This is our last day. This morning we headed off over to HK Island to use the mid level escalators, which we are told, climb a mile from the bottom at Central to maybe half way up the mountain. The escalator serves all the people living from those levels who live in the immediate densely populated areas. Otherwise the local streets are crosshatched all the way, so access is Ok if you have transport or use a bus. Each escalator is of normal length, it is just a matter of swapping onto the next climbing escalator. They run down to about [View Full Entry]

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After a short break, we caught the subway to they local market at Sham Shui Po in the New Territories. On arriving we were right in the middle of a local market - this time there were no Europeans, no hawkers, no “you want imitation watch” and no “you want new suit sir” and you could shop without even being pestered by the shop owners. We both found this market more relaxful. We got some good buys as regards things not so far seen in the tourist markets of Temple Rd or at Stanley. Off one of its streets this market [View Full Entry]

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This morning we visited the HK Museum of Science. I imagine it’s similar to the Melb Science Museum that I haven’t yet visited. So here, and maybe unusually, we saw the dinosaur exhibit for specimens taken from Lufeng in Yunnan province. It contained a few skeletons and a film - the most important aspect of this is that it’s supposed to be one of the biggest dinosaur finds in the world, which something I never knew. The film showed that the Chinese have made a full sized roof, maybe the size of a football field, over part of the site for [View Full Entry]

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We began today with a trip to Aberdeen over on the far side of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen has a fishing port with lots of traditional Chinese boats including smaller sampans. In order to get there, we used the subway from Kowloon to cross under the harbour and then caught a bus from Central to reach Aberdeen. The bus uses the cross-island tunnel thru the mountain to reach the other side. If you took away the small harbour, Aberdeen was just like anywhere else, congestion, people and high rise apartment buildings. Anyway, the harbour was right on the street and was [View Full Entry]

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First thing today, we headed to the Hong Kong Museum, which was three minutes walk from where we stay. But before we got there, we met up with two butterflies whilst strolling past under a Chinese Banyan Tree on the way. They were large black with blue flashes and landed on Maurs shoulder - one made a great picture. The history museum has two main exhibitions - one on the early history of Hong Kong and the other concerning the time since the republic of China movement began in 1911. The first exhibition contained many expensive static displays, exhibits, explanations and [View Full Entry]

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The morning began with a rush to catch the Star ferry over to Hong Kong Island so we could meet the 10.15am connection hop off bus to Stanley. We missed it by 2 minutes so we took another ride of yesterdays hop on hop off bus around Hong Kong Island on the Victoria harbour side; this takes an hour before it linked back with the next Stanley bus. That worked fine and we were off to Stanley on the other side of Hong Kong Island. The best part of the trip was driving past The Hong Kong Jockey Club at Happy [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Maurs and I went for a walk thru Kowloon Park which is the local public park in the city. It’s a bit up and down and not much grass is about but instead there are lots of native trees and walkways and people. There was the usual aviary of parrots including some Aust Palm Cockatoos and Galahs but the best part was the lagoon or pond. In there were small tortoises, some were just lined up on logs to get some sun whilst others swam, all sorts of fish, water birds and wait for it - Flamingoes and lots of them. [View Full Entry]

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We all got up early at 8.00am to go to the bow on the front deck to watch the boat entering Victoria harbour Hong Kong. It’s pretty amazing - the harbour is probably a smaller version of Sydney Harbour but here the surrounding mountains are closer and off course the high rise apartment buildings are as thick as anything on every side - I’ve never seen anything like it before. This day became our port day in lieu of the trip being cut short by not visiting Taiwan. We walked around Kowloon which is where the ship berthed, walked up to [View Full Entry]

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Today was a normal shipboard day. We all went in a tennis serving competition and won some more ships dollars towards our redeemable T shirt whatever. In the afternoon, we again teamed up with Joyce and Charlie in the ships trivia competition and we did a reasonable job but as usual there was always a better team. The final of the karaoke was on in the lounge in the aftrenoon, and we went to see our friend Claude from Austin Texas and he won - he does Frank Sinatra very well. At tea time, he played piano in the piano bar [View Full Entry]

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