After carefully and deliberately distributing our luggage between three bags (these having been left in storage at Carmen’s flat in London - one containing a wooden chair for Talia) our flight to Hong Kong got off to a bad start when we told at Heathrow airport that, regardless of weight, we were each allowed only one bag in the hold, or else pay £120! Nor could I take my computer on board plus a small backpack. Having cable tied our bags – the first problem was to find a knife to open them. The next was to unpack adjacent to the check-in desk, squeeze our belongings into two bags, put some clothes into my computer case, squeeze that in as well and carry the laptop under arm. By the time we’d had to take off our shoes, removed belts, discard our water and an almost empty tube labelled 150ml – the “joys” of air travel were beginning to wear a little thin.
Eleven hours later we landed in Hong Kong, and in complete contrast to Heathrow, experienced the smoothest of smooth passages through immigration and customs, quick retrieval of our baggage, passage through a spacious, well-signposted facility and transferred on a silent, comfortable, high-speed express train to Kowloon where we were met by the Honk Kong courtesy buses that took everyone to their respective hotels - a painless affair that impressed us no end. The Minden – chosen from an answer in the travel section of an English newspaper proved perfect for our needs. Our first impressions of a city environment containing 7 million people which in spite of its towering sky scrapers, busy streets (11 700 road casualties / year) and shopping centres, was so clean and efficiently run - we seldom see equalled. Hats off to Hong Kong!
Adopting the stress free “package tour” approach that we’d found so rewarding and informative in Athens, the first thing we did on arrival was select a number of tours that gave us the widest possible range of experiences. These included a tour of the city, an island tour, a tour of the surrounding countryside (“the land between tour”) and, as a special treat, to coincide with our last night, a tour of the harbour with a seafood dinner. Our first morning we strolled to the Hong Kong History Museum doing our best to disregard the touts trying to obtain business for tailors and noticing how many roads have English names - relics of the “good old colonial days” when the British were enjoying the fruits of a thriving opium trade according to our visit to the Museum where we found a most enlightening historical introduction to our time in Hong Kong!
That afternoon we took a HK Island tour: Hong Kong’s water and 80% of its food comes from mainland China. Luxury items (tobacco, alcohol and petrol) are heavily taxed and the import duty on luxury cars is 110%. However, the various forms of public transport are so good that very few people need to own a car. The small, expensive council flats aptly named “diamond cages” stack skywards and overtime this has impacted negatively on cultural family traditions. Young people are not marrying until they are in their late 30’s because their first priority is to save enough money to buy an apartment, and by that stage they do not want children any longer. Young women in Hong Kong are steadily becoming more and more career conscious and self-sufficient (our guide Kim-Kim worked a 17 hour day with one week off per year and complained about the tendency of eligible bachelors going to China to find a traditional wife prepared to stay at home and do the housework! After visiting the ancient Man Mo temple we were taken on the funicular up Victoria Peak for panoramic views. Here we must mention the detraction caused by smog laden air enveloping the city from our arrival. We heard that a typhoon approaching Shanghai was causing unsettled weather (low pressure) and the industrial pollution that hangs over inland China had been pushed out over Hong Kong and there it stayed for almost 4 out of our 5 days.
Eleven hours later we landed in Hong Kong, and in complete contrast to Heathrow, experienced the smoothest of smooth passages through immigration and customs, quick retrieval of our baggage, passage through a spacious, well-signposted facility and transferred on a silent, comfortable, high-speed express train to Kowloon where we were met by the Honk Kong courtesy buses that took everyone to their respective hotels - a painless affair that impressed us no end. The Minden – chosen from an answer in the travel section of an English newspaper proved perfect for our needs. Our first impressions of a city environment containing 7 million people which in spite of its towering sky scrapers, busy streets (11 700 road casualties / year) and shopping centres, was so clean and efficiently run - we seldom see equalled. Hats off to Hong Kong!
