Hong Kong

Another continent (Carly): Thu 30/11/2006 9:45 AM

Hi everybody.  (....continued from  Tokyo page......)

Our next stop was Hong Kong. The hostel there was not nearly as nice as Japan - the bathrooms were comical as there was a toilet sink and shower in the space of a cubicle in your average shopping centre toilets! But Hong Kong was wonderful. We took a boat trip on Victoria Harbour and admired the incredible skyline. We walked along the Avenue of Stars where Adam saw the names of many of his heroes: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jony Woo, Tony Leung, Jet Li to name a few. As Hong Kong is duty free we did quite a lot of shopping. We found that the fashion is tending towards Japan but hugely influence by sportswear and the sports shops wrap display trainers in clingfilm like in China. The 'Symphony of Lights' show was amazing. We watched it from the Avenue of Stars and got a great view of most of the buildings in the show. It is made up of the neon lights on most of the banks along that stretch of the Hong Kong Island side of Victoria Harbour. They flash and change colours to music blasted out from tons of speakers. Its one of those things which is difficult to describe so I guess you'll all just have to go to Hong Kong yourselves to see it! We had a walk along the Golden Mile (the road we were staying on) and thought of lots of amusing things to say to the hundreds of hawkers!

We took a bus out to Repulse Bay named as the British expelled pirates from it. There was a beautiful beach and the statues and shrines around the Life Guard Club were brill. Another bus took us to Stanley where we had a picnic lunch on top of a shopping centre and took in the views of another bay and the 19th century Murray house. We had a long walk through Stanley Market where I was very tempted by the Mah Jong sets. Reluctantly I realised that the smaller sets would be impractical to play with and the larger ones far to heavy to take with us - a good reason to return to Hong Kong one day! We went out on Hong Kong Island and enjoyed the party atmosphere. We found a nice bar but only had one drink there as it was soon overrun by expats dressed as pirates on a rowdy scavenger hunt!

On our third day we ventured into the New Territories where we visited a large Taoist temple. I really like it particularly the orange two-tiered main temple but the multi-storey modern building with lots of temples inside did not impress Adam who prefers older, more authentic ones. As it was a nice day we went to the Peak where we had amazing views of Hong Kong Island and most of Kowloon. Of course there was a shopping centre at the top (they are everywhere in HK) but it improved the view as we climbed many escalators to the roof. The shopping centre also hired lots of entertainers who kept us amused as we waited for sunset - we wanted to see the view during the day and all lit up! My favourite was a guy on stilts in a costume which made him look like an elf riding a flamingo! On the roof that night we were surprised to find clouds washing over us - a slightly bizarre experience.

We spent our final day visiting the Tian Tan Buddha. To get there we had to take a 20 min cable car ride up the mountains. At first the view was amazing but we were soon swallowed by the clouds. The cloud was so dense that all we could see in every direction was white. It was sort of disappointing once the whole "being in a cloud" excitement had worn off as the views from the cable car are apparently amazing. It was eerie at the top as we could not see very far in front of us! The Buddha statue was on top of another peak and we had to climb a seemingly never-ending staircase, with more popping out of the cloud as we rose up! At the top of the stairs we found that we could not even see the head of the Buddha. The statue was a huge bronze one cast in China in 1989. There was a small indoor exhibition (and of course gift shop) in the base of the Buddha's lotus throne. While we were inside the clouds thinned a little and when we came out we could just make out the serene face of Buddha. That afternoon we headed for Mongkok, it was not as scary as I had expected (having seen the fil 'One Night in Mongkok' which does not exactly have a happy ending) as no triad guys tried to kill us! The markets were great and we had a good look around. None of us could resist and we all had some bargains when we left!

Hong Kong was lots of fun and I guess its a shame that we went to Tokyo first otherwise I think we would have been much more impressed with all the neon! It is another city that never gets dark (continued on Seattle page......)

Hey everyone... (Adam): Fri 12/01/2007 1:03 AM

Hi Everybody,

I know it has been too long since my last email, I apologise but internet is hard to come by in America would u believe it? We had free internet in our last hostel in San Francisco but the computers were terrible so i couldn't b arsed to spend ages trying to get one to work. Right now I am in Chicago and we found this place in the yellow pages and took 3 tube lines out of the city to get here! Anyway more about Chicago later on, I haven't written one of these since Japan so I better fill u lot in on Hong Kong, Seattle and the whole of California where Mum, Dad and Scott joined us for the last month.

I'm casting my mind back all the way to Hong Kong, it seems so long since we were there but I can remember all the gd stuff so it's ok. Hong Kong is one of the most culturally diverse places we have been, as well as the Chinese heritage there are a lot of Brits still living there and also people from all the other former British colonies. Everyone there speaks English so it was easy enough to get by but sadly I couldn't use any of the extremely limited Mandarin Chinese I tried so hard to pick up in Beijing because the Chinese in Hong Kong speak Cantonese.

In the 70's Hong Kong had the 2nd largest movie industry in the world after Hollywood. Pretty amazing that this relatively small community should make such popular films. Many filmmakers and actors moved there from Shanghai when the Chinese government shut down their film industry. As there are Chinese communities all over the world there is also a huge export market for Hong Kong movies. Their industry has only been overtaken by Bollywood in the past few decades. Hong Kong's rich movie heritage and recent worldwide popularity lead to the building of the Avenue of Stars. Similar to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, it is a street with stars set in the pavement bearing the names of the industries biggest actors, directors, producers etc. I recognised a lot of names from my film studies module on Asian cinema and Carly was surprised at how many she also recognised: Bruce Lee, John Woo, Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Jet Li.

