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Published: October 31st 2009
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Today we bought a hop on hop off bus ticket and used it to travel through Kowloon where we are staying and over on Hong Kong Island. The best part bit of this was sitting up on open top of the double decker bus. We had English commentary via ear pieces. It was interesting noting close up, how overhanging neon signs were steadied to buildings by very old cables, the locals washing which was everywhere hanging out their apartment windows and how some of that had come adrift and fallen onto some of the signs' frames. Some of the footpaths' verandas had all sort of junk laying around up there including part from air conditioners and I aslo saw a tree or two attempting to grow out of some verandah cracks!. So back to the blog, in the afternoon we switched over to Hong Kong Island via the 6 minute ferry ride across the harbour in a very old Sydney Harbour type ferries - called Star Ferries (cost is AU$0.36 cents thank you). The other boat traffic was everywhere and it wasn’t that too dissimilar out there on the water to the streets on land. Once on Hong Kong island we
Jackie and Maurs
You never know who you are going to meet next in HK ! joined up with the same bus line. The road traffic was still heavy and the never-ending high rise buildings, turns on the road, just kept going. We soon stopped to ride the cable tram to the top of Victoria Peak. For me this was the best part of the trip. The two-car tram is pulled by a 1½ inch braided steel cable. The early ascent is approx 22 degrees but it soon got steeper and maybe reached at least 40 or even 45 degrees. Watching nearby houses pass by is staggering when you compare their horizontal lines passing against the cable tram's angled window panes. The pressure pushing you back into the seat was amazing. No way could you stand up. The floor between the seats where you walk between, is concaved at lengths of about 500mm, so when you do have to get out at least you can grip the floor. At the top, we had to use another six flights of escalators in the building to get to the viewing areas. Looking across Victoria Harbour, I think we were about at the same height up there as the 2nd highest building in HK ie International Finance Centre which
Victoria Peak
The view from the "The Peak" - cable car end spot looking back down over the harbour is 86 storeys. It was cooler up at The Peak (that's what they call it) and a bit windy and the haze was still there but at least you could see for miles before it blocked everything out. The trip down was good too, except you had to look over your shoulder to see what was going (the tram off course goes backwards down hill). After returning to our hotel, we had late afternoon tea, then we caught up with our shipboard Canadian friends for tea down town at a local Chinese restaurant. As fate would have it, they mentioned a local department store might still be open. We went in there late just before closing and Maurs found a scarf in the designer area named "Maureen", which we found out, is a Korean fashion label!
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