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So much incense!
Man Mo Temple, Hong Kong. This was such a peaceful place amidst the hustle and bustle of HK.Hong Kong is a city of contradictions, from bird's nest shops in one street to Pizza Express in the next. It is possible to walk from the hustle and bustle of Soho and find oneself in front of the Man Mo temple, an oasis of incense. Some of the most interesting streets are those near Hollywood and Possesion streets where shops sell herbs and spices in canvas bags, fish lie drying on the pavement and antiques stores sell vast quantities of jade. We saw skyscrapers being built using scaffolding made of bamboo which went all the way to the top of these huge buildings.
On our first day in Hong Kong, we took a trip on the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator, apparently the longest in the world. For me, it was a bit of a disappointment, it was neither air-conditioned nor continuous, for some reason I had thought that it would be both. That evening, we headed up to Victoria Peak on the Peak train. The angle that this train travels up at is impressive, the view at the top unfortunately did not match up, it was a very cloudy day.
The timing of our visit to Hong Kong (if not
Apparently it's a delicacy
Very attractively packaged bird's nest for sale the weather) was fortunate as it coincided with Buddha's birthday at the Po Lin monastery. After seven months in Pete's backpack, Little Buddha accompanied us on a day trip to see Giant Buddha on his birthday. Giant Buddha was unfortunately obscured behind mist but there was lots more to see at the monastery. We had a vegetarian meal in the canteen where some chinese ladies seemed intent on getting us to eat more. Afterwards, we went to a birthday concert for Buddha. It was hilarious, there was a stand-up comedian and some singers, one of them sung 'The greatest love of all' for Buddha. After they finished, some amazing child gymnasts got up on stage. These little guys were cartwheeling across the stage and supporting each others weight in amazing arrangements of their bodies. Afterwards Pete gave Little Buddha a wash and we tried to peer at Giant Buddha through the clouds of mist, not too successfully.
Next morning, on the recommendation of Mr Sam from our hostel, we had Dim Sum for breakfast across the road. The place was absolutely packed full of locals, a good enough endorsement for us. We had no idea what we were ordering
but the five or six dishes that we did order were mostly steamed dumplings with a variety of fillings - pork, prawns, sweet meats etc. After digesting our huge breakfast, we hopped on the star ferry to Kowloon. Kowloon is pretty different to Hong Kong, noisier and busier. Every street corner had some guy trying to sell us a suit. A con-artist posing as a Buddhist monk tried to get us to give him $500, we wrote down $5 in his book as our donation which he promptly changed to $500 when he left us, to match the other ficticious donations in his book. We visited the Avenue of the Stars where Pete did his Jackie Chan impression, found out that he's Jet Li's hand twin and then walked up to the night market. This was full of the usual tat, fake watches and sunglasses. I did however, get my fortune told. The guy who read my hand had really good english and was a pretty funny guy. We had spent longer than we intended at the night market so we had to race back to the Avenue of the Stars to watch the light show at 8pm. For this
show, the Hong Kong skyline is lit up by lasers and flashing lights on the Hong Kong skyscrapers. The lights are arranged in interesting shapes on the skyscrapers and different ones light up in time to music played over loudspeakers on the avenue. Well worth a look.
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Cumberland Sausage
Kim Buckley and Richard Baxter
"So Much Incense!"
Excellent shot.