HKTrip13 - Harbour Grand Kowloon

This time, we stayed at the Harbour Grand Kowloon hotel in Hung Hom. Having made a short trip there last year to visit a friend who was staying there for a few days, I decided that it this the next time I visited Hong Kong I was going to stay there, and finally experience living in a "real" hotel (i.e. one that looks and feels like one, complete with whatever other services/utilities). It was more than worth it :)

Lobby
The lobby is always a busy, bustling place, with heaps of stuff going on. Whether it be people coming to dine at one of the three restaurants in the hotel, checking in/out their rooms, or holding a wedding reception (there were 2 of these held that weekend, one on each day; it was quite interesting watching them and their 4-5 photographers + equipment going through various setups on the grand staircase, including multiple changes of clothes within the space of an hour), there's always stuff going on.

Grand staircase where many wedding receptions would spend their afternoons taking group photos

Harbour views as seen from out of the lobby. It's quite stunning and relaxing to spend time just sitting here...

Fountain in the lobby...

View of the buffet restaurant on the ground floor...

Forecourt
In front of the hotel, there's a small roundabout + water fountain that all incoming traffic flows past. When getting off from a taxi, you're also greeted by the doormen. During the weekends when there are wedding receptions though, things get a bit busy here...

External Views - By Day
During this trip, I've finally started to understand that it's often more important for architecture to create interesting spaces + comfortable environments for its occupants than it is for the external forms of the building to look interesting (thus forcing the internals into some weird/awkward shapes). The Harbour Grand Kowloon buildings are examples of this - they look spectacular internally, but externally, may at times appear slightly awkward. Nevertheless, this is done for good reasons (see later).

The Promenade outside the hotel was quite popular with people out for a stroll, and also some recreational fishermen

External Views - Night Time
Things look even better at night!

Street view...

Around the forecourt...

I love the ceiling and staircase details on the buildings on the wings

On our last full day at the hotel, they started putting up their Christmas decorations in the morning as we headed out. By the time that we returned that night, they'd put out the following Christmas trees (previously seen just tightly bound and bagged in the unloading area).


Outside looking in...

The views on show across the harbour...

Rooms
They offer several different types of rooms, ranging from suites (containing a large 2-storey meeting/lounge area, large bathroom, and separate bedroom - I know, since I spent an afternoon in one of these), to smaller/more standard rooms. However, perhaps the most notable feature would still have to be the stunning sea/harbour views you get. If nothing else, this alone is worth staying there...

All corridors in this hotel look something like this...

For accessing your room, every "guest" staying in a room is given their own swipe card. Apart from opening the door, this is also used to enable the power supply when you're in the room (on the Saturday night, we found that the cleaners had been in to fix the minibar light and had left their card in the holder ;) These are presented in a little card holder pouch along with a card with instructions for taxi drivers on how to get lost tourists home again (which could come in handy if, in a pinch you end up stuck on some cross-harbour bus, get lost/confused, and end up missing your stop and stuck in the middle of nowhere in some of the rougher parts of town).

Upon arrival in your room, you are greeted with a personalised welcome message on the TV :)

In general, the standard rooms can be best described as relatively standard hotel rooms + "a house of mirrors"...

On our last night, there were even a few extra touches, such as extra towels beside the beds and orchids on the beds...

But perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about my stay was...

Stunning Sea Views
One of the things I enjoyed the most during my stay at the Harbour Grand Kowloon was sitting in front of the large window and looking out across Victoria Harbour (and out towards the eastern mouth of the harbour). The photos I've got here don't quite do it justice, especially since compared to some of the other shots I've included here, they'll look rather dull and staid. But when you're sitting there staring out the window, it's simply quite mesmerising to just spend ages gazing idly at the view.

A glimpse of the views out the window. In this shot (taken perhaps mid morning), a junk/sampan floats by (it only appeared once while we were there). In the distance, there's one of the floating platforms that transports cargo containers around (these come complete with their own crane, but need to be towed by a tug). To the left, the tip of the Kai Tak cruise ship terminal (built on the old airport's runway) can be seen...

A large cruise ship slowly chugging into the harbour. Everywhere else, there are heaps of little boats chugging too and fro!

Early morning view from the first morning (before sunrise). The harbour was already very active by that stage... Unlike the other mornings, it was overcast (and slightly misty) that morning.

It doesn't matter what time of the day it is either - there's always something new and interesting to look at, even in the middle of the night.  For example, one night, there was some kind of police chase along the motorway that runs along the coastline past North Point on the opposite side of the harbour, so there was this flashing blue light that just zipped from one end to the other and then back again a few moments later joined by another pair of lights! Judging by the distance that the lights travelled, they probably would've been doing close to if not over 200kmh - which is quite a feat, considering how fast the traffic in general goes on the motorways!

