Hong Kong Summer Spectacular with HKTB – Day 1 of 6

On my first day in Hong Kong (HK), upon arriving at the Hong Kong International Airport, we were quickly ferried to our hotel by coach.

The hotel we stayed at is called The Mira Hotel. The Mira is very centrally located in Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀), the heart of HK’s commercial, shopping, dining and entertainment district. There are railway stations and a ferry terminal, all located within walking distance from the hotel.

The contemporary hotel lounge where we waited for check-in
A service staff came and served us small cones with cream – he must be shocked by the number of camera flashes going off

If you are frequent reader of my blog, you will know that I am mostly a budget traveler in order to stretch and maximise my dollars to visiting more places, rather than spend on luxury. The Mira hotel was really a vast change for me. Newly refurbished, the rooms all come with handpicked fabrics and materials, giving a modern, fun, yet classy feel. You can read more about the hotel via Sze Ping (Chinese) and Darren (English)‘s respective blog entries.

What really impressed a super geek like me – all the hotel rooms come equipped with a 40-inch LCD TV, 500GB Sony Personal Computer/Entertainment Centre, Bose in-room soundscapes and “My Mobile” Nokia phone service (allows you to route your room phone to the mobile phone and bring it anywhere). To top it all, complimentary high-speed WiFi and wired Internet are available for all guests. Cool right?

My beautiful hotel room
The bathroom area
Press kits, brochures, maps and other useful material the HKTB folks had prepared for us in our room
Complementary fruits, macarons and other dessert items from the hotel

After marveling at the hotel room and taking a quick shower, I headed to the lobby for a light snack at the in-hotel restaurant with the bloggers, Vivien from the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), my colleagues, Siew Kian and Ming Choy.

I had the Asian fusion set. Yummy, though the food took quite a while to come. Nonetheless, we all had a great time chatting, excited about the programs ahead.

My Asian fusion noon snack

After lunch, we headed to the Hong Kong Summer Spectacular – Dragon Boat Carnival Opening ceremony. We managed to catch a parade and some concert performances. There were also booths selling food stuff and operating funfair type games.

Dragon boy
Happy “Ba Zhang” (rice dumpling) boy
A dragon boat
Marching band performance
Booths and stalls area
Lots of Korea boy band fans have already gathered at the concert area when we arrived
San Miguel beer is a main sponsor for the event
Security guards
Drumming kids
On standby
The drumming kids performing on stage
Intense expressions

Drums performance:

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Ah7sr6pSZmo?fs=1&hl=en_US”]
My colleague, Siew Kian, armed with a DSLR
Me and my other colleague, Ming Choy
The VIPs beating on the drums to announce the opening of the dragon boat carnival
Snow foams descended from the sky after the opening ceremony
Hong Kong singer, Deep Ng (吴浩康), was the first to perform on stage with a series of Cantopop numbers
View of the full stage
Close-up of Deep Ng
Next up was another Hong Kong singer, Sherman Chung Shu-man (鍾舒曼)
Close-up of Sherman

Sherman Chung Shu-man (鍾舒曼) singing:

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/v/xl321SUtxCM?fs=1&hl=en_US]
On stage together
Sherman sang another song with Deep playing the guitar
Korean TV crews were there too – one of them had a giant movable crane as above

The highlight of the event was the singing performance by a “Dream Team” group from South Korea. Let’s Go! Dream Team is a popular Korean television program and stars middle-aged comedians and boy band idols. When the latter group hit the stage one by one – the fans gathered all started screaming their lungs out. The fans must be green with envy at the bunch of us seated in the VIP area, near to the stage.

Blogger, Geck Geck, posing with the league of young female fans
The “uncles” in Dream Team came on stage first to tease the crowd
Another funny uncle-type – probaby a comedian too
The first young, handsome lad to come on stage – a rapper called “Mighty Mouse”
Hi-five!
Not sure who this guy is, but a lot of the teen girls start shrieking when he came on stage
Alexander from boy band, U-Kiss. He is more chio than handsome I would say. Nonetheless, the girls love him.
The uncle trio from Dream Team singing a Chinese song together – Wakin Chau (周华健)’s Friends (朋友)

After the carnival, it was dinner time. We promptly made our way to Busy Suzie, an upmarket Japanese robatayaki restaurant and bar. We were very privileged to have Chef Iwagami Yoshiaki serving us. He is a jovial chap who made effort to interact with us too, making our dining experience a really memorable one. For a review of the restaurant, you can read the expert food blogger in our group, Catherine’s detailed blog entry.