Adopting the stress free “package tour” approach that we’d found so rewarding and informative in Athens, the first thing we did on arrival was select a number of tours that gave us the widest possible range of experiences. These included a tour of the city, an island tour, a tour of the surrounding countryside (“the land between tour”) and, as a special treat, to coincide with our last night, a tour of the harbour with a seafood dinner. Our first morning we strolled to the Hong Kong History Museum doing our best to disregard the touts trying to obtain business for tailors and noticing how many roads have English names - relics of the “good old colonial days” when the British were enjoying the fruits of a thriving opium trade according to our visit to the Museum where we found a most enlightening historical introduction to our time in Hong Kong!
That afternoon we took a HK Island tour: Hong Kong’s water and 80% of its food comes from mainland China. Luxury items (tobacco, alcohol and petrol) are heavily taxed and the import duty on luxury cars is 110%. However, the various forms of public transport are so good that very few people need to own a car. The small, expensive council flats aptly named “diamond cages” stack skywards and overtime this has impacted negatively on cultural family traditions. Young people are not marrying until they are in their late 30’s because their first priority is to save enough money to buy an apartment, and by that stage they do not want children any longer. Young women in Hong Kong are steadily becoming more and more career conscious and self-sufficient (our guide Kim-Kim worked a 17 hour day with one week off per year and complained about the tendency of eligible bachelors going to China to find a traditional wife prepared to stay at home and do the housework! After visiting the ancient Man Mo temple we were taken on the funicular up Victoria Peak for panoramic views. Here we must mention the detraction caused by smog laden air enveloping the city from our arrival. We heard that a typhoon approaching Shanghai was causing unsettled weather (low pressure) and the industrial pollution that hangs over inland China had been pushed out over Hong Kong and there it stayed for almost 4 out of our 5 days.
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Lea overlooking Hong Kong from Victoria Peak (400m asl)
En route to Deep Water Bay and Repulse Bay with the inevitable jewellery factory thrown in, we looked out on the elite suburbs where wealth, along with superstition, reflected itself in a prestigious apartment block overlooking Repulse Bay. A large architectural gap in the structure enables the passage of a dragon living in the hillside behind to move unencumbered down to sea without any difficulty and, if it desires, enjoy a drink from the swimming pool in the complex. A brief stop at Stanley market ensured we’d come back another time via the local bus service! Finally we caught the Star ferry to Kowloon for dinner on the waterfront with a laser show - HK’s Symphony of Lights which lost most of its impact for us due to the smog.
Our boat trip over to Lantau Island passed the runway of the airport and we discovered this was hardly our first visit to the island but the second as we had unknowingly landed here on arrival in Hong Kong! We were taken to the traditional fishing village of Tai O and in the market came across many of the weird sea-foods available for sale – masses of dried seahorses, shark fins and fish bladders – and were intrigued by the trouble taken by vendors to keep their catches of prawns, crabs and molluscs alive using battery operated aerators.
We were given a vegetarian lunch at the Po Lin monastery, the most popular Buddhist temple in Hong Kong with its massive 26m high, 520 ton, bronze Buddha - the “enlightened one” overlooking the place.
