Temple, Sampan, Tea and Night Harbor

Hong Kong Day 2

Really full and busy day today.  We had a group tour this morning, which started with a walk through the "old section" of the city, the western side, where the high rises and shops and restaurants are built on the mountainous terrain.  There are a whole series of escalators and "travelators" that transport people up and down that neighborhood, which includes their version of "Soho" and "Chinatown."  Their Soho looks a lot like Soho in NYC!!  After wandering that neighborhood we visited the Man Mo Temple, a Daoist Temple, which was fascinating.  We went into the hall of ancestors, where people  make offerings to their dead relatives who are memorialized on plaques in the temple.  Then there are two other shrine rooms with statues of Daoist saints where folks bring offerings and make prayers.  The incense that burns in the temple are HUGE coils that hang from the ceiling. They light the end of each coil and it just continues to burn for hours.  I've incuded pics of some of the statues in the temple and the incense coils.

After the temple we went to a jewelry factory and then went to the harbor where we took a sampan ride through the area of the harbor where the floating village (or more accurately the vestiges of the floating village) still exists alongside multi-million dollar yachts!  There are boat people who have lived on small houseboats in the harbor for generations, although they are dwindling now as the younger generation has been required to attend pubic schools and, once educated, no longer want to continue the boat people's life.  The boats are extremely small.  The boat people are fishermen who sell their catch to the wholesalers at the fish market.  

We returned to the hotel and then three of us decided we wanted to do "afternoon tea" at the Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon Island.  We changed and took the ferry across the harbor to Kowloon for the tea which begins at 2. We got there a little before 2 and there was already a long line for tea.  Fortunately it moved quickly so we only had to wait about 15 minutes to be seated.  It is a very elegant hotel lobby, not unlike the Plaza in NYC.  The afternoon tea is a full on British tea, with scones, finger sandwiches, cakes, and even an absolutely delicious chocolate mousse!  There was live violin and flute music to accompany tea.  We enjoyed ourselves immensely and it was very relaxing to sit there and enjoy the good food, terrific tea and the atmosphere.  I've included a pic of our three tiered tea tray and one of the restaurant itself.  The scones with clotted cream and jam were fabulous.  We rolled out of there close to 4:00 and had only a little time to browse around the area before we had to head back to our hotel for our evening excursion which began at 5:30. 

Our evening activities included a thai dinner (which I only picked at since I was still very full from tea!), followed by a walk through the night market, then a ferry ride across the harbor where we were able to enjoy the many lights on the buildings.  The lights are really fantastic on the buildings in the harbor, as they move and change and are multicolored and the whole scene is just a glittery, rainbow of color and special effects.  Its really magnificent.  Then we drove up to Victoria Peak, the highest point in Hong Kong where we were looking down on the enormous skyscrapers that we had watched from the harbor.  Then we came back down the mountain and took a trolley ride.  The trolleys in Hong Kong are double deckers, like London buses.  After that we returned to our hotel and it was nearly 11:00 PM when we rolled in here.  So it was a fun but somewhat exhausting day!!  Tomorrow is our last day and there are no scheduled activities although a bunch of us want to do a couple of tourist sites so we will all go together to those. 

I'm pretty tired from the day's activities so I'm off to sleep now.

More tomorrow night....