So Long Hong Kong

Tomorrow morning we leave for Siem Reap, Cambodia, where we will spend 3 ½ days visiting the amazing temple complex called Angkor Wat. But for now we are relaxing in our beautiful room at the Shangri La Kowloon hotel in Hong Kong. We arrived late the other night, but surprisingly we haven’t experienced much jet lag, probably because we are traveling west for the most part and we are always ahead of the sun. We crossed the International Date line on Thursday which means we arrived in Hong Kong on Friday, losing a day in the bargain.

Saturday morning we met our guide Andy Yeung in the lobby and after a joyous reunion with the Andersons who are staying at the Marriott on Hong Kong Island, we proceeded on a full day’s tour of the city. When Andy picked us up he ushered us out the door and onto a bus and for one sinking moment I thought we would be part of a larger tour, but the instructions had been understood—it was just the four of us, plus Andy and the driver—and an entire bus. A small bus, but a bus nonetheless.

HongKong is an enormous city with skyscrapers to rival New York and traffic comparable to Bangkok. Seven million people crowd the relatively small space and the high rise apartments are lined up one next to the other for miles. Of course, because Hong Kong is an island there is water everywhere and most of the tourist attractions have to do with the bay and the harbour. Repulse Bay is a beautiful beach which wasn’t crowded because the weather was cool, but one can only imagine what it is like in the heat of the summer. We took a sampan ride through the Aberdeen Fishing Village which isn’t a village at all, but a floating city of fishing boats, house boats, and water taxis. Andy told us that the fishing industry has been all but wiped out because of over-fishing and the fishermen struggle just to make a living nowadays. That was evident in the poor condition of most of the boats. For lunch, at our insistence, we skipped the touristy restaurant on top of Victoria Peak and instead Andy took us to a local dive where the specialties are fish ball soup, fried fish skin, broccoli in Chinese gravy and some other unrecognizable vegetable. It was truly a delicious taste of local color, though maybe not the most delicious meal we’ve ever had. Afterwards, we went to the famous Victoria Peak to see the magnificent Hong Kong skyline from across the harbor, but unfortunately it was a day of clouds and mist and the buildings were all but invisible. On the way up to the Peak we passed #99 (lucky numbers) where we got a glimpse of the home of kung fu legend, Jackie Chan. All of the houses on the Peak are in the $20-40 million range.

Maybe the most interesting part of the tour was a visit to a street where every shop sells dried “stuff,” used for everything imaginable from cooking materials to medicinal concoctions, to potions used in the many superstitions that rule much of Chinese life. There were dried fruits and vegetables of all types, dried shark’s fins, dried birds nests used for the expensive delicacy bird’s nest soup, and bin after bin of things you don’t even want to know about, most of which even Andy couldn’t identify and had to ask. My favorite oddity though was the deer antlers, which they boil for many hours and then when soft slice into paper thin slices and use to flavor soups and stews. The shop that sold the dried deer antlers also had dried deer’s tails—you know, that part of the deer anatomy that started out as a cute little wagging thing that follows the deer into the forest. If you don’t believe how weird some of this dried “stuff” was, note the picture above which was prominently displayed in one of the windows: We Buy Gallstones. Dr. Mark, are you listening? This could be a whole new market!

The tour ended with a visit to a Taoist temple right in the middle of the city. I had noticed earlier that I hadn’t seen that many temples—not like in Bangkok where it seems like every other building is a Buddhist temple. I asked Andy how many temples there were in Hong Kong. Six hundred! Oh well, they must be well camouflaged!

But back to the Taoist temple: The driver parked our bus in a lot with lots of other buses and Mary and I immediately assumed we were being taken to a major tourist attraction. Well, by now we should have trusted old Andy. This temple is an attraction, all right, but what it attracts is thousands of Chinese both locally and from all over China who come with incense and gifts of food and clothing which they proceed to offer to the gods in exchange for long life, prosperity, wealth, many children, etc. etc. The incense was so thick you could hardly see or breathe and hundreds of worshippers were on their knees or prostrate outside the temple doors holding bouquets of the stuff all burning at once, blankets spread out with fruit and raw chickens on them, and at least one of every family shaking fortune sticks. Fortune sticks are kind of like pickup sticks—you shake a box full of them until one shakes itself loose and falls out onto the ground. Each stick has a number on it, and you then record the number of the fallen stick and do the whole thing over and over again. The combination of numbers then tells you your future. Now if what is prophesied in the sticks doesn’t happen, you need to come back and try again, but if it does happen, you need to come back and thank the gods for smiling upon you. Thus, you have a bit of a vicious circle of burning and shaking and kneeling and prostrating.

In re-reading this, I think I sound a bit disrespectful and I don’t mean to be. These people were every bit as pious and into their beliefs as we are into ours. They are just different and it was most interesting to be able to watch. Speaking of superstitions, a few of them that Andy related are: never wear a green hat, never give a bell as a gift, #4 means death, #9 means long life. Don’t ever pat the shoulder of a gambler or he is sure to lose. If you happen to see a monk on your way to the horse races or the gambling hall, turn around and go home because you will lose. Feng shui, which means wind and water, is very important to where you live: a house should face the water and have its back to the mountain, and you should never be able to open the front door and see through to the back.

Kudos to Andy for a great day!

Today was a “day at leisure,” so the four of us met in the lobby of the Peninsula (a lovely place to see and be seen), and then walked through the beautiful Kowloon Park where you can see locals practicing every form of martial art and lots of small groups playing guitars and singing, and many people like us just hanging out. Since most Hong Kong locals live in very small and tight quarters—4 people in a 500 square foot apartment—it is no wonder they use and love the outdoors.

Then on to the “Ladies Market” for another dose of local color. We ate Dim Sum for a late lunch, a two hour affair where once again we were the only non-Chinese. After lunch, the weather had turned surprisingly cold so we scrapped the plans for the rest of the day and returned to the hotel where we now sit, relaxed and ready for the next adventure.