A Final Farewell from Hong Kong

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Friday 30.01.09

I headed off today on the bus to Stanley, in the south of HK Island; it's famous for it's market - I thought I'd better do some shopping here in HK!!

The market isn't all that big, but, just as elsewhere in HK, they manage to squeeze a lot into a small space! It's strange though, because the rest of Stanley isn't like that - it just seems to be the market place. It was quite busy, although it gets really busy on weekends, but the hustle and bustle seemed a bit more relaxed that in the city. I wandered around the market for a while, picking up bits and pieces.

It was a beautiful day - the cold snap seemed to me to have come to an end - no jacket or fleece needed today! An old chinese lady told me I must be very strong! I must have looked confused - she touched my arm and said it was because I wasn't feeling the cold - I think it was around 20C so not what I'd call cold!!

After the market and a Vietnamese lunch, I wandered along to St Stephen's beach, which is a popular windsurfing and dinghy sailing spot - there were quite a few people out on the water. There were some children playing in the sand, and occasionally venturing near the water's edge - I'm not sure what the water temperature is here just now - I didn't test it to find out! I sat for a while and watched the Stanley world go by, then headed back to town on the bus.

I had been thinking about where I would go for tea, and I had remembered seeing a sign for somewhere the other day that I had been meaning to investigate, so off I went. Up the stairs, I could hear lots of chatter and clatter of plates and chopsticks - all good signs I thought. I opened the door, and practically everyone stopped, looked up and stared - I'd obviously gone somewhere I shouldn't or where I wasn't expected - I didn't hang around and hotfooted it back down the stairs to find somewhere else!

Saturday 31.01.09

My destination today was Peng Chau, one of HK's outlying islands. The ferry ride over started out quite choppy and got rougher and rougher. I was writing some postcards at the time, so if yours was one of them, please excuse the handwriting - and depending on the stage of the journey your card may or may not have got a mention of the ferry ride and how sick I felt!

Peng Chau is a pretty small island, and there are no cars on the island - there are only bikes and trikes - so it makes wandering around fairly easy, although you just need to avoid the odd dog sleeping in the middle of the road! I followed some of the trails around the island, saw some temples and I climbed up to the island's highest point called Finger Hill - according to the map it's only at 96m but in the sunshine and the heat (it was another beautiful day) it felt like much more - perhaps it's because the last stretch is a long, seemingly unending flight of stairs. But, it was worth every step. With some of the views, you would hardly believe this was still HK - a couple of times I looked up and I could have sworn I was in the highlands. There are some great views over to nearby Lantau (which is the island with the big bronze seated....buddha) which today, was not shrouded in mist and probably would have been a better day to go than Tuesday was.

After wandering around the island for a while, and this is a place where you can just wander aimlessly - the pace here is much slower even than it was in Stanley, I found myself a spot to sit on the beach, not far from where some fish had been hung up to dry in the sunshine. Again, more strange looks from people still feeling the winter chill, and wrapped up in big puffy down jackets and hats, and there's me, sitting on the beach in my tshirt (I havn't ventured into shorts yet, it's not that warm, and I don't think the Chinese have done anything to deserve having my legs inflicted on them; I'll save that for NZ, where they should be used to walkers' legs, so mine can't come as too much of a shock!!)

I had also planned to go to another island today called Cheung Chau, but after my ferry this morning, I didn't fancy taking any more boat trips than I needed to, so instead I headed out to Fanling in the New Territories where I saw a huge temple complex - this time a Taoist temple. There were lots of people coming to make their incense offerings; there were also large furnaces into which people were throwing bundles of paper that they had bought on their way in (I think they had written messages on them too); this I think is what translates as hell money, and is an offering for the dead, to ensure safe pasage for the souls of the departed.

Sunday 01.02.09

February already - I can't believe it! A bit of a sorting out morning this morning, looking at what I have picked up long the way already, and what I was going to pack into the parcels to send home, and off to the post office to get everything posted, including eventually the postcards, hopefully there's a good chance those postcards will make it home before me!

Sundays in HK city centre are quite strange - several streets around Statue Square are closed off to traffic, and there are just people sitting up and down the streets in groups, chatting, singing, dancing, some religious things, eating - all sorts of things; I think I read that this is where the live in nannies and housekeepers etc meet at weekends to catch up and have some time away from their employers.

I then headed to Kowloon Park which is another of HKs green spaces; in it there is a Kung Fu corner where local groups perform Kung Fu demonstrations on Sunday afternoons; I watched for a little while before heading back up to the Chi Lin Nunnery at Diamond Hill for some tea.

By the time I got to the Nunnery, they had stopped serving afternoon tea, and had closed to get ready for their dinner service which started at 6pm, so finding myself with some time on my hands, I went to Plaza Hollywood (a nearby shopping mall) for a wander. I could hear drums banging and cymbols crashing and thought there must be a display of something, so headed towards it. On the ground floor, there was an area sectioned off for children to try on the lion costumes and to play with the drum and cymbols, but then I saw the real excitement of the day!