As well as its movie industry Hong Kong is famous for skyscrapers. Victoria Harbour is surrounded by a complete range of old and modern high-rise buildings. Every night they put on a light show accompanied by music from speakers dotted around. Buildings light up in time to the music in loads of different colours and sequences.

We went in a lot of shops in Hong Kong although didn't seem to buy much. We strolled into an antiques dealership coz they were selling some pretty unusual stuff. Hong Kong has long been an important port for the export of oriental goods so you can buy pretty much anything with the words 'Made in China' there. In this shop they had huge elephant tusks with 3-dimensional scenes carved into them. Just as we are taking a morbid curiosity in one showing the communist victory in China an attendant comes over and tells us that sadly elephant ivory is only allowed in Hong Kong and cannot be imported into Britain. Lucky for us she informs us that we can take mammoth tusk back home... somehow the 'mammoth tusk' ornaments were cheaper than the elephant ones - I can't imagine that there's an abundance of mammoth tusk around these days, normally u only see it in the British Museum for instance.

We went to a bar one night with Chris in a famous area of Hong Kong called Lan Kwai Fong. Unfortunately we only realised when we got there that it is famous for being full of drunken ex-pats from Britain. We looked for the bar with the most Chinese people in it to try and get some authenticity but it backfires when we are invaded by pirates. Apparently they are on a scavenger hunt for someone's birthday but they have no hope of ever finding the treasure coz they all just seem to cram into our tiny bar and stay there. So we were trapped by a bunch of murderous pirates much like the ones that used to invade Hong Kong in the beginnings of British colonialism. Still I would rather be trapped by the pirates than the alternative - we later saw a group of guys dressed as cowboys with a transvestite native American squaw in tow.

We only went to two temples in Hong Kong and the first was a major disappointment after the ones in the rest of Asia. Fung Ying Seen Koon is a Taoist temple unlike any of the ones we saw in China. For starters it's brand new which doesn't do anything for the sense of mysticism and ancient wisdom one wants when visiting a temple. Secondly it has a cafeteria kind of similar to a school canteen which doesn't do much for my idea of how monks should conduct themselves. Lastly the shrines are not a series of low, smoky, interconnected buildings with breezy courtyards in between them - the shrines here are one on top of another inside a tower block! Yes they had the nerve to design their temple after a block of council flats. At least the worshippers follow the same traditions as the Taoist followers in China - they only give offerings to the gods in charge of good fortune and monetary gain, now that's Buddhism for you...

One of the best things we did in Hong Kong was getting a good view of the city. Victoria Point is a short but practically vertical tram ride up the mountains on Hong Kong Island. That is after you wait in an hour long queue, it's really popular. The view is worth it though, no other city in the world looks like this. To either side there is rainforest and in front of you are some of the most space-age looking buildings you've ever seen. The city is scattered around the edges of the bay and in places it stretches up the mountains. The variety of buildings is spectacular enough without the fringes of untouched forest.

Of course nothing is complete in Hong Kong unless it has a shopping centre so they built a huge one on top of the mountain, as you do. We went up about twenty escalators to get to the top, stopping to see a few entertainers here and there until we got to the top floor for the best view of Hong Kong. The clouds were passing by right over our heads which made the view even more amazing.

Okay finally I'll tell you about our last day in Hong Kong and one of the most memorable of the trip so far. By memorable I mean strange, like Lenin's Mausoleum rather than the Great Wall of China. We heard about another temple on the top of a mountain which we had to take a cable car to get to. Ngong Ping Temple was built in 1993 because some monks from Hong Kong traveled to China and saw the great statues honouring their favourite deity there and decided they needed one. They set about getting the funds etc and soon enough had this enormous bronze statue cast and assembled on top of a mountain. So we get on the cable car and it's s'posed to be a 20 min ride to the top. It starts to get foggy and soon enough we can't see anything. The cable car took us into the clouds which is a pretty unnerving experience to have in a cable car because we couldn't actually see the cable we were hanging from.

Every now and then another car would pass us the other way in the mist but we couldn't see them til they were right next to us. Anyway we made it to the top after being stopped in a turning station for about 10 mins. When we stepped out of the car we could barely see 20ft ahead. We climbed the stairs to the statue of the Tian Tan Buddha and the stairs just keep getting longer and longer coz we can't see in the cloud. Finally we get to the top and we can barely see the Buddha itself coz it's so murky. If I was Buddhist I probably would have been profoundly affected by this but as I'm not I just thought it was really cool. From the Buddha's platform we couldn't see anything, it was as if the rest of the world was not there, very peaceful indeed, prob great for meditation. As I mentioned before nothing in Hong Kong is complete without a shopping centre so we got some lunch before taking the cable car back to the world.

So that about does it for Hong Kong, I know it's been long but I still have a lot of catching up to do so expect some more emails in the near future. I'll try to send at least another one before we leave Chicago. Anyway I hope all is well with everybody, I assume no one is seriously ill or dead because I'm sure someone would let me know but then I was surprised at the very small number (slightly more than zero) that emailed me to say Merry Christmas and happy new year etc (thank you to those that did... oh wait 'those' is plural isn't it?).

Anyway as I didn't email over Christmas either I better wish all of you a belated but very Merry Christmas and a great new year!

Take it easy

Adam