HONG KONG: Harbour Cruise Bauhinia and Open-Top Bus Ride

When we were in Hong Kong, we stayed in City Garden Hotel. They are a bit pricey especially if you don't book in advance. The hotel however is okay for the price since it is only a bus ride from the airport(although about an hour of travel or more if there's traffic which is kinda often in Hong Kong), there are a number of restaurants nearby, and they have a Gray Line tour desk which offers the same travel tours to other higher-end hotels.

When we were making our itinerary for this Hong Kong vacation, a few goals we wanted to accomplish in one night is to be able to watch the light show called Symphony of Lights(free light show that happens every night), see the bright neon lights of Hong Kong, and eat at a dinner cruise while staring at the pretty Hong Kong skyline. We browsed thru the Gray Line brochure and found a tour that will let us do all of those mentioned above in one night. They call it the Highlight of the Night package.

After being picked up from the hotel, they brought us near Temple Street where we then transferred to an open-top bus. It was raining then so they provided us rain coats free of charge. The tour passes thru a number of government buildings that's not that really interesting. Only two things stood out while we were riding this open-top bus. One is when it drives thru a street called the Golden Mile which is a street full of neon lights that it looked like daylight because of the brightness and the amount of neon lights on each buildings we passed by. The other highlight is when the bus stopped at a point where you can see the pretty Hong Kong skyline. Picture of this is below:

After the bus ride, they brought us back to Temple Street and gave us about half an hour to shop. This is basically side-walk vendor shopping kinda like shopping in NY China Town so haggling is almost a must. They do sell a number of interesting stuff like really cheap open-line cellphones and replicas of brand-name bags. But we were only interested in buying souvenirs. We saw a vendor selling key chains which we liked and we were able to haggle him into selling us 12 key chains for the price of 10.

From Temple Street, the tour bus then brings you to the pier where you board the ship for the dinner cruise. While we were on our way to the pier, we were really saddened by the bad news that due to bad weather, the Symphony of Lights was canceled. It's a situation that was out of our control so we just calmed ourselves and did not let it ruin our night.

The first thing we noticed upon boarding the ship is that it looked crowded. They probably should take about quarter of the tables and chairs that was setup to make it a more spacious and relaxing cruise. There are no special tables so you have to sit on a table with 8 other guests, sucks for a couple like us. The food was not that great other than probably the cow's tongue entree and their selection of desserts. A live band performs and encourages the guests to dance to their music after most of the guest were done eating. Most people though opted to go to the viewing deck to enjoy the view. Because of the weather, not many people stayed in the view for long since it was really windy and chilly. Because of the said weather condition, we were unable to take a decent photo while we were in the viewing deck so pardon the looks of the picture.