Feb. 25 - 28 Lots of things.......

Feb 25 – NP360, Buddha, Tai O, Stanley, Aberdeen, The Peak

Not doing very well with my blogging since I’ve returned from the holidays. I’m not working any more, but seem to be keeping myself pretty busy. So today is March 8, I’m over a week behind. The good thing for those who wanted brevity, is that my memory isn’t so good, so there will be many details that I’ve forgotten.

So on this Sunday my job was to show Keith (the Cadmus guy here for the week from the US) some of the HK sight, a mission I’m happy to undertake. He wanted to see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island, a must see in HK. Having been before I knew just what to do. Since this trip was not decided on until the last minute, I couldn’t buy the tickets for the skyrail (cable car) ahead of time. This meant waiting in line for about an hour. It wasn’t too bad & the weather was fairly comfortable & not so humid. The skyrail was spectacular. This being my 2nd trip I knew what to expect. It is fun to see other’s reactions though. It was a nice clear day so good for photo shooting. (this photo is NOT Keith, just thought this guy looked so cute with his New Years pinwheel trophy)



Since I’ve described the Buddha in detail on other occasions I won’t do it again. I’ve learned a few tricks, like you don’t HAVE to buy the $7.50US tickets which include a veggie lunch in order to climb to the top (260 stairs). If you really want to go into the enclosed area under the Buddha, (museum of sorts, but the most exciting thing is the Buddha relic – piece of his bone – that is the size of a grain of rice & behind several sheets of glass, so it’s almost impossible to see & not too awe inspiring for non-Buddhists) you can just buy a much cheaper ticket for that. We just climbed the stairs. We wandered around the temple which was fairly crowded, typical for Sunday. People are still celebrating the New Year, so the temple is where they go to light lots & lots of incense & have their fortunes told. We also went out to the Path of Wisdom, which was no longer under construction like the last time I went. Much nicer now.

We then took the bus out to Tai O, the fishing village & Keith got the obligatory photo of the shark skin & all sorts of dried fish. He bought a beer for 50 cents & drank it as we wandered. No open container laws here. We hoped another bus & headed to the village where we caught the ferry back to HK Island. It was the slow ferry, but nice weather, so it was very pleasant to sit outside. The guy next to us looked like an experienced British ferry rider. He looked in his 70’s & had several cans of beer that he consumed on the ride, he also had snacks & read the paper. I guess his relaxing Sunday ride. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed on & rode it back again. Maybe time to get away from the wife or something, who knows.

We’d been in contact with John who stayed home to do some work & he met us at the ferry pier. We caught a bus from the pier out to Stanley Market, which is on the south side of the island. John likes to take people there, it is easy & less stressful shopping that the night market. When we arrived it was about 5:50 & the market closes at 6 (OOPS). Turns out many places didn’t really close up until 6:30. It was almost empty & many shops were closed already, so it made it pretty easy. Keith did a good job getting things for family & friends & getting them quickly. It is interesting to see how different people work the shopping thing.

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we decided to try a seafood place that I had heard was good in Aberdeen. It sort of a tourist place, but supposed to be good. So we took a taxi to Jumbo Restaurant. It is supposedly the largest floating restaurant in the world. It doesn’t go anywhere, but you do have to take a boat out to it. Very fancy & Chinese. We got the set dinner which was great. We had fish soup, shrimp, seaweed salad, scallops, crab balls, a whole fish (this is the Chinese way of serving) which was delicious. I think a few other things. The dessert was the most interesting. I’d been telling Keith about how taste buds are different in different countries. I said what the Chinese consider sweet, we would not consider so. They love red beans & make candy and ice cream out of it. It is sort of strange for Westerners. Well our dessert was red bean & lotus seed cream soup. It was a hot soup & slightly sweet, but had tiny red beans in it & was red colored. Keith was not impressed. It was OK, I think John liked it.

It was such a clear evening that we decided Keith should see the Peak lest it be cloudy & he miss it later in the week. So we hoped a taxi to the Peak. It was indeed an excellent night for photo taking up there. We even talked to a woman selling oil paintings that she said her husband paints & she sells every night up there. They were mostly of HK in different shades, some at night with a moon, some at sunset, some very pink ones (strange). We each bought one, they were like $12US, so no big deal, but I think will look nice framed on our wall. Easy to transport. Since Keith felt like he missed dessert, we got some gelato & all were happy with that. The Italians know how to make sweet sweets. We took the Peak Tram down & were all pretty tired. I told Keith I think he set a record for any visitor we’ve had in visiting the most places in one day. We were all worn out.