An example of the views across the harbour at night... Even in the middle of the night, you can often still make out the buildings on the opposite side, as well as watching the traffic quickly stream along the motorway.

One of the most interesting parts of watching the sea was just observing how different it can look at different times. For example, on just the first morning alone, I observed how it would often alternate between being perfectly still, to developing these broad sweeping bands/lumps that would either move towards the shoreline (or do so at an angle). From time to time, there would also be some patches where the surface would shimmer with a different pattern to the rest (I'm guessing that those patches were the result of fresh and salt water meeting).

 Relatively plain and tranquil...

 Bands of larger/slower moving waves moving towards the shoreline...

Cross motions - some small waves overlaid over some larger bands coming in at an angle...

Small waves (illuminated by the sunrise)

Some larger waves...

And that's not mentioning what happens when the sun starts getting involved...

The sun starting to peek through the clouds (day 1).

Another view of the sun peaking through the clouds on the first morning. Note how the waves are moving in different directions, and that some patches of water seem a bit darker/greyer than the rest.

 At this point (day 1), the whole surface was glassed over by the sun peeking through...

God Rays! Wow... this was really quite spectacular to witness...

It's also a different matter once the sun has fully risen. Then, the sea really starts looking really magical (instead of just merely moody or with playing different characters). For example, one of my favourite "effects" is how the reflections seem to randomly sparkle across the surface of the water - the spec-highlights just randomly/spastically appear at a point, then abruptly disappears and reappears elsewhere. It's like someone is running a special particle generator specifically for spec highlights! Another of my favourite effects is how patches of water in the distance can "shimmer" - it's more like horizontal folds of a cloth just vibrating away!

We also managed to catch a few sunrises from our room. Never before have I actually witnessed an actual sunrise before, from start to completion. Here's just a quick taste of the beautiful sights...

The sun just starting to poke out over the horizon...

 Rising up...

Rising up even more. (Note: the sun here was actually completely red, though it doesn't look like that here. Check some of the shots I took on the Airport Express while approaching the airport for examples of what this looked like at the time in reality).

And last but not least, the ships busily moving around across the harbour. Even in the middle of the night, there was shipping activity, though it does noticeably pick up shortly after sunrise, when the cross-harbour and party-boat ferries start up, the large cruise liners start steaming in, the fishing boats head out, and more...

One of the cruise ships which regularly passes by (as seen on the first day). This one usually parks out beside the Harbour City mall and the various hotels that are situated out that way.

This yellow ship is also another frequent visitor, though it only seems to come once every 2 days. It usually spends its time in the harbour being tugged to and fro, with many small boats (e.g. like the tug pictured near it here) fussing around it. In the background is the newly opened Kai Tak cruise liner terminal.

This large beauty, the Star Cruises "Pisces" vessel is usually parked right outside Harbour City.

A closeup of Pisces - Featuring a pair of lively goldfish nonetheless!

The Kai Tak Cruise Liner terminal - note how shiny it is, and how it seems to have been designed to look a bit like a dragon boat (or a canoe/waka).

This weird ship seems to be one which is used to ferry large amounts of soil/sediment around the place. Most likely, it is used for "land reclamation" (i.e. the process of dumping huge amounts of soil and sediment into the sea to create more land), a process upon which many parts of modern Hong Kong is built!

These interesting looking structures are in fact floating platforms which are used to transport containers around from one port to another. Although they come with their own cranes, they have no power of their own, so need to be pulled around by tugs (i.e. the small yellow boats in front of each).

 A "party boat" and one of these floating platforms...

All together at once!

But that's not all. There were lots of other different craft out there...

 A small fishing boat...

Another small fishing boat - I watched as some of the fishermen manning this boat stood at the stern one morning and proceeded to yank 2 or more fish out of the water, right in front of my eyes, just meters away from the shoreline in front of our hotel. It's amazing that even in such a busy harbour, there are fish that are just waiting to be caught!

A closeup of the sampan that passed by one morning. From the looks of things, it is probably used to ferry tourists about on cruises around the harbour.

One of the cross-harbour ferries. Note how the powerful motors out the back leave quite a disturbed/turbulent wake behind. It's also quite interesting to see how the disturbance caused by these motors propagates out across the sea, and to see how the waves generated by this actually take quite a while to die out. In the meantime though, some of these large bands of waves are actually quite rough. No wonder conservationists always argue in favour of having reduced speed limits in ecologically sensitive areas!