1881 Heritage – we had our dinner at this upmarket place
The restaurant, Busy Suzie is located inside this round building
Restaurant entrance
Our dinner menu at Busy Suzie
Inside the restaurant
I like this manga artwork in the restaurant
The friendly restaurant manager popped by to welcome us
Peter playing with the serving stick which resembles the oar for rowing dragon boats
Seated and ready for dinner
First course – a small dollup of Japanese mashed potato to whet our appetites
Hokkaido King Crab fillet salad
Chef Iwagami grilling vegetable for us
Grilled asparagus and shiitake mushroom
Grilled pumpkin and zucchini
Beef tongue or Gyu-tan, served with mustard and sea salt
Enjoying my serving of beef tongue
Grilled to perfection salmon
This was how each of our courses were served – fun right?
Grilled minced pork sausage served with a little bone tucked like a chicken drumstick
Jerome, Peter and Geck Geck enjoying their pork sticks
The chef now turns his attention to the ladies
Seafood fried rice
Grilled riceball
Grilled teriyaki chicken
Yuzu jelly dessert

Chef Iwagami’s nifty knife work on video as he cuts up two fishes:

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/v/xyzKsuNllNM?fs=1&hl=en_US”]
The two fishes put to grill
Parting shots after a wonderful dinner at Busy Suzie

BUSY SUZIE
Shop 209, 2/F, 1881 Heritage,
2A Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2369-0077
Open daily
Lunch: noon to 3pm (2.30pm last order)
Dinner: 6pm to 1am (10.30pm last order)

After dinner, we hang around the scenic 1881 Heritage building area where Busy Suzie was located to take a few more shots.

Me acting cool at the stairway
Ming Choy with the same pose
The tree embedded inside the round building is really quite unique
1881 Heritage area
A tigher shot whereby you can see the “1881”
Full moon night
We passed by H&M on our way back to the hotel – I vowed to be back again with Rachel
We also passed by these luxury brand stores – I won’t be back, they are out of my price range

I then headed back to my hotel to wait for Rachel’s arrival. She flew by Tiger Airways and her flight was delayed by over an hour. By the time we met, it was almost midnight. I joined her for a quick supper at a Cha Chaan Teng (茶餐厅) near The Mira.

Rachel, fresh from Singapore
My supper
Rachel’s supper/dinner
Rachel was really hungry and gobbled up her food quickly
The restaurant was closing when we left. We were probably the last customers.

That ended my first day. Stay tuned for my next post. If you cannot get enough of Hong Kong, you can visit this joint blog by Camemberu, Aussie Pete, Lawrence Huang, Sze Ping, Ang Geck Geck, Elaine Chua, Shinnpark, Darren Ng, Jerome Limand Violet Lim to read more first. 🙂

Read my previous Hong Kong trip blog entries:

Hong Kong Summer Spectacular with HKTB – A Prelude

Flying Off to Hong Kong in a Few Hours

Technorati Tags: Camemberu, Aussie Pete, Lawrence Huang, Sze Ping, Ang Geck Geck, Elaine Chua, Shinnpark, Darren Ng, Jerome Lim, violet lim, catherine ling, huang kee hong, low sze ping, write on white, gin oh, the long and winding road, hktb, hong kong tourism board, singapore blog awards 2010, hong kong travel, hong kong travel blog, hong kong blog, hong kong itinerary, hong kong tourism, hong kong summer spectacular, hong kong international airport, the mira hotel, 尖沙咀, tsim sha tsui, the mira, mira hotel, dragon boat carnival opening ceremony, hong kong dragon boat carnvial 2010, hong kong dragon boat carnvial 2010 opening ceremony, korea dream team, let’s go! dream team, u-kiss, alexander, u-kiss alexander, 2pm korea, 2am korea, dream team south korean, dream team in hong kong, korea dream team in hong kong, 吴浩康, deep ng, deep ng singing, 鍾舒曼, sherman chung, sherman chung shu-man, mighty mouse, korea mighty mouse, Chef Iwagami Yoshiaki, busy suzie, japanese robatayaki restaurant, busy suzie robatayaki restaurant, 1881 heritage, 1881 heritage hong kong, gyu-tan, beef tongue, grilled salmon, grilled rice, yuzu jelly, hong kong busy suzie, hong kong shopping

alvinology

Alvin is a marketer by day and blogger by night. He is a 100% geek who spends too much time surfing the web.

View Comments

  • Wow what a long post! :D Nice to relive the memories...and see what I missed out too!
    And hey, your room layout is quite different from mine!

  • Wow, incredible blog layout! How lengthy have you been blogging for? you make running a blog look easy. The full look of your web site is great, as neatly as the content!

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