Feb 26 – Dragon & Lion Dancers, etc…

Today I went to pick up the thing that I’d taken to the tailor to have made. Not sure if you remember, but this was for John & I thought is was something for the company, a sample or something, so I agreed to get copies made of this garment. It was a terrycloth swim suit cover all (one piece, shorts & strapless elastic top). After I took it to the tailor, Mrs. Poon, John tells me it is for his boss’s mother-in-law. Imagine sending something like that here to be made, I didn’t really get it. Anyway, I don’t think Mrs. Poon understood that the garment was not for me. I had tried to tell her to copy exactly, not for me. She kept wanting to make it bigger. Well, she made it bigger. Not a lot bigger, but definitely bigger. She wanted me to try it on & I had to say, no, not for me. It ended up costing about $50US, so I don’t think the boss is going to be very happy. I don’t know what it costs to have things made, but it was so simple I think it could have been done for that in the US.

I had to go to the post office & had found out the nearest one was down the hill on Queen’s Road, near the tailor. Walking along Queen’s Rd I naturally passed some little clothing stalls. I had to stop & a few had some bigger sized T-shirts. I got a couple of them because they were so funny. One I got says “Crusty Demons” on the front in Goth lettering. I got this for Brooks girlfriend for her birthday. The funniest thing about it is that on the inside where the label should be (there was no label) was printed “made in China by the tallest people we could find there”. This just cracked me up. I also found a t-shirt for my friend, Sue, who also has a birthday. This one was much stranger, you know why this stuff is sold here & not in an English speaking country, because half the stuff is misspelled & often what is written doesn’t mean anything. So here is what Sue’s said: “VOICE HEARI AYRO” in large letters, then under in small letters, “It you nsicn carefully to the voice of HER your God and do what is righr ia his eyes, if you’pay attention to his commands and heep all his decrees, t will not hrhr on you any of the diseases and heals co B005” Don’t ask me what it mean, but I thought Sue would find it amusing. I got one for myself that reads “HEAT” then under that “CELEB” then under that “ATTENTION”, then written over those words “CHEERFUL GIRL”. I just liked the Cheerful girl part.

I did find the post office & it was in the huge building that we can see from our apartment that has really nice lights at night & I’ve never known what building it was. It is called just The Center. There are government offices & other random offices in it & the post office. Had to go to 3 different windows, it is very confusing. You can do a lot of things at the post office besides send mail, so there are lots of windows for many different things & what they write in English is more British English, so it doesn’t always make sense to us Americans.

As I exited the building I happened to notice that they were putting up a display or something in the area in front of the building. I noticed a sing saying “Dragon & Lion Dancers at 1:30”. It was 12:45, so I decided to wait & see what it was all about. Dragon dances are a big deal for the New Year, very traditional & people go crazy over them. I was the first one there so staked out my spot. I’d learned from the New Years performances. The guards made me move back some & people kept trying to get in front of me & the guard would move them back behind me. One woman get next to me & she took it upon herself to make sure I retained my front spot. She didn’t speak a word of English, but spoke to me continuously in Chinese. It was so funny. I think she knew I didn’t understand, but she just wanted to talk. When the guy who is like the Chinese father Christmas came out with a basket of goodies, she made a point of getting some & gave them to me. They were red envelops with candy & we decided it wasn’t very good so we both gave our extras to a little boy near us, he didn’t like them either. She also went back a few times to get different strips of red paper with gold Chinese writing on them. I guess they each have a different meaning to bring you luck for different things. She got me a bunch of them & explained in detail what each one said. I understood none of it, but smiled & nodded politely. I guess I was her project for the day.

When the dance finally started I did have a good spot & got some great photos (my new friend made sure of that). The music for the dancing was provided by several huge drums & some symbols, that’s it. So it was very loud, but fun. The dragon came out first & it was a long dragon on several poles held up by probably 15 or 20 people. One person holds up a ball on a pole & leads the dragon around. They are very agile & fast & had to keep changing out dancers as they got too tired to keep up. At one point they gave the ball pole to a man in a suit (I’m guessing a government official or bank president) & he had the honor of leading the dragon, everyone cheered for him.

Next up were the 2 pole lions, that actually looked very much like dragons to me, but they were 1 person in a suit, covered by the suit. These guys climbed poles that were about 25 feet high held by people at the bottom. There was a cross bar that they danced on & leaped off of & did all sort of acrobats on. At the end they were served some lettuce with long poles & the lion took it in his mouth, held it there, then spit it out all chewed up. Next they were given a scroll & at the appropriate moment, confetti was shot into the air & the lions let their scrolls were released to reveal a long scroll with what I assume was a special New Years message. Everyone cheered like crazy.

