Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 (Hong Kong)

THE 'HONG KONG FOR DUMMIES' TOUR: To get my bearings, I started re-reading James Clavell's excellent Tai-Pai. I found myself still immersed in the 1840s by 9 a.m. There's got to be a better way to learn about Hong Kong, right? Why not go outside?
So to fast-forward my knowledge of the city, I took a guided bus tour of Hong Kong's main island. No Kowloon. No New Territories.
We zipped up a hill, right by a fabulous house that we were told was used in the filming of Soldier of Fortune. I took one picture on the fly (right). (Note: Someone with plenty of time on his/her hands dutifully isolated some movie stills that show the house. (I think it was the house of Hank Lee, the character played by Clark Gable.) It was too misty to get a good view of the city from the heights (above). But I did get hornswoggled into buying a PLATE with my picture taken on the summit, complete with mist in the background.
Don't tell Sandy, but she might have to unwrap it on the morning of December 25. On the other hand it might not survive the trip back to Singapore. It's quite breakable.

ON TO ABERDEEN: Later in the tour, we tootled through Aberdeen Harbor in a tourist-fueled sampan. I think we were in a well-protected typhoon haven, which is designed to provide protection for boats when those storms roar through here. We passed by numerous floating homes. One, which was either one of those residences or an idle fishing/work boat, housed a young man who was enjoying a smoke (right). We drove around the famous floating Jumbo restaurant (below).
After the harbor, we walked through a jewelry-making workshop in Aberdeen and then across the southern coast of the island past Repulse Bay and Deep Water Bay. We stopped at Stanley, to allow time for shopping at the town's market. I wolfed down a Belgian hot dog on the shore before catching the bus back to the city.

No comments:

Post a Comment