My travels in Hong Kong

Okay, so as promised, I am going to go way back to some of my first content creation trips as there are plenty of great stories from each one which I think may make an interesting read. I mean, who knows, I could literally be typing into the abyss of the World Wide Web but even if no one reads this, I enjoy trying to remember all the fun ventures that happened on my travels.

For anyone that has followed my Rosie B Wild adventures, I am sure you maybe aware of my work collaborations with Fred Olsen Cruise Lines and will have seen I have been lucky to get to some real far flung places. This firstly started with a trip to Iceland in 2022 which was a fabulous experience but I have a different Iceland blog planned in the future so I will start with my second ever trip with Fred Olsen.

This trip happened in March 2023, and I was very grateful to be offered the chance to join a section of one of their World Voyages for 3 weeks. The locations I would be heading to were Hong Kong, Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. However, with so many epic countries, I didn’t think a blog for all of them merged into one was a good idea, so I am going to break it into instalments beginning with the first destination: Hong Kong.

Now we all know I love wildlife and I was pretty gobsmacked that before I had even left the country, whilst standing in the long stay car park at Glasgow Airport, a very brazen red fox bowled out in front of me. Of course, my camera gear was all packed very neatly ‘Tetris’ style in my Vanguard Camera Bag (which I should add is great for travel as it has wheels!) https://www.vanguardworld.co.uk/products/alta-fly-58t But I couldn’t not at least try to get my camera out because wildlife rarely ever just presents itself so there I was, rifling manically through my bag trying to assemble my proper camera; because a phone just wasn’t going to do it justice. Anyway, here it is below.

Red fox in Glasgow Airport Long Stay Car Park

It didn’t take long for the fox to slink off into the distance and quite frankly, I needed it to leave as otherwise, I was going to be late, since I was distracted. I had moments to pack my bag back up as the bus was headed my way to take me to the airport terminal. Luckily a very lovely guy stood next to me in the bus stop had witnessed the whole chaos ensue and helped me get my other suitcases on the bus whilst I reorganised myself. (Thank you lovely man!)

Anyway, that was me in the terminal, checked in and through security for the longest flight I had ever done. I should mention now, as it will become a frequent theme within my travel blogs, I fret for a long time about airport security. I am grateful for them as I am aware it is a very important job and keeps people safe however, it is hard as a photographer because you can almost guarantee, I will need to get most of my equipment out, spread it out across 7386 trays and my bag always ends up being double checked. Sorry to everyone who is behind me in that queue - I am the worst and camera gear just seems to land me in a whole cofuffle of chaos. And it did, I was randomly drug checked which took, what felt like forever, as I could see all of my very expensive equipment blocking up the conveyor belt for everyone else. Again, sorry. But I made it and I was ready for my flight.

Due to a pretty long flight time and the ship’s planned arrival time for the next morning, I had a whole afternoon and evening to explore the busy city life of Hong Kong before heading to my hotel for the night which I was very excited about.

Even in cities, I still love to find wildlife where I can so that was my first mission whilst I still had some daylight left. One thing you can always guarantee in most places is pigeons. I know they have a bad reputation and a lot don’t like them but I do like them. Though this was content for myself over anything that would be good for cruise line material! I also scouted out where the ship would be arriving in the morning and when I had found this, I found myself some more interesting wildlife which was a Black-Capped night heron.

One thing I was pretty keen on capturing was some long exposure night city shots so after checking my bags into the hotel, I headed out into the busy city. Here are some of my photos that were caught that evening.

I also had time to plan my following day as all I needed to do, was capture the arrival of the ship, get to the ship to check in and leave my bags before heading out for the day. So naturally, I tried finding a good location for some wildlife encounters, but I will get onto the details of that after the arrival of Borealis and of course a good nights rest.

So it gets to the next morning and my first job is to pack my camera gear up to head down to the waters in which the ship will be passing by and within about 10 minutes, Borealis sails past me. It was a very cloudy and rainy morning so not the best conditions for photos and video footage but that is something that cannot be controlled.

Fred Olsen’s Borealis arriving in Hong Kong

Once this was complete, I needed to make my way back to the hotel to grab my luggage and get a taxi to the cruise terminal to get checked in on board. This was pretty smooth sailing (good pun I know) and before I knew it, I was trying to work out the exact logistics of my plan for the day which was to get to a place called Kam Shan Park. Why you ask? Well, this was a renowned area for spotting both Rhemus and Long-Tailed Macaque. And as a wildlife photographer who had never seen a wild monkey of any sort before, this was something I was extremely excited for.

Kam Shan Park was located around a 20 minute drive away so I needed to organise a taxi, but with a slight language barrier, this was quite the challenge. I found a taxi driver and explained that I would need to go to an ATM so that I could pay for the taxi as I only had enough for a journey there. This is something I thought he had understood but I soon realised this was not the case as he pulled up to the Kam Shan park signs. Being the socially awkward person I am, I thanked him, paid him and thought to myself ‘do you know what…this is a future me problem, I have wild monkeys to find and limited time in which to do this.’ So off I went, on a mission to find the wild macaques of Hong Kong. It was a steep climbing path and it was also extremely humid, something I was not used to, especially with a 20kg camera bag on my back but I was determined. As I reached a shelf half way up, I saw how insane the Hong Kong city skyline was, so I took a break to fly my drone and get some shots through the trees.

