My time in Hong Kong

Boy did the time ever fly by when I was in HK. I can't prove it but I really think that international date line screwed me out of a day. I left on Monday on the Jan.27,crossed the international date line traveled for 14.5 hrs. arrived still on Monday Jan. 27, went to bed, and seemed that the next day was Weds. Jan. 29, mind you I was with Rod Serling from Twilight Zone part of the day. So notwithstanding my out of body experience and the apparent loss of a day, my time in HK was everything that I hoped it would be, and more!!!

The first day I walked around one of the major shopping, merchant and garment areas, it's called Tsim Sha Tsui district and it is km after km of not stop shops, small business and restaraunts in any direction and right in he middle of it all is Kowloon Park and it impressive, they say it's almost as big as central park in New York, I have no idea if this is true but it's big and it's well used. In the center is a large averie and the birds they like to let you know that it's not their idea of a good time being in there, what a noise. It's very heavlie treed and has all kinds of these shrubs that are maizes and their not that easy to get through them. After about the fifth try I followed a bunch of 8-10 year olds through the larger maizes, I would have gone through easy this time but I didn't want to embarrass the kids. Another amazing thing was the level of safety that seems to exist. I was going back to my hotel one night around 11:30 PM and in order to get to my hotel it was either go through or go around the park, which would have add 5-6 more kms, so I went through or at least I followed other people going through the park and I never felt unsafe in the park even when I was alone, which wasn't very often. The park is almost as busy at that time of night as it is during the day. This area is very close to Victoria Bay which is HK's water front.

The next day I walked down to the water front, around this area they have the cultural center, the space museum, the ferries and a walkway around the Kowloon side of Victoria bay. I was impressed with all of the cultural exhibits, the museums, but after a few hours of that was enough for me. I caught the ferry over to HK island, the ferries are really something. They haven't changed anything on them since the first one was commissioned, now they are part of HK history and they couldn't change them if the wanted. The ferry rides are very economical $2HKD, which is about .35cents. Most people on the ferry are tourist and people that are not going far from either side of the bay, the subway system is much more efficient. Once over there you can see that this is the heart of the corporate world in Asia. Everything in this part of HK island is defined by opulence and money, each building complex trys to out wow the next, and for me it was working, I was wowed by them all. All of the buildings are unique in some way, many are next to parks or squares with sculptures that are very soothing and relaxing . The parks are immaculate and are in such contrast to the miles of hi-rise office buildings and appartment complexes, some that are 60-70 stories high, I can't imagine living in those building, mind you don't live in them unless you have lots of money, and I mean lots of money.
I walked from the dock up to the tram for Victoria peak. When I got there, 1. I was almost dead from the walk, it's about 2-3 km from the dock, up hill and I mean uphill. 2. This was during the week in the middle of the day and there was at least a 2 hr. lineup. After almost sacrifing my life to get there I wasn't going back without seeing the peak. The wait was worth it, the climb on those trams is incredible, at times it must be a 45% grade. The trams are another heritage of HK, The were built in 1922 and are still the same, at least on the outside, the inside I don't know, they run awfully well for a 90 year piece of equipment. I'm sure that the technology has been updated, especially the safety devices.
Once at the top it is an awe inspiring site and a great place for picture taking. This would be the place that I would insert a bunch of pictures.
I was talking to Bob today he helped me get the proper driver for my camera. I downloaded the
driver and the down loaded the pictures on to my computer. He called me through skype onto our landline and was it ever clear.
So I have the pictures on my computer so the next feat will be to figure out how to get the pictures from my files to this blog, baby steps people, baby steps, but I digress.
The picture taking was great, incredibly crowded,but great. I then had a late lunch at Baba Gumps at the top of Victoria Peak. Getting back to the dock from the drop off at the tram was just as interesting and a hell of a lot of fun. One of the thing that I find so intereting in HK is people watching and it was rush hour when I was going down. The people they were in a hurry, but there didn't seem to be the stress that I was expecting. A lot of the people were stopping in parks and open forum areas, unfortunately everyone was stopping for a smoke, the amount of people that smoke in HK is mindboggling, maybe that's why everyone was so relaxed, still
interesting though. By the time I caught the ferry and walked home I was completely bagged

