We're arrived early evening right into the center of Hong Kong harbour. This world is vibrant, full of multi-national companies with huge signs atop the high rise buildings. Many had light shows on their port facing sides and a few with some laser lights during the evening.
We spent a couple of hours in Kowloon on our first evening, since that's where we were docked. It's non-stop shopping, starting in a large mall that you have to walk through just to leave the terminal - not impressive for us, but we aren't really mall shoppers. We had hoped to take the tram to Victoria Peak that evening, but it was quite foggy, so we opted to wander a bit and then stroll along the port promenade.
The next day went across to Hong Kong and Stanley on the traditional Star Ferry. The toughest part is having correct change for the ferry token machine (it took a 10 HKD note and gave change but sometimes won't). Kind of funny to have a fairly antiquated system in the midst of this huge, modern city - the buses and trams also have old style fare collection devices. The bus to Stanley (bus 6) was $7.80 ($4:00 if you have ID for senior rate). Once at Stanley market, I requested coins for the buses and that was easy.
We loved the ride over the mountain to Stanley. In one way, it quickly got us away from the skyscrapers and into Terre covered hillsides, but then we found huge hillside resorts on the Repulse Bay side. Stanley market was pretty touristy, but had a few nice things we could buy to bring home. Walking along the old promenade was nice - so different from the bustle of downtown Hong Kong.
We had seen a few of the iconic trams from the bus, so decided we'd get off as soon as we saw the tracks on our way back, just to ride them a bit - kind of like using the different transport means in San Francisco.
We had met a couple from Hong Kong at breakfast, and they suggested a couple of "old" sights, so we took the tram to the base of the hill and climbed the steps up and up and up to see the Man Mo temple - it's the oldest temple in Hong Kong and supports schools and hospitals in the area. As usual, the incense drove us out fairly quickly.
From there we went to an old style workaday restaurant, where we tried two dim sum options, having really no idea what we were eating, how to eat it, or how much of our few remaining funds it would use. We managed very clumsily to eat most of it with chopsticks, but went over our funds by about 50 cents, which we had to keep to get back on the ferry. The people around us seemed amused and Stan thinks someone behind us paid the difference (we did try to give them a US dollar, but they didn't want that).
We watched the sail-away from the lights of the Hong Kong skyline, with a few laser lights adding to the display. There is much more to see in Hong Kong, should we come this way again someday.
Stan's photo blogs - Hong Kong
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