Looking downwards towards the promenade - It all looks kindof fake in a way and/or different from when you see it at ground level. Nevertheless, there are always many people walking around here. 
 

The view from the desk facing the window. Beside the desk was a comfy sofa/chair which was great for lazing about (especially when the sun came up, or after a long day of walking) and looking out the window. The window ledge too is not bad for sitting and peering out (if you can fit on it)!

At night and in the early morning (as seen here), you can actually see a few standing lights turned on in some of the rooms (likely to be suites) in the tower on the left. It's actually quite interesting/eerie seeing them...




Transportation
While there are no MTR stations nearby (yet), there are numerous other transport options for getting around.

Some of the transport options for getting in/out from the hotel, including the ubiquitous taxis (red Toyotas. You can get from practically anywhere to anywhere else on these, as long as you're willing to pay up and/or the driver isn't in a foul mood - which is a bit hit and miss at times, especially around rush hour when they're often at the ends of their shifts). Also featured is one of the free minibus services...

For getting around, one of the most convenient options is to take the free shuttle offered by the hotel. This operates every half an hour, and loops between the hotel, East Tsim Sha Tsui centre (near the Science and History museums), and Hankow Road (beside the Peninsula Hotel). It is a really nice service, where you can sometimes get some interesting conversations with fellow guests (e.g. on one journey, there was a pair of bubbly uni graduates from the UK who were spending a year teaching in China and were popping down for a weekend with their aunt so wanted to head off to buy some jackets before heading back up to China that evening, as well as an older couple from Australia - Perth IIRC). Another nice point about this service is that it is a much smoother ride than you'll get on any other form of 4-wheeled transport in Hong Kong. I'm not sure whether it's just that the minibus is better maintained/built than the ones used by the general public, or whether the drivers of this shuttle are actually more skillful AND mindful of passenger comfort (something that can't be said of the taxi drivers, and definitely not for the regular minibus drivers - heck, my uncle got a nasty bruise on his forehead from one of the days we were in town when the minibus he was in crashed into a taxi that just randomly pulled out). Perhaps one possible downside is the scheduling (only once every half hour) and the fact that since Hankow Road is quite crowded with shuttles for other hotels in this chain/group (e.g. Harbourfront Horizon), you'll often be left to disembark in the middle of the road.

If you're in more of a rush, the taxis are a good way to get out to TST, where you can practically go anywhere you like once you find a MTR station. However, the ride is often much rougher, with the driver likely to start zooming off at crazy speeds and darting around at times.

Perhaps even crazier are the minibuses (literally, "little bus"). These are yellow and green Toyotas. Payment is via Octopus (though you can pay by cash if you really wish, it's really tricky/confusing and fiddly to do this, especially considering how you get tossed up quite a bit in there). Even though they're technically limited to 80kmh (there's a large speed gauge visible to all passengers showing the current speed, with a big red light and loud screech everytime the driver exceeds this speed), some drivers still flout the law. For example, one night, we had a driver who exceeded the limit some 5 times within a minute, travelling between 83 and 85 kmh which talking/fiddling/texting on his phone in one hand, flying around bends + dodging traffic, and not wearing a seat belt. Compounding matters is the fact that these don't really have seat belts, so you're really forced to hang on to the handbars on the chairs or else face flying out of your seat whenever the bus turns. Also, they're really really noisy to travel on, since everything rattles and shudders, especially when on the countless dips and lumps on the road surface.

If you really want/need/end up travelling on these, bus number 6 is usually the one you want. Catch it from Hankow Road (down a block from where the hotel's minibus is), and get off at the bus station/exchange place in the Whampoa Gardens area. From there, head back down to the start of the street, turn left, and walk until you get to the end of that main street. Then turn right and walk towards the sea until you see the hotel.

Surrounding Areas
The Harbour Grand Kowloon is located in the "Whampoa Gardens" area in Hung Hom. This is quite a nice residential area, with quite a relaxed "homely" feel compared to the more frentic Tsim Sha Tsui.

Notable features here include the fact that all the apartment blocks around here have a similar design scheme, featuring green + white towers around a central park area within each cluster. There's also a shopping center, with the most notable feature being a mall shaped like a yacht.

The yacht-shaped Whampoa Gardens mall...

The distinctive green and white apartment towers for this area

Scaffolding on the side of an apartment block

A small park-like area in the middle of a block of units. In the bottom left corner, there's a "private schoolbus" - a yellow bus that's owned by a particular school (there's one just down the road from the hotel) for transporting its students around.

 A busy motorway divides one half of Hung Hom from the other...

Some of the older apartment blocks out past the boundary of the Whampoa Gardens development.