Hong Kong, Part Two

Hong Kong, Part Two

We have been real tourists for the past few days.  We had a delightful al fresco luncheon at The Pawn with some friends we met in Moscow who are now working in Hong Kong.  It was a glorious day, with bright sunshine and clear blue skies, quite unusual for Hong Kong.  It seems that the Chinese government decided to close most of their factories in and around Beijing before the big meetings there last week.  That action coupled with not allowing two thirds of the cars and trucks to operate cleaned the air over the conference and had the unexpected benefit of cleaning the air in Hong Kong due to the favorable winds.

After lunch we walked around different markets and ended up at the ferry terminal where we said our goodbyes as they boarded their ferry to Discovery Bay.  We continued to wander around the city and were almost able to walk home without going outside by hopping from enclosed mall to enclosed mall on elevated walkways.  The malls are all decorated for Christmas with lots of fresh Christmas trees and wreaths scattered around the lobbies. Every mall seems to have a Christmas Village with all the trimmings, including the fake snow. I have never seen so many designer label stores so concentrated in my life and it seems that each mall has the same stores with nothing low end. I guess that is what the street markets are for.

The Pro Democracy protestors have done a bang-up job of setting up their camps.  They are very clean and well organized and there seems to be a command structure, at least I assume those with walkie-talkies are commanders.  They have a media center, a first aid center, a recharging center (can’t give up their screens), and a food distribution center.  It seems that many of the merchants have been donating food and water to the protestors, much to the dismay of the local government.  They have taken over a very large central roadway that leads to the tunnel to Kowloon and the airport so that all of this traffic now has to take the surface roads, which have streetlights, and this really slows things to a grinding halt at rush hour.

Our friends had told us that on Sundays all of the Philippine nannies and housemaids have the day off, a Hong Kong law, and that we would see them sitting together on flattened cardboard boxes around Hong Kong.  That did not prepare us for what we saw. There were thousands of these mostly young women who were gathered in clumps of five to ten, sharing food, massaging each other’s feet, grooming one another’s hair and just having a grand old time. They were everywhere, not just in parks and city squares, but gathered on walkways, sidewalks and curbs. It was truly an amazing thing to observe.

After wending our way past the picnickers, we decided to take the ferry over to the Kowloon side to see how things have changed over there in the 15+ years since we were there.  Equally amazing, but not in a good way, was Tsim Sha Tsui, the main shopping area of Kowloon where the Star Ferry stops.  From the moment we stepped off the ferry we were assaulted by countless Pakistanis trying to get us to buy custom made suits, shirts, dresses, and ties.  When that wave passed a new group would come at us trying to get us to buy knock-off watches, handbags and suitcases.  And so it went for the entire time we were in Kowloon and it made for a less than pleasant experience.  We took refuge in the Hyatt Regency for a bit of a break and then decided that we would rather just get back to the Hong Kong side as soon as possible, so rather than having to fight off more hawkers, we opted for the subway, which was fast and clean and took us right to our hotel.  We felt like we had just been to Cairo and not Kowloon.

Today, in keeping with our desire to be tourists, we took a long and lovely walk through the Hong Kong Park, an oasis of calm and green in a landscape of mirrored glass skyscrapers and the constant sounds of construction.  Here our souls were soothed by fountains, waterfalls, streams, and small ponds filled with turtles and koi. There was a butterfly garden filled with some of the most beautiful and large butterflies we have ever seen. At the marriage registry there were several weddings taking place with lots of photographers capturing every moment of the events.  We soon exited the park and got in line (with a hundred of our dear friends) at the kiosk to purchase tickets to take the Peak Tram to the top of Hong Kong.

The tram is a fixture of Hong Kong and has been around since the late 1880s, carrying tourist and residents up to the top of Victoria Peak. From there you have marvelous views of all of Hong Kong, Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. They have interactive tablets with earphones that allow you to choose what you want to learn about using their photos and icons, all very high tech and really well done.  We had a great time just looking around and hearing about the history and buildings of Hong Kong - like I said, we were just being good tourists.

Told you we were tourists!

On the way home we took a different route through the Hong Kong Park and spent a lot of time in the Aviary, which is a huge outdoor cage with 600 bird species.  We marveled at some of the colorful birds we had never seen before and we followed the grasshopper lady who dispensed grasshoppers onto tree leaves for the birds to eat, and boy did they eat.  We were about forty feet above the stream at the bottom of the aviary and the walkway twisted and turned and dropped about fifteen feet by the time we got to the exit.  It was one of the coolest places we have visited on this trip.

Time to rest!  Cindy and Wm