This tour scheduled a cable car ride but weeks before a gondola had fallen off - Horrors for Hong Kong! Digressing - Just prior to us immigrating to Australia a decade ago an article appeared in the South African newspaper about “Omo” land - referring to Oz as a highly regulated society and in comparison to Africa we found it so… However, Hong Kong takes the cake. Never before have we seen quite so many signs (many threatening prosecution) telling people what not to do! From pushing in queues to spitting, littering, fishing, lighting candles, smoking, you name it … feeding birds included! Instead of the cable ride we were taken to Cheng Sha beach. My! My! Having lived in Natal with its shark protection measures it was amazing to find all Hong Kong’s beaches protected by shark nets resulting from one shark attack that occurred along the coastline. Every swimming beach is enclosed by nets, inside of which is a boom to prevent people swimming near them. Despite the beach being empty when we arrived, there was a bevy of lifeguards in attendance. One in a stainless steel observation tower; another on stand-by with a motorised rubber-duck and shark warning flags; another waiting in a fully-equipped onshore clinic; and yet another sitting on a pontoon anchored offshore in the centre of the swimming area. All these precautions together with notices about not swimming during thunderstorms; when the water temperature reaches 24°C; for 3 days after rainfall; at dusk or dawn; and - just for good measure - notices about protecting one’s eyes and skin from UV radiation! This is called “duty of care” and the Chinese take the matter very seriously. Returning to Hong Kong using the local ferry from Silvermine we were stunned by the number of bicycles parked in rack after rack stretching for ever at the terminal indicating the number of commuters using this service. We’d love to have seen the mass exodus at the end of the day
Our Land Between Tour took us out into the rural portion of the New Territories which extend 60km inland towards China revealing Hong Kong to be surrounded by mountainsides covered in dense forest, reminding us of rain forest in places as we ascended Tai Mo Shan (Hong Kong’s highest mountain (annual rainfall is 2 000mm). Not much subsistence farming any longer as the local vegetable farmers have long since sold their plots to property developers.
Temple visits gave us an understanding that ancestor worship is an all important belief. We saw many memorial halls where the walls are filled from top to bottom with the ashes and photographs of people’s ancestors. There is not enough land available in Hong Kong for people to be buried in a grave, so 7 years after being buried the bones are exhumed, carefully cleaned and incinerated. The relatives pay astronomic prices for space in the halls, the most expensive being those at eye level. They purchase, and subsequently burn, all manner of things made out of paper for their ancestors to use in the next world. The Yuen Yuen Institute illustrated all this very clearly. A shop selling everything made of paper from clothing, watches, money, radios, mobile phones and foodstuffs – all of which are burnt as offerings on funeral and memorial days, the smoke taking these things up to heaven. George was reminded of the day he found a Chinese $200 000 note blowing around the Karrakatta cemetery in Perth and not knowing any better, thought he’d stumbled across a massive fortune. “Not so” said the bank manager – “but it would be useful for playing monopoly”!
At our next stop, the sight and sounds of the construction machinery busy extending a massive multi million dollar development - Beverley Hills, contrasted sharply with the simplicity of the Sam Mun Tsai floating village that we had come to see. As we walked out on the breakwater we stepped over the rough and ready cables and pipes supplying the floating platforms - homes to the fishermen with water and phones for fax / email contact. Generators provide electricity. We wondered about the countdown on what may be considered the “blight on the bay”?
Saturday night and we delightedly took our sunset cruise on a traditional Chinese junk taking in the upper reaches of Victoria Harbour lined by a multitude of towering buildings, all illuminated in different ways flashing and sparkling their reflections across the waterway. Even the moon was shining her silvery trails amidst all the glitter and glamour. Arriving at Lei Yue Mun Fish Market we warily stepped through the wet passages passing an amazing array of live marine delicacies awaiting consumption from menu orders of the many seafood restaurants that back on to the market in every direction. Specimens of which we’d never seen the like of… Elephant nosed clams looking the most gruesome!
Our table of eight turned out to be from Australia, all of an age and like minded, that it made for good conversation between the different courses that came our way. A post- prandial walk took us along the by now, for us, often trampled Avenue of the Stars to visit Temple Street Night Market which turned out to be exactly like we’d seen depicted in travel books.
Our last day was spent on the harbour wandering through Art Galleries and a craft market totally free of mass produced “made in China” goods as found elsewhere in the world! Instead, perfect examples of ingenious thinking, crafted by hobbyists who love what they do.
Crowning our visit was the pleasure of checking in our luggage and receiving boarding cards before we’d even got to the airport. The whole efficiency of the operation being just as impressive departing as it was arriving.
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