Hong Kong Cityscape

I also took this time to get film footage and of course, a selfie, because this was the first time I had visited Hong Kong.

My journey up the steep hill continued and it didn’t take me long to find some macaques. In fact, there were absolutely loads both on the path and in the surrounding trees. I cannot even explain the excitement I felt as I watched my first ever monkeys in the wild. Safe to say, I took quite a few photos and video.

Rhemus macaque with the Hong Kong skyscrapers behind

Whilst I was snapping away, I heard some more rustles in a nearby bush to which I thought ‘oooh here are some more macaques.’ I was wrong, very wrong. Before me, stepped out a Wild boar, something I did not think I would see therefore, I did not pack spare underwear for my trip (tmi..maybe.) I had read that there is the occasional boar up in these hills but I still didn’t expect it to happen as from what I had read, this wasn’t a common occurrence. Anyway, this didn’t matter anymore because it was stood right in front of me and I was on my own with no phone signal. My camera bag was on the floor away from me, so I backed up from that and watched it’s movement’s as I wasn’t sure how dangerous it could be. It walked towards the bag and had a good sniff (as if the airport security wasn’t enough already) but decided that there was better food to be had elsewhere and trotted on past me. It seemed very relaxed so I decided at this point to follow from a distance and to get some photos of this exciting (and somewhat intimidating) encounter. This was when it headed to an opening right in front of the skyscraper skyline. Despite my strong opinion’s on how the human race has done so much damage to the world, there is something quite incredible seeing these wild animals in front of our homes. If nothing else, it shows their incredible adaptability to these man-made concrete jungles I guess. Anyway, here are some photos from that encounter. I actually think it might be smiling in the last image.

So after that pretty crazy encounter, I decided to head back down to search for more wildlife. As I was strolling, I saw lots more macaques in the trees and running across the paths but nothing quite prepared me for the amount I saw when I was getting close to the bottom of the path.

The macaques are probably fairly used to people here and as I got to the bridge that crosses a very busy road, there were macaques everywhere. It appeared some one had put some food down as so there was quite the gathering going on and they were completely unphased by my presence. I think I got some of my best images at this point as, well, it was hard not to, to be honest.

And to give you an idea of just how unphased they were, here is another photo from that moment below.

Rosie B Wild amongst her own Macaque kind

Once I had snapped photos and film to my hearts content, I decided that I should probably try and work out how to get back to the ship. If you remember back to earlier, you will remember I am here with limited to no internet, taxis that only take cash and I did not have any more cash. And with cruise ships, there is no time for error, if you are not back on time, you are staying exactly where you are as they will not be waiting.

I tried ordering an Uber first and for this, I had to pay stupid amounts for the smallest amount of internet allowance. This proved to be pointless as it was not working and it went through the internet allowance within minutes of me even trying to organise an Uber. My next idea was to try and call a taxi firm. This once again, did not work well as the language barrier once again became the problem here (not to mention, the sky high costs of calling.) My final and only option was to stand at the side of the road and flag down a taxi of which there were many; it was just finding one that would be able to understand my terrible instructions of getting to an ATM to get cash so that I could then pay them on arrival at the cruise terminal.

It didn’t take me too long to flag down a taxi but I felt bad, not being able to speak Chinese as I tried to describe where I needed to go using my phone (what would we do without technology?!) and a terrible rendition of charades. Anyway, I thought all was understood but, I soon realised as the cruise terminal came into view, that the ATM information I had tried to give had clearly not gone well. I pulled out my wallet and showed the taxi driver that I had no cash. The last thing I wanted was to get arrested for seemingly tricking a taxi driver into a free journey, as that was most definitely, not the plan and not how I wanted my cruise journey to end when it had only just started. The driver initally seemed confused but eventually, I managed to explain what was needed. He drove me around the streets and pulled up to a Santander, which I never thought I would be so thrilled to see but there you go! Anyway, I managed to get what I needed and the very lovely and understanding driver, took me to the cruise terminal. I thanked him a huge amount for his incredible patience and went on my way, back to the ship. I made it.

We would now be sailing to our next destination; Japan. I was so very excited to start this 3 week journey. It was a fantastic start, despite being, quite nerve-wracking at points but I was now ready to begin this content creation project. I unpacked my bags and got settled in ready for the future adventures (and probably mishaps) to come.

You will have to come back for the next chapter in a couple of weeks time as I have decided I will be releasing blogs on the first and third Sunday of every month. It is there, that I will continue my stories from my time in Japan.

For now though, thank you for taking the time to read.

Over and out,

Rosie B