After a good night of sleep and a good breakfast, we left the ship with the intentions of riding the tram to the top of Victoria Peak. It is the tallest mountain on Hong Kong Island and has amazing views of the city. But today’s weather did not co-operate as it was colder, cloudier and very windy. We hoped to try it in the afternoon if the weather cleared up. Once again we took the shuttle to the Central Pier where the information guide mapped out a walking tour along with directions to the Central Mid-level escalators. These escalators are the world’s longest at 800 meters, and since Hong Kong is all hills, the main way for people to get to their homes. They operate down only from 6:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and then up from 10:30 a.m. to midnight. To get to the escalators we walked on various covered walkways, the whole of Exchange Square is connected. Once we found the escalators we headed up, stopping off in the SoHo district. This is the main restaurant and club area, with every nationality represented.
Going up the escalator
View from the escalator
The Walk down at 300 meters
Next stop was the Man Mo Temple Compound. The temple was beautiful and many people making offerings it was a very serene place. (The cone-shaped objects on the ceiling are incense. I had to laugh, they were lighting the incense with a blow-torch. The sights and smells inside these temples is something not to be missed.)
Heading down we walked through the antique section, many shops with many great items. We did end up buying a (genuine!) antique horse, we just hope it will make it home as it is very fragile and old. We then walked through the furniture district, again it was beautiful furniture and would have loved to buy some. The prices were very good. (Chris and Tracy, you would love it here!) The walk down was easy and the sights interesting. We now headed straight down and went through a market area with fish, vegetables and every kind of mushroom in the world. Betty wanted to cut the bag of frogs open and set them free.
Bag of live frogs!!!
We continued down through various other markets and restaurants. All the restaurants were packed with most having a line of people waiting outside. This is what happens when you have six million people living in such a small area. We had over 300 Hong Kong dollars to spend but didn’t find anything we wanted or needed, or anywhere to eat as they were all busy.
Once to the bottom of the hill, we went to the IFC Mall, this mall was built since our last visit. There was a food market, we strolled thru to just check it out. We spotted a bakery and ended up getting two rolls which served as our lunch. Since we still had Hong Kong dollars we headed to the money exchange at the pier and exchanged it for money for Thailand. We exchanged $270 Hong Kong Dollars and they gave us $970 Thai Baht’s so now we are rich again. Back at the ship we went to dinner, they were having a Hong Kong buffet which turned out to be excellent. Betty and I ate a little of everything, the crispy duck was especially good. (If you could get past the fact that the duck was laying on the carving board with its head still on.) We were joined at the table by Rita and Hartman, we have never seen them before. It turned out that Rita was a retired nurse and Hartman was retired letter carrier, go figure. We had a very nice conversation and talked for nearly 2 hours. Back in the cabin we watched the movie “ The Descendants” with George Clooney.
We sailed out at 5:20 and noticed that the reason we didn’t remember the sail in was that on our last cruise we actually sailed in the opposite way since we came from Vietnam and now we are sailing to Vietnam. Once out of the busy harbor, we will enter the East Lamma Channel where the pilot will disembark and we will then enter the South China Sea. We will then maintain a south-south-westerly course across the South China Sea.
