More Pictures From Hong Kong, Part 2

Here's more pictures from Hong Kong, starting with our trip to Victoria Peak.

The closest buildings are on Hong Kong Island, but the rest of this picture is of the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor.  You can see how the mountains are really looming all around the massive city.

Clouds were settling in around the peak next to us, and there were some below us as well.

Here's a picture of Victoria Tram climbing towards the peak station.  It has just come out of almost a 90 degree turn; you can see the track at the far left of the picture.

I can't tell if this super-zoomed picture of distant islands is cool or not.  I offer my sincere apologies if it is, in fact, lame.

There was an extra fee for coming up to this very top part of the Peak Station building, but it was pretty cheap.  It was also worth it, as you get a clear, unobstructed view of the whole city.  There was a mini-museum set up behind the camera to show what Hong Kong used to be like.  The writing was in English and Chinese.  Very few people seemed to notice; I guess the view is a valid excuse.

We also had a great view of the other mountains in the area.  The weather was great during our time on the peak, although it was still stiflingly hot and humid, of course.

I challenge anyone to show me ANY evidence that there is an escalator with a cooler view than this.

I like framing pictures using trees, caves, and buildings.  There were plenty of other pictures like this one.

Chinese graffiti!

I told you already...I like photos framed by trees.  I could quit them if I wanted to...

When we mentioned the creepy staircase in the middle of the woods that we decided to climb, I'm not sure that we emphasized how far we went on it without seeing any other people or any signs that there was anything at the end of this path.  You can tell from Maura's tired expression that we haven't been spending too much time climbing long staircases on hiking paths lately.

Most of the time on that stone staircase was spent surrounded by dense trees, but the trees thinned out the higher we got, and there was occasionally a glimpse over them of a view like this.

I don't usually have a lot of luck with pictures of trees, but this one came out okay.  These trees were definitely unlike any that I've seen at home.

This is a view in the opposite direction of the city.  The "lake" in the foreground is actually Pok Fu Lam Reservoir, from which Hong Kong get its fresh water.  The tap water in Taiwan and much of mainland China is not safe to drink, so the fact that it is in Hong Kong is a nice perk.

We found this view towards the end of our hike.  Kowloon (including Tsim Tsa Shui, the area in which we stayed) is on the far left, and Hong Kong Island is on the right.

This is that platform that we took a million pictures from when we first got to the peak.

Maura's face basically sum up how she felt about a steep backwards decline down a mountain.

There may not be a lot going on in this picture, but it's the best one at showing the angle of decline.

I took a few pictures of these twin skyscrapers.

We stumbled upon this little park by accident.  When we got to the bottom of Victoria Peak, we knew that we wanted to head to the Star Ferry, but we weren't particularly sure where it was, so we wandered towards the water.

There's a fairly shocking number of these foot-long-or-so fish in most of these ponds.

You know I like framing pictures with trees.  I also like taking pictures of the reflections of buildings in other buildings.  I don't actually remember this coming up much in my life, but it was a short-lived obsession in this city.  Don't worry.  I'll just post this one.

Again, a random park we stumbled on on our way through Hong Kong Island.

It was starting to get dark (a process that seems to take very little time over here) during our walk, so the lights started to come on.  Hong Kong is all about brightly colored lighting on their skyscrapers.

This is probably my favorite picture (that doesn't have Maura in it) that I've taken in a long time.  These small, old-fashioned junk boats sail around Victoria Harbor with the huge urban sprawl as a background.  I loved it.

This is post-torrential-downpour.  We may have been soaked to the bone and unsure if my wallet and all of our money was destroyed, but we still had to walk the mile or so back to our hotel.  At least, as I found out at this moment, my camera still worked.

Don't ask me why, but our hotel had a random art exhibit (modern art?) that depicted a couple of rooms with...things...for some reason. 

I don't know if this monster fish was available for purchase if you had a party of 50, but it was hanging out in the tanks of fresh fish and shellfish in the lobby of the restaurant we ate at on Sunday night.

More to come, unless there is a groundswell of, "get over the Hong Kong trip and move on with your blogging life, Tom!"

More Pictures From Hong Kong

If you haven't already read our original Hong Kong post, you should definitely do that first.  I just took so many pictures (292 that I kept, although that was limited by the fact that it was raining for most of the weekend) that I wanted to share some of the ