc 髮菜
Sea cucumber 海參

The above are famous Dried Seafood can be purchased in Hong Kong. Together with Bird's Nest.
The following link introduce some basic knowledge of Chinese Dried Seafood.

http://www.consumer.org.hk/website/ws_en/news/press_releases/p33902.txt

You can find some of the shops selling such products at Wing Lok Street, near Western Market. More of the shops can be found further at Des Voeus Road West, west to Wing Lok Steet. You can find road sign at Western Market.

Recycle Right

Hong Kong is running a recycling system in order to classify three major types of wastage. The government is educating people to throw those materials into the boxes with different colors.

- Blue for Paper

- Yellow for Aluminium Cans

- Brown for Plastic Bottles

It encourages people to classfiy the wastage to boxes of different color. This "three-color" boxes are located in various locations in the city. Besides the litter box, please try your best to classiffy those materials for recycling. Thanks very much.

This is a promotion video abut Recycling produced by The government.
URL - http://www.info.gov.hk/isd/tvapi/recycle/english/high_eng.htm

Online Survey

ONLINE SURVEY

Dear friends,

We would like to invite you to join a survey about this blog, appreciate if you can share us your view to our work.

http://www.my3q.com/home2/189/hktour/survey.phtml

Thanks you very much :)

Best Regards,

Edmond, George, Onon, Richard

MTR New Fare System

MTR and KCR is merging on 2nd December 2007, MTR announced the new fare table on 22nd Nov. You can have a look on the new fare table. However, the details of the tourist day pass were not yet release.

The fare Table of MTR


Enquiry: 28818888

(The System Map is captured from MTR website (http://www.mtr.com.hk)

No Plastic Bag

Park'n Shop, one of the chain supermarkets in Hong Kong, announced not to provide plastic bag to customer. It is aimed to encourage customer not to use too much plastic bags. To save more resource of the earth, people are being educated not to waste too much, as well as those stuff that are not bio-degradable. Customers are encourage to donate $0.2 for each plastic bag, if necessary.

Besides Park'n Shop, most of the major chain store are joining a campaign called "No Plastic Day" on every Monday. Moreover, McDonalds having "No Straw Day" twice a month.

So, be reminded, bring your own bag when shopping at supermarket. To save our earth, everyone need to take part. :)

Flight Status

You may care about your family members who are traveling. You can check the flight status from the website of Hong Kong International Airport.

http://www.hongkongairport.com/eng/index.html

The information about the fligh is provided, such as flight number, airlines, destination or origin, estimated time of arrival or departure, actual time of arrive or departure. It is nice, I always use this service, when my friend is backing to Hong Kong, I'll give a ring to my friend by checking the status of the flight. Once the flight is landed, my friend will receive my call, haha. :)

Smoke-free Hong Kong

Effective since 1 January 2007, smoking is prohibited in most indoor areas especially restaurants, karaoke, cinemas and shopping centres. The maximum penalty HK$5,000! For your family and health, please join us to keep Hong Kong clean and smoke-free. Thank you :)

http://www.smokefree.hk/

Money Exchange

Need some cash exchange services? Go for the licensed banks or money exchange shops. You can check the reference exchange rate first, and a handling fee may be charged.

http://hk.dbs.com/index_GetExchangeRate.htm

http://berlincompanyexchangelimited.blogspot.com/

Foot Reflexology (Foot Massage)

Hong Kong is a shopping paradise! After a day's shopping may cause sore feet. There are now many body and foot care centres around shopping areas like Causeway Bay, Wan Chai, Central, Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok. Some of them open 24 hours! You can choose from Accupoint Massage, Aroma Massage, Foot Massage, and/or Shanghai Trim Style Pedicure from HK$88 up. The next day you can shop freely again without pain.

One City, One Rail System (MTR)

If you are planning to visit Hong Kong, you may beware that there are two mass rail system in Hong Kong: MTR and KCR. The two systems are running independently, and it is almost no overlap in service area, but with some interchange stations.

KCR mainly cover the West and East of the New Territories, and provide two ways to connected to Shenzhen, mainland China. MTR is mostly underground and running in the urban area of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and also provide the Airport Express.

However, the government decided to merge two system, in order to provide one mass rail system in Hong Kong. If a journey need to cover both KCR and MTR, you should paid fare to both system. However, after 2nd December, 2007, the two systems are merged together, you can use one fare to travel a trip all between any lines of the rail network.

The new company will called MTR, however, in Chinese Name, the meaning will be "Hong Kong Railway", all the KCR station will be renamed to MTR station.

So if you are planning to visiting after December, please beware of this change. :)

MTR (left logo), and KCR (right logo) will be merge to MTR in 2nd December, 2007. The new company logo will be the same as current MTR, and the name will be MTR. The picture is Nam Cheong Station, a station that current as a interchange station of both network, after merging, the role will change to "line interchange station".

Evening Out-patient Service

It seems very trouble if you feel sick on trip, however, you may need a doctor if you really not feeling well, especially for children. Your hotel may provide medical service, but, it may be expensive, and the service may be not available in evening or midnight.

I’d like to show you some information of evening out-patient (outpatient) service. If you are not Hong Kong resident, you need to make full payment at emergency room of public hospital. However there is no special queue for tourist, so you may sometimes take several hours to wait at emergency room, if your case is regarded as “not critical”. Therefore, it is suggested you go to the private clinic and hospital.

There are several private hospitals and clinics providing 24 hours or evening out patient service. Here is a list of those services located in urban area of Hong Kong.


Clinics:
T Y Healthcare (Evening out-patient service till 2am)
Address: B/F 473 Hennessy Road Hong Kong (Exit B, Causeway Bay MTR, Station)
Contact Number: 2836 6288

T Y Healthcare (24 hours out-patient service)
Address: G/F 483 Nathan Road Kowloon (Exit C, Yau Ma Tei MTR Station)
Contact Number: 23850105

T Y Healthcare (Evening out-patient service till 2am)
Address: G/F 748 Nathan Road Kowloon (Exit B2, Prince Edward MTR Station)
Contact Number: 31025678

Health is essential to our life, no matter who are you.

The healthcare system is quite good in Hong Kong. The system take cares to local and foreign people, so it is not a problem to access medical service in Hong Kong.

This is one of the major public hospital in Hong Kong.

Visitor Information Services

You may wonder if you can get a Hong Kong map for tourist or having information of tourist route in Hong Kong. Although you can go online to check the most update information (for example, visiting our blog), but maybe you are not bring your notebook computer with you, or you didn't find an Internet Cafe. Then you can go to the Visitor Information Services Centre operated by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

You can find a series of leaflet about Hong Kong, maps for shopping, hiking and traveling around, information about racecourse, theme parks etc. Moreover, you can get a visitor's kit for you to design you own travel route.

The locations of the service centres are:

Hong Kong International Airport 1
Transfer Area E2 (7am - 11pm daily)
Web kiosk for tourist information available 24 hours

Hong Kong International Airport 2
Buffer Halls A and B, Arrivals Level, Terminal 1 (7am - 11pm daily)
Web kiosk for tourist information available 24 hours

Hong Kong Island
Near Exit F, Causeway bay MTR Station (8am - 8pm daily)

Kowloon
Star Ferry Concourse, Tsim Sha Tsui (8am - 8pm daily)

Lo Wu
Arrival Hall, 2/F, Lo Wu Terminal Building (8am-6pm daily)

Visitor Hotline (multilingual)
+852 25081234