Superstitions and traditions reign supreme in Chinese culture. I had read about lion dancers going through the streets in small towns in China, and shopkeepers inviting the lion into the shop, as it is very lucky, but hadn't really considered that this would happen in a huge shopping mall! There were 2 or 3 lion teams on different floors, and they were going into every shop.

Above the doors, the shop keepers hang vegetables and a lai see (red packet); when the lion comes and does his dance, he has to jump up and eat the vegetables and the red packet; it then throws the vegetables around the shop, which is meant to bring wealth and prosperity to the business; the lion keeps the red packet with the cash! It was a spectacular sight to see; there was a huge crowd following each set of lion dancers. All the shopkeepers were at their doors waiting for the lion to come to them - you could see the look of disappointment in their faces when they thought he was coming to them but it turned out just to be shoppers instead! I'm pretty sure they would have made it round everybody though.

After this, it was time for tea - I had been looking forward to this all day! I headed back to the Nunnery and was there about 10 minutes early, but just as well - there was a huge queue! They were taking bookings for later sittings, but as I was on my own, they asked if it was OK if I shared a table, then I could go in straight away. I sat next to a Chinese couple who looked like they were on a date, so I felt like a bit of a third wheel. The dinner was very good - afterwards I was so full I could hardly move. I'd opted for the set menu, which has always been a good option for me so far, getting to try a small portion of 5 different dishes.

We started with a soup of sweetcorn and mushrooms, and that was quite tasty; then came some seasonal greens in soy sauce; the next dish looked to me like beef, but since the name of the place is Chi LIn Vegetarian, I assume it was tofu - but it was quite tasty; then came some sweet and sour tofu and pineapple - this time the tofu was a bit crispy rather than the soft one earlier; the last tofu dish was a bit strange, when you had the tofu on its own it didn't really taste of much and had a strange texture, but when you combined it with the sauce and the ginger, it was completely transformed, maybe that's the magic of tofu - get the sauce right and it will be delicious! After all this when I thought we were done, they came with pudding; it looked like blueberry custard - I think it was congee which is a rice based porridge which people here eat at almost any meal, and can be savoury or sweet - the people next to me had a bowl of it plain with their main course instead of steamed rice. This wasn't blueberry, I'm not quite sure what fruit it was, it wasn't too sweet and although I probably wouldn't pick it off a menu if I saw it again like I would with some of the other dishes I tried, it was quite nice. The nuns do feed you very well indeed. I had to leave before they could try and feed me anything else!

Final Thoughts and Bits I've Missed Out!
• HK is a great place and somewhere I'd recommend for a visit - I think I may need to come back another time to do all the things I haven't gotten round to this time - many people were surprised that I was coming for nearly 2 weeks, but for me, it hasn't really been long enough - maybe I'm just a slow sightseeer, who knows!

• It must be exhausting to live in HK, everyone always seems to be so busy and on the move; there will be a couple of dinner services each night because although big groups of family and friends will often meet to go out for tea, (HK appartments are by all accounts quite small with tiny kitchens) nobody really lingers too long over dinner.

• Did I tell you how great my shower here in the hotel was? Not sure that I did, anyway, it was great, second only to mum and dad's!

• According to the leaflet I got from about the Peak Tram, the idea to have a tram going up the peak, and the initial planning permission was sought by a Scotsman everybody thought at the time was a bit crazy, although the credit for it seems to go to a couple of Englishmen - maybe they are the ones who paid for it to be built and the Scotsman was the architect.

• There must be a Guiness world record attempt on just now to see just how many people can fit into a HK tram car - they're double deckers, but they're a lot narrower than a bus, maybe 2/3 the size. Well, the one I was on last night was almost jam packed full when I got on (I'd already let a full one go past me) and kept picking up more and more people and they just kept squashing in; breathing was becoming quite difficult. Because the downstairs was so jam packed full, to get off (you get on at the back and pay as you get off at the front), it was easier to go upstairs squeeze through the slightly thinner upstairs crowd, and down the stairs at the front, and even that was difficult enough!

• HK is very hygiene and cleanliness conscious - perhaps after SARS - there are signs everywhere telling you to cover your nose and mouth when you cough and sneeze, to spit into tissues and through them in the bin, to wear a surgical mask when you have any kind of cough or cold or sniffle, to stay off work if you feel unwell

• An amazing number of people do go around wearing surgical masks, and nobody bats an eyelid. I'm not sure what reaction I'd get if I walked through Hatton with a surgical mask on!

And that, is the end of my HK story - today (Monday 02.02.09) I fly to Auckland, NZ - I will have a few days in Auckland and then I pick up my spaceship and start touring!

For those of you who haven't heard about it or seen the pictures of it, here is a link to their website - it's quite a small van, but that makes it easier to park.

Spaceship

So, farewell from Hong Kong, and I'll catch up with you all in New Zealand
Thank you to everyone for reading this far, and thank you for all the messages you've sent, sorry if I haven't replied to you yet
Love to all
take care
Claire
x

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Comments

[Helen (Kevin's Mum)]

Wow
Hi Claire Oh how hard it is not to be envious! Hong Kong sounds amazing and you really seem to have seen loads -- although as you say maybe you will need to go again. Enjoy NZ as I am enjoying reading about your trip. Love Helen