Stepping into a new continent – a week in Hong Kong COMPLETED - Page 9 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Saturday 16 February – part six: a trip on a Hong Kong tradition
After it finished, we walked along back towards the Star Ferry terminal, getting a photo of the two of us in front of the lights on the way. It was a great photo, but the quality of the printing wasn’t the best, but as it only cost HK$10 (about £1.20), I wasn’t that bothered. I don’t have a copy of the photo to show you, as it’s not been scanned in. However, here are some that we took along the way:
A replica junk pulls into the harbour – this isn’t the one we’ll be taking later in the week
We kept stopping on the way to take photos, including some of a fantastic display of the characters that will represent the Beijing Olympics, showing them trying out all the Olympic sports. It’s a big thing over here, with a lot of countdowns in Hong Kong. After all, it will be staging the equestrian events when the games get here.
Finally, we made it to the Star Ferry terminal and this really reminded me of the Staten Island Ferry in New York. Although it can be used by visitors to get to and from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, it’s predominantly use is by residents to get to work. As such, the process for checking in for your ferry is very business like. As one ferry comes in, a buzzer sounds and the red light changes to green and you’re off. They don’t hang around either. I think we were all boarded and off in about three minutes, which wasn’t bad going.
It did look it would be a choppy trip over the water, but you don’t feel it that much when you’re on board thank goodness. We had to wait a couple of minutes for one of the other ferries to come out of the dock and then we landed on Hong Kong Island. The Star Ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island moved forwards about a year ago on more land reclamation. It’s amazing how much building has taken place on reclaimed land and they were claiming more all the time, making the harbour smaller and smaller. What that will mean longer term, who knows, but I can’t help but wonder what damage they are doing to the environment.
We headed for the subway station, but as we entered the mall where it’s situated, Mark mentioned that he was hungry and I could do with some food as well, so we had a look at the store directory and found a McDonald’s. I know it’s a cop out, but it’s safe and it was one of the few places still open at that time. Mark got a Big Mac meal and I just wanted some fries, but things got a bit confused and it took about three attempts to explain what we wanted, but eventually we got there.
When we were done, we headed for the MTR station and this is one that links underground between two stations. It was like being in an airport with huge caverns underground. It’s a shame that we don’t do things like this in London, as it seems a lot of other cities do and often have underground city beneath them.
Eventually we found our way to the right line and it was fairly busy on the way back to the hotel. It does seem like this city doesn’t sleep. It was certainly still really busy at 10.00 with no sign of things slowing down as we walked up the road to our hotel. It had been a long day and as soon as we got in, we just crashed.
Today we walked 10.89 miles. The weather today was mainly dry with just a tiny bit of drizzle in the evening with temperatures in the high 50’s. The best thing today was the view from the Peak. The worst thing today was how tired we got mid way through the day. Today we tried seeing the Symphony of Lights And the result was it was a bit of a disappointment. The most magical moment today was seeing the Hong Kong skyline at night.
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Stunning views....the picture from the peak were absolutely amazing. Looking at all the stores you would think you are in a large US city....it really is so close to a NY look.
Sorry the Evening Lights production was not as good as claimed...but I wonder how the fireworks at Hong Kong Disney fare...
I woke up about 6.00m but as Mark was still asleep, I watched a bit of TV. It’s very surreal here. There’s a channel called AXN Asia that just basically puts out American TV with some Asian versions. There’s an Amazing Race Asia, but generally it’s what you would see in the States, with shows like CSI and House on. I watched the last episode of a series of 24 and the funning thing was for those who watch it, it’s the one where the Chinese kidnap Jack at the end. Considering what you might have heard about the Chinese living in a fairly restricted society, I couldn’t see any evidence of that here, not judging by what they were showing on TV anyway.
We took our time getting going and by the time we had had breakfast and left the hotel, it was 9.45. We boarded the subway and again, this was packed, but interestingly today it was packed with woman, many of them single. I had heard that on Sundays, the city is packed with women, especially Filipino, as it’s the only day of the week they have off. From what we saw this morning, that was certainly true.
We had to change lines halfway through at the same place we had been through last night and today, it was at lot busier. We saw lots of runners who had obviously competed in the Hong Kong Marathon that had taken place earlier today. I couldn’t believe how good they all looked, considering all the running that they had been doing.
When we got on the second line (unfortunately just missing a seat, which was really annoying, we went outside for a fair bit of the journey and saw some of the marathon still taking place. Something else that was surprising was how far out it was all built up. Just when you thought that you’d got to the suburbs, no, there were more high rise buildings.
I don’t think there can be another city in the world with so many high rise buildings everywhere. Finally we did see some countryside, with lots of sea around and this was around Sunny Bay, home to the Hong Kong Disneyland subway stop. Tomorrow we’d be there and I couldn’t wait to see what it’s like. I was just glad we weren’t going there today, judging by how people got off at that stop. Anyway, we had one more stop to go and then it was off and over to the cable car stop nearby.
There was a huge line to get on to this thing and the signs warned us that it would be about 45 minutes until we boarded. Although it was a long wait, I put it at more like 30 minutes and we kept moving quickly enough, so that was no problem. We went for a return cable car journey with no added extras (you could get admission into films included as part of a combo ticket, but we weren’t interested in seeing them) and finally we were off soaring over mountains, as we made our way up to the Po Lin Monastery. The cable car journey was about 25 minutes long and we went through about two turning stations and over green mountains and lakes. It was beautiful scenery, although a bit misty.
You can tell we’re right back out near the main airport again You have to be seriously committed hikers to do this! The Buddha in the distance
When we got to the other end, we walked through the shopping village (and dining area) and headed straight for the monastery.
I had come to see one thing and that was the huge Buddha here. It’s the amongst the largest sitting Buddhas in the world, but it dates from just 1993. I think someone had an eye on the tourist market when this thing was built.
It’s got 183 steps up to it and Mark wasn’t sure that he’d do it, but there were plenty of stops on the way, so off we went and make it, we did.
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And what an amazing underground subway system!! 
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