Exploring Hong Kong: Asia's World City (Day 1)

We headed to the airport at around 3 in the morning and since I was coming off a tiring, long shift from work, we looked for a comfortable place to rest at the airport while waiting for our flight.  It's not impossible to find a perfect spot with Changi's impressive facilities.

We were greeted by this huge plane as we were disembarking in Hong Kong.

The airport is huge but it's easy to find one's way.  To get to the city, there is an Airport Express train that we considered taking; the fare is about 100 HKD (16 SGD, 520 PHP) per person.  We opted to take a cab when we found out that it would approximately cost us 300 HKD which is roughly the same amount as that of our train ride since there three of us. 

We stayed at Holiday Inn Express in Causeway Bay and the location is perfect as it is right across Times Square.  Since it was still early to check in, we left our bags there and explored the area before settling to have lunch at Cafe de Coral. 

Cafe de Coral is a pretty popular Chinese fast food place and while it is so, they gave some thought to their interiors so the place looked cool.  There was a long queue when we got there but they were pretty efficient as we didn't have to wait long.

       

We then took a much needed quick nap after checking in before heading out to Victoria Peak at Central station. 

We were greeted by a throng of people waiting to go up at 5 in the afternoon.  We nearly backed out when we saw the crowd but since we didn't have any place to go, we decided to wait it out.  It actually didn't take long as the line moved pretty fast.  (Tip: Book your tickets online)

After exploring the Peak, we decided to take a bus ride down instead of the tram as the queue is crazy long and we couldn't bear the cold weather.  We got off at Pacific Place where I saw a really cool restroom. 

Before calling it a night, we made a quick stop at the night market over at Temple Street. 

Window on the Park

Window on the Park gave me images of something extravagant, marble floors, floor to ceiling windows and perhaps a grand piano on the side so I was a bit surprised when I saw the restaurant. Instead of extravagant, it has a homey, rustic feel. It feels as if I'm in a Microtel in Baguio. 

Initially, their service left a bad taste, for a group of 8, we were given two small square tables. When we informed them that we are a big group, the waiter counted the number of plates on the table to be 8. He counted it loudly twice signaling that we should just shut up as there are 8 plates already and if 8 small plates can fit then surely we all can. We decided to let it pass and we proceeded to survey the buffet spread.

The spread itself was a bit lacking and to quote my friend, the selections were also haphazard. There's a little of local fare, a little Japanese, a little Chinese, sure this is an international buffet but they way they were laid out felt as if no care or thought was placed into it.

There's a salad station,


and right across the salads are the Japanese selections with a tray of assorted sushi (3 assortments) and just one more plate of salmon sashimi.


There's also an assortment of dimsum right beside the mains. If you are a rice eater, you only have chicken, roasted chicken and curry to choose from as your main dishes but they do have a prata station, a chicken shawarma station and a laksa station complete with instructions to make up for it.

There's no seafood station unless you consider the mantou and chili crab sauce (just sauce, no crabs) seafood.


A Yu Sheng station has also been set up.


Before moving on to desserts, not pictured are the fish porridge, some rolls and...I think that's it.

The dessert station had an assortment of kueh, a durian pengat, some tarts from the CNY celebration, a pudding and a couple of pastries.


Next to it is a chocolate fondue, a waffle station and an ice cream station.



Worth mentioning also is that unlike most hotel buffets, they provide free drinks (orange juice, bandung and pineapple juice).


With that said, what they lack for quantity, they make up for quality. It certainly won't be considered one of Singapore's top restaurants for nothing.


I enjoyed almost everything that I've tried and the waffles, though already a bit tough, were still good. My favorites would have to be the roasted chicken, fish porridge, goreng pisang (only because it's the first time I've tried it) and the chocolate hazelnut cake.



Overall, I think for the price that we paid for it was worth it. Do note that we got it at half the price because of a deal that we got from BigDeal, the lunch buffet cost us 29SGD (950PHP) each, but I won't be willing to pay anything more than that.

Service also turned out to be quite okay because we were assigned a new wait staff who was very friendly and efficient.