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Published: January 28th 2009
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Since I'm not normally much of a city girl, it may come as a surprise to you to hear that I am utterly in awe of the Hong Kong skyline, and I can't stop taking photo's of it! I've never been anywhere with so many
huge skyscrapers, and they're all so close together.
My first whole day, I think I said before, I was just getting my bearings and getting booked on to the parade tour and the horseracing (more on both of these later). I walked from my hotel in Sheung Wan in the west of HK Island along to Causeway Bay in the east, craning my neck all the way, and trying not to bump into anyone along the way. It's a really busy place - but with an average of well over 6,000 people per square kilometre, I can't be surprised about that! To put that into context, I think Edinburgh has around 2,000 per sqkm and Glasgow has about 3,500 per sqkm.
In the evening I headed over to the Kowloon peninsula (ie the mainland part of HK) and wandered up Nathan (the main hub of the tourist district). After a nice tea, I headed
up to the famous Temple Street Night Markets - I thought I'd seen crowds in the afternoon, but those were nothing compared to the crowds I faced here. There are lots of the usual market stalls - the copy watches and pirate DVDs etc. Also, since everyone here was getting ready for Chinese New Year, there were lots of stalls selling the red packets for the
lai see (lucky money), decorations and sweets.
Unfortunately, I was too late for the Jade Market, so I guess I'll head back up that way another day.
After this, each day I have tried to go out with a loose plan of what I'd like to do and where I'd like to go, so that I don't just spend the days wandering round in circles, marvelling at the skyline.
Sheung Wan district (Thursday 22.01.09) I thought I'd start off exploring the area around and about the hotel. For me, Sheung Wan sums up the contrasts of HK Island - there are areas where mass development has resulted in the huge skyscrapers, but at the same time, there are still many of the traditional streets containing old Chinese shops and street
markets. There is the dried seafood street (which is literally full of dried seafood shops); the ginseng and bird's nest street (both are said to provide energy, be good for a fair complexion, and aid a long life); the herbal medicine street (when I look in the window of some of them, all of a sudden I feel healthier than I ever have before!); then there's the street full of funeral shops selling "hell money" which are paper offerings burnt for the dead.
To cope with the steep inclines of the streets running up from the harbour area, many of the old streets are "ladder streets" which are streets full of steps to make walking up and down a little easier. None of my photo's show it, but some of them are only laddered at the pavements, so that cars can get up and down - I don't fancy doing a hill start there!
I spent hours just wandering up and down these streets and markets, taking advantage of the public terraced garden I found on one of them when my legs were getting weary. There were lots of traditional shops around the Hollywood Road area, and lots
of antiques shops too, so, great, if that's your kind of thing, not my cup of tea, but still a nice area to wander around. There were lots of knickknacks for sale on the lane known as Cat St (I'm not sure why since it's real name is Lascar Row), although some of it looked like they'd found it on the street and decided to try to sell it!!
I had my first visit to a temple also; this was a Man Mo temple which is dedicated to Man Cheung (the god of literature) and Mo (the god of war). This was a busy little place on a street corner. In the run up to Chinese New Year, the temples are all very busy, with everyone praying for good fortune etc for the coming year. The air is thick with the incense offerings being burnt at the shrine - the smoke is said to carry the prayers to the spirit world. I think the land that the temples sit on might be the only land in HK that is safe from the demolition crews and builders!
My wanderings next took me to the Mid Levels, which is really
just the area where fairly wealthy people live. It seems on HK Island, the richer you are, the higher up the hill you live - the super rich live on the Peak, even higher up. To make life easier for the commuters, a series of covered escalators have been built to the midlevels - in the morning they just go downhill to let people get to work in the city, but then from midmorning they only go uphill - I took a ride, just because I could.
More wandering took me through SoHo (South of Hollywood Rd) and Lan Kwai Fong, which is where all the cool kids hang out, so I'll probably not be spending much time there!!
I had booked myself onto a ride on "Dukling" which claims to be the last sailing junk in Hong Kong, for a sail across Victoria Harbour. On my way to the pier, I stopped off at Statue Square, which only has one statue in it after all the original statues were removed by the Japanese during their occupation of HK. The only statue that is there is one of a former chief executive of HSBC (which is just across
the road) - he was presumably quite successful to warrant a statue, so I couldn't help wondering what he would think about the current chief's handling of the bank. The Cenotaph is also nearby.
The harbour area, near where the central piers from where the cross harbour ferries run is, like so many other places here, under construction again. A lot of HK is built on reclaimed land - I think I read somewhere that they were planning to reclaim some more land - if they keep going, it won't be long before HK Island is joined up to the mainland and they won't need the Star Ferry anymore. There is apparently a walk that outlines the various shorelines over the years, although I don't think you need that to get the idea - the tramline takes almost the original shore line, and there are temples dedicated to a god of the sea/fishermen which would normally be built very near the shore, but which now, are nowhere near it.
The sail on the Dukling was pretty good - it's an old fishing junk that over the years has been modified, including being motorised, but it still has its
sails. We toured around Victoria Harbour taking in another view of all of those skyscrapers lining the waterfront of both HK Island and Kowloon peninsula.
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