The next day I went to Macau, which is about an 1 1/4 hr. ferry ride to the SAR Macau, both Macau and HK are SAR's (Special Administrative Regions) of China. This means that they are both part of China but with different immigration, civil and criminal laws. I had go through customs for both Honk Kong and Macau coming and going, the difference is that I didn't need a visa for going to either place and the both cater to tourists. In HK there is a huge British influence, what with double deckker buses, driving on the other side of the road and english being the third most spoken languge, the first two being Mandrin & Cantonese.
In Macau the influence is Portuguese, it was once a colony of Portugal as HK was a colony of England. There is a huge portugese influence but still I it think that english is also the third language in Macau.
Macau, for those of you that don't know is the Las Vegas of the orient. When I was going there, and it was a beautiful day no wind, nice seas and a nice enjoyable trip, remember I said that, anyways back to Las Vegas. I thought that we were going to see a few hotels & casinos maybe approaching the size of the ones in Vegas. Well some of the hotels are the size of Vegas hotels, but they are adding to the hotels, the Wynn, and the MGM Grand are adding 10,000 rooms to both hotels and they are already massive. The most unique is the Lizboa Grande it is absolutely massive and such and incrediably different design.
When I was walking through this hotel, there old fat guys, and lots of them, with these incrediably beautifal, slim, without an ounce of fat on them young women, wearing incrediably tight short dresses. I thought isn't that nice that these young women would take the time to come to Macau and spend time with their fathers, I had heard that family was very important in China.
One thing that I noticed in the construction of all of these hotels, casinos and other building is the scaffolding, it's bambo all of it even the scaffolding 50-60 stories up it's all bambo and held together with some sort of stapping, that blew my mind .
I spent the a good part of the day gamling in the casinos, I lost $500, not to worry they were HK$, so in reality I lost about $75 Can. One big difference is the smoking laws in Macau, the are none. After about 1 1/2 hr. in a casino you had to get out, your eyes and throat were burning, when you looked arouund you could see the air was blue with smoke above the tables and slots.
The most popular game there is baccarat they go nuts for this game.
On the way home I took the last ferry to HK around 9:30PM, the wind was really blowing hard and the water looked choppy. We took off and slowly began to pick up speed and then we hit a roller and the boat went up and down like being on a roller coaster, everyone thought this was great and made that sound when you go over the top on the coaster, you know
wheeeeeeeee..... and then we went into the next botton of the wave and it took us to the top of the wave and there were a few more wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's but not nearly as many. Within about 10 minutes there was not a sound and you could see people reaching for the sea sick bags. Chinese people are the most polite people on the face of the earth, probably about half the peoeple on the boat, and this is a passenger boat holding 5-600 people, were sicker than dogs. There was not one sound on the boat, if this would have been happening in North America or Europe there wouold have moning and gagging and whining. On this boat nothing, no sound. the guy in the seat next to me was sick the whole time and I didn't even know it, but then I wasn't paying to much attention to him, let me tell you it was a rough ride I was glad to see the lights of HK. I didn't get sick, but let me tell you I soaking wet from sweating on the ride back. It was a first for me and I hope it's the last boat ride like that. After that I dragged my ass back to the hotel.
The next day I took it easy and thought I would get to know the subway system. I bought an octopus ticket which cost $55 HK that's about $8.50 Can. it's good for 24 hr. from the first time you use it, not from when you buy it. This is something more for tourists, but with it you can use it on the subways, the surface buses which includes all of the double decker buses, HK has the largest fleet of double decker buses in the world and none of them, they say, are more 5-6 years old. They are truely luxury buses, and they can manuver through the HK traffic.
Anyways I spent the day taking the subways to variuos districts around HK and Kowloon. The thing was that every station that I got off at was as busy and as crowded as the next. Every district had wall to wall people and there was no sidewalk rage or impolite people, sometimes it was hard to navigate your way through the constant crush of people. It was as if people took no notice of it and accepted the crush of people part of life, for me it wasn't so easy, At times you felt yourself being carried along and then when you got to the other side of the sidewalk and you were able get to the place you wanted you felt like hi-fiving people because of the accomplishment you felt. You would then take a subway somewhere else and each place was different economically you could see that in the shops the quality of the storefronts the and the people were different,but one thing was constant was the crowds
This wore me out in no time and the day accually flew by and it was time to go back to the hotel
On the last day I decided I was going to take it easy. So I caught the subway over to HK island and got off at the Central station and just wander around in the area where the tallest building are located, this also included some of the exclusive shopping area where all the real expensive shop are located. These various shopping centers and most of the Asian financial institutions are located here and are all connected by a +15 walkway. When I got off the subway and went upstairs the place was wall to wall people and they were all together in family units, there were mothers, fathers, young people, old people and lot of kids. The all had these areas on the walkway kind of steaked out, with blankets and some the had their area isolated by card board boxes and the were all having picnics and family gatherings. This went on every where in the downtown core, the must have been 40-50,000 people they were everywhere, it looked really neat when you first looked at it they were having a great time. When I was walking by them you could here them, they weren't speaking Chinese, some of them were speaking english. I asked the what the occasion was and they told they were all Philipino. I gathered that this was their only day off most of them got at the same time and were able to meet. These were the nannies, the maids the gardiners and whatever else they do. There were whole family units in HK and this was their family time. I was amazed at their family commitment but it was also kind of sad, but what do I know they were having a great time.
After that time was running short and I finally ran across a "Big Bus Tour" you know the ones that have double decker buses with the tops cut off them. They are in all the big cities around the world, so I did the big bus tour of both HK and Kowloon. I probably should have done this tour at the beginning rather than the end. It actually was nice to finish my stay in HK that way.
Now it's on to Thailand, I'm sure he pace will be quite different, it better be, I'm beat.


TD