The high point of the performance was the lion that walked on poles. There were about 10 sets of metal poles that were about 10 feet high, set up in a row with metal circles on top of them, barely enough room to stand on. This lion (2 men under a lion suit) jumped onto the platforms & leaped & jumped from one to another & stood on each other like raring up. They twisted & turned & you always felt like there was no way they would land on that little platform safely & they always did. They were really incredible. I can’t even describe how amazing & impressive it was. It ended with great cheering from the crowd & the dragon & all the lions dancing together & taking bows. It sure was a fun event to happen upon, I’m so glad I got to see it.

The rest of my day was spent looking for some books for John. It turns out there are not large book stores here like we have in the US. The largest I could find in our area was probably 1500 sq. ft. They had lots of books, the Chinese are great at fitting lots of stuff in very small areas, but not what he wanted. I was also looking for maps of Asian countries that are notebook size & stiff & durable. Nobody had a clue what I was wanting. I went to 4 different book stores, it was very frustrating. Thank goodness for Amazon.com!!

Feb 27 – Back to the temple & Walled City Park

It still being New Years (it lasts in earnest for the first 2 weeks after the actually day & really for a month afterwards), Sarah & I decided to do what all good Chinese folk do & go to the temple to have our fortunes read. We headed out to the best temple for fortunes (the one I’d been to last week), at Wong Tei San. The place was absolutely packed with people all over the place burning incense & fake money, praying & making offerings & doing the fortune stick thing. I bought myself a New Years bobble – it is a stick wrapped in shinny red ribbons & has a big circle with 4 little pin wheels on it. There are other ribbons of red & gold all over it & other decorations. Everyone had them & they came in all different sizes. We got our incense & fortune sticks. We made our wishes & then headed for the fortune telling area. We got sucked into seeing the first woman who had English written on her booth. Sarah had her palm read & it was not very clear what the woman was talking about. The woman took Sarah’s numbers & said about the same thing about the 2 numbers as she did about the palm. We weren’t very impressed. We next went to the woman I’d used last week. We had to wait, but it was worth it. She was much clearer. I couldn’t remember the numbers I had gotten (probably very bad luck), so I passed on the fortune. I’ll have to stick with the one I got last week.

There is a little meditation park near the temple that has a large pond that is filled with turtles. It was very peaceful to walk around. It was lunch time so we went to the little mall near the temple & had Chinese soup. On our way out we were looking at the map to figure out if we could walk to the Kowloon Walled Park. A woman very nicely asked if she could help us. I explained where we wanted to go. She started talking to some other people & they all gave suggestions in Chinese & she translated to me. He was drawing all over my map & trying to show me where to catch the bus & which bus was best to take. Sarah said afterwards that at one point there were no less than 10 people surrounding me making suggestions in Chinese. It was comical, but very nice of them to be so helpful. We laughed afterwards that we could have been at the park in the time they spent trying to tell us how to catch the bus & where to get off. Must have been 10 minutes doing all of this.

We finally told them we now knew where to go & would be fine & thanked them profusely. They wanted to take us to the bus stop, but we said that was not necessary. We wandered out & did our best to find the bus area, but after all of that, we couldn’t find it. We were laughing so hard. We finally looked at each other & said “Hell, let’s just take a taxi, it isn’t that far.” It was not far at all & once in the taxi we saw the bus depot. Oh well.

I’d been to the Kowloon Walled City Park before. It is a peaceful & relaxing place. Nice after the hectic temple scene. We walked around enjoyed the waterfall & rock sculpture. Sarah explained to me that the Chinese design their parks to resemble larger areas in nature, so the rocks were probably supposed to represent mountains. It made sense. We walked back about 10 minutes to the MTR station. I avoided taking out my map again for fear of getting “help”. Having done this trip before I knew where to go. No more adventures or misadventures on this journey.

Feb 28 –

Not a very exciting day. I worked on our taxes most of the day. We had to have all the info in to the tax prep people by today. There were many on-line forms to complete & copies of papers to scan. Not much fun, but it is done!! I went over to the Heifer International office to see the power point for the presentation that I’d be doing tomorrow. This school had a different project that they sponsored last year, so I needed to brush up on that. No problem!!

This evening I walked into our bed room, which has a good view of the harbor & something was really different. I did a second look at the harbor & there was this gigantic ship going by. It dwarfed the ferries & other boats out there. As it went by I could easily read on the smoke stacks “QUEEN MARY II”. WOW, I called for John to come take a look. I was not quick enough to get my camera out before it disappeared behind the buildings. I quickly called Sarah to tell her to look out her window. They had not seen it coming & were impressed as well. Sarah keeps up with local news better than I do, so she knew it was in town. I guess the harbor where the cruise ships usually dock is not large enough for QM2, so she had to dock out where the big cargo ships dock & ferry people in to port. It was an impressive sight.