China Trip Journal - 13

China Trip Journal - 13

Thursday, October 23, 2008
8:00 PM

Tour 1. Kowloon & New Territories Tour.
Adult: 320HK$/~45.70 U.S. $
Children: 220HK$/ ~31.43 U.S. $
Duration: 4-5 hours

Check out my Photos!
http://picasaweb.google.com/mtml072/PublicHongKongGroupTour1#

I've arrange the tour the night before with Amanda at the Park Lane Hotel, and have made arrangements for a Friday trip as well.

The pick up and the bus ride. The pick up starts at 8am. The bus ride is definitely too long. There are more of picking up and driving around than the actual tour itself. Would I recommend this tour? NO! But, I would recommend some of the sites to visit on your own, if possible. The tour was not a complete disappointment, but its not something that will make your jaws drop either. Although, this particular tour is not very expensive either. The bus picks you up and drop you off to your hotel after the tour. Make sure you eat breakfast or bring a snack or two if you get hungry during the trip. Since this somewhat of a short tour it doesn't offer lunch.

STOPS:

1. Chuck Lam Sim Yuen. A visit to "Hong Kong's exquisite Buddhist Monastery." The monastery was beautiful, and the location was overlooking the city. The area use to be a bamboo forest, but because of the changes overtime the bamboo forest is pretty much like a patch of bamboo trees in the backyard. The idols on display are just great to see and it gives you a closer look of beautiful statues and the smell of incense during your visit. Pretty calming…But we were given only 20 minutes to take our picture, buy a couple of souvenirs, and a drink to quench our thirst.
2. Route 3. "A refreshing escape with the Ting Kau/Tsing Ma Bridges via the picturesque section of Route 3 to Yuen Long." A description base from the tour itinerary given to us by our tour guide. It's a beautiful ride, but nothing I'm jumping about. But it is the route to our next stop!
3. Kam Tin Walled Village (Kat Hing Wai). This small village like inside the fortification with a mote that use to stand to defend and keep the occupants safe inside during WWII (Note: need to double check!) still stands 'till today. The wall that's made out of several types of building material lasted for a very long time and have withstand the test of time. Through wars and natural degradation. From what our tour guide said, the heavy metal door was taken down by Scottish as some sort of a trophy.

The main occupant of this small village are mainly elderly. Some of the children have gone out to the city to live and to make a living. The main family that lived in this village are the Ting family, from generations to generations. The elderly dress up on their usual everyday clothing and a hat with a black net around it. The purpose of this hat with nets is to keep the sun away, and to keep the mosquito's out while they are at work. Many, if not all of them are very independent, and have very little to no income coming in. Some of the homes are re-built by the older children who have saved up to modernized that old homes from the old days. Some of the homes are three stories high, but the size of each floor is tiny compare to a standard hotel room. (~## square feet.) The idea is that; the younger family who takes care of the family resides on the first floor, the parents on the second floor, and the grand parents on the third floor. Each of the levels have it's own bathroom, bedroom, living room, and a kitchen.

For sure each of the unit homes have a good number of people living in it. The cost of living in Hong Kong is pretty high compare to some parts of Mainland China. Most children who takes care of their parents have to find jobs in the city and hope to maintain a certain way of living for their whole family including parents and grandparents.

Although, the old ladies of Ting village surely knows how to make a few Hong Kong dollars when they need to…When tourist arrived at their village, they require a small fee to have their picture taken with the guest. They share the profit amongst them, and each tourist who have their picture taken have to pay 10HK$. Well it's a good days work to put on their special hat and their typical clothing to pose for pictures, which is approximately 15 out of 35-40 tourist who decided to do this would earn them 150HK$ divided by eight women they end up making 18.75HK$ in a matter of 20 minutes. Which is not bad at all for these women. Kudos! To them.
4. Lok Ma Chau. This part of the tour was pretty nice and still mellow. There's a 10 to 15 min walk to the park overlooking the border of China, "The No Man's land." It's basically the Mexico border of Hong Kong type of thing. It's nice to see and catch your breath, but nothing spectacular.
5. Wishing Tree. This is an area where it's tradition to write your name and your wish to a colorful bundled of paper with Chinese writing and some figures. You look for the year you were born and hang it on the column of your birth sign. It cost 5HK$ a piece. They would take it of after a week to burn it, and this is how your wishes are sent to the heavens. There is also a wishing tree just for the ones looking for love. It's the same idea…So I did write my wishes and hang them to their designated section.
6. Kaiser Estates. This was the last stop of the tour. It is a jewelry factory, supposedly oldest factory. The tour shows you certain areas of the factory where they design and make the jewelries. Its definitely cool to look at, but at the end of the tour everybody goes to the jewelry store. It's definitely packed and for sure lots of tourist are meaning to buy a jewelry or two. And, I wasn't to entice to buy my own piece just because I didn't find anything really worth buying.

So there it is! The end of the tour. Definitely I would probably recommend two out of six of the location we went to see. It's not bad at the same time, because the price for the tour is not very expensive either.

Note: Some sources of information are from the brochure and tour guide during the tour.

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