Hong Kong Sight: Ngong Ping (Day 5)

Hong Kong Day 5

As usual: Bad resolution photos are mine. Good and lomo photos are from my talented friend, Roger Yeo. Check out his Facebook for more photos, he does photo shoots. Some other  photos are from Shu En’s Olympus Pen. If you’re interested to know whose who’s, drop a comment.

Then we headed off to Ngong Ping which was an island away by a 25-minute cable car ride from Tung Chung MTR. Initially, our plan was to head to Ngong Ping before going to Citygate outlet for shopping. Being the lucky people we are, that was the day of the typhoon alert no. 8 hence, the cable car was not operating. We pushed our plans later to day 5. Do plan your Ngong Ping and Citygate outlet shopping day together to save time.

Also, do check out Ngong Ping’s website before heading down as they do close for maintenance.

This is the beginning of our harrowing experience. Read on…

Citygate outlets and Ngong Ping are both at Tung Chung station
Go up this long escalator
Be prepared to queue for a while.

We took the “crystal cabin” which was the cable car with a glass flooring which in my honest opinion, is not very worth it because most of the time you’re looking out of the windows instead of the floor.

Jeremy Scott by Adidas
This is what you see out of the windows as compared to the floor…
Doesn’t it make more sense now?

However, the queue for the crystal cabin is also way shorter than the normal cabin.

The requisite tourist photo
There are some food outlets there but this is was the only thing we could afford
They had some cows wandering around and they weren’t scared of humans. But I was pretty scared and I ran away quick

There are a couple of shows, museums and temples to see there. But our mantra (what a pun) for that day was to be tourists and take pretty pictures.

What a nice path
Another tourist picture
Running Man came to film at this location and Shu En insisted we had to come here.
They sold ginger tau huay which was disgusting
This picture marks the start of our harrowing experience

So after all the picture taking and leisure strolling, we headed to the cable car station to catch the cable car ride. From Tung Chung we had to take the MTR to Tsing Yi to catch the Airport Express to the airport. Shu En’s flight was at 7.55pm.

So it looked like this: Cable car ride – Tung Chung – MTR to Tsing Yi – Change to Airport Express train – customs – plane

We started queueing at 6pm. The scary part was after queuing for about 25 minutes at Ngong Ping outside the cable car station, we realised that HOLEY SCHMOLEY there are winding queues inside the cable car station and WE ARE GOING TO MISS OUR FLIGHTS. We started to panic and went like “Oh shit, this is not happening”. We were all panicky and we are poor graduates/students with no money to buy extra plane tickets!!

The courageous me went to the counter and told the customer service person that we are going to miss our flights, they asked to see our boarding pass and we were allowed to jump to the top of the queue. We got on the cable car at 6.30pm. It doesn’t help that we were in the same cable car back as this bunch of Ngong Ping employees and they were sniggering at what lousy tourists we are.

It was a tense wait in the cable car. Everything has a silver lining right? We caught the sun set on the cable car ride back.

The sun set along the way
It eased our anxiety a little
The sight was really pretty

We reached Tung Chung at 7pm, ran for our lives, took the trains and made the changes and reached the airport at 7.30pm. Shu En ran for the customs as her gate opened at 7.30pm.

Thankfully, we all caught our flights back! Shu En boarded the plane with 10 minutes to spare. This concluded our Hong Kong journey on a good note!

It was really a fun trip with people I never expected to go with. Initially, I was rather apprehensive but it turned out all good and I renewed friendships that were stale for a while. You know how some travelling really sucks the fun out of it when people have disagreements. I’m really glad that everyone was easy-going enough and it was a happy trip. And I’m excited for our (if any) upcoming adventures together.

3. Ngong Ping 360

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