Hong Kong = Sensory Overload. Hong Kong (HK) is wonderful!

Above: Hong Kong by day as we sailed in about 8:00 AM. Very foggy exacerbated by the pollution from the mainland.
Below: Hong Kong by night. Still a little overcast, but the cacophony of light cuts through most of it.

Hong Kong (HK) consists of a small peninsula jutting into the South China Sea plus about 200 or more islands. It is about 400 sq. mi. in total land area and has about 8.5 million inhabitants. Most of them were out shopping during our visit. There are actually three parts to HK: HK Island; Kowloon Peninsula; and, the New Territories, a series of islands, peninsulas, and appendages of the mainland. 

HK was a part of the British Empire but is no longer a British Crown Colony. It was returned to China in 1997. Although it is now part of China, it remains as a Special Administrative Region (SAR). It will retain SAR status until 2047 at which time it will be under full Chinese control. Our guide/interpreter, Quin Dey (“Queen”) was sanguine about the eventual finality of the SAR. She said that she will be in her 70s at that time and realizes that the younger generation will have lived as Chinese citizens for most of their lives and will most likely be more easily assimilated.

As we pulled into the harbor we passed several other cruise ships docked farther out than we expected but as it turns out, we were docked right up in the middle of everything. Our dockage was at the Ocean Terminal, but more on that later.

We had tours for both days, but they were not full day tours. This gave us enough time to do a bit of wandering on our own. What a city to wander in!

Our first day’s tour was a highlights tour that took us from the top of Victoria Peak to a boat ride in the harbor to a visit to a street market. A full tour and yet we had time left to wander on our own for a while.

We began with a tram trip that was nearly vertical. The Victoria Tram was built in 1888 and has operated continuously since. Fortunately, they have updated the tram cars and the ride was fairly comfortable. Since we were ascending at a rather steep incline, gravity kept pulling us back into our seats as we strained to look around at the passing buildings and landscape on the way up. Unfortunately, a combination of weather factors rendered any long distance sightings null. The visibility was only a few hundred feet at first, but it gradually cleared to about a thousand feet. Still hard to see much on the ground, but still worth the trip.

Several shots of HK from Victoria Peak. Oops, the one on the left top is at harbor level.

Left: We pose in front of the impressive view from Victoria Peak. Squint a little and you'll see what we saw...not much.
Right: I was always a sucker for any form of transportation. This car was from the early 20th century and is now a tourist office.

At the top of Victoria Peak is a large shopping mall (Peak Galleria). Among the usual tourist schlock are high end shops, boutiques, and restaurants. By the way, that last sentence pretty much describes HK: tourist schlock, high-end shops and boutiques, and restaurants. We were then bussed down the mountain and headed toward the Aberdeen section of HK. Aberdeen is one of the oldest parts of HK and still has the remnants of the fishermen and boat people who have lived on the water for centuries. The locals call them the “water gypsies.”

Our river tour began at the shore side dock where the private ferries take people out to the world’s largest floating restaurant: the aptly named Jumbo Seafood Restaurant – five stories of food, drink, and kitschy opulence. We didn’t stop there, but it was a great photo op.

Some shots of HK harbor from our little sampan on the water tour. The upper right is a shot of the Jumbo Restaurant.

The harbor bustles with ferries, fishermen, families, merchants, and the ubiquitous tourists. Our twelve-passenger miniature sampan put-putted along driven by a large older lady who had several words of English: boat, fisher, houseboat, tip, thank you… IT took us about 20 minutes to make a small circle around the roughly two hundred or so small water gypsy boats, large fishing trawlers, pleasure boats, and other tourist sampans. After our return to shore, it was back in the bus for a trip to our last stop, Stanley Market.

Stanley Market is one of several sprawling street markets scattered throughout HK. Some of the markets specialize and Stanley is known for clothing, although one can find just about anything in any of the markets. We strolled among the “shops” and stalls and tabletop vendors more for the novelty than to buy anything. Most of the prices are fixed, although some bargaining is done. Since this was the Chinese New Year celebration weekend, we were told not to expect to bargain much at all. Although we did not intend to buy anything, the array of clothing ranging from simple shirts to quite fancy brocade evening coats was too much to resist and Bonnie would up with several items – some as possible gifts and some for herself.

This is the only really good shot in Stanley Market. The little girl saw us poking around the stalls and couldn't take her eyes off us. As soon as I got the shot, she turned and ran to her Father.

Then it was back on the bus and back to the ship. All in all a good introduction; however, we decided that HK is another one of those places that need much more time to fully savor and appreciate and it has gone on our must-return-to list for further exploration.

The pier where we are docked is adjacent to one of the world’s largest, possibly the largest, shopping malls: Harbor City. There are over 300 stores, 150 restaurants, parking for thousands of cars, and acres of people. We were struck by the numbers of young and youngish people who crowded the stores and mallways. It seemed like everyone had at least one or two shopping bags and they all looked eager to buy more of whatever.

The evening, we had a farewell dinner on deck with another couple we had met on the cruise who were leaving the ship in HK. HK at night is as exciting as it is during the day. The light shows on the sides of the tall buildings and the lasers shooting off the building tops seem to be right out of “Blade Runner” (if anyone else remembers that movie…). This show was not just a series of lights on the buildings, but pictures, Chinese writing and slogans, and one double set of buildings side-by-side that actually had an aquarium being depicted! All in a cacophony of color, motion, and throb that kept you looking from one to another to another to see what would come next.

I will be doing a separate posting about our second day in HK soon.

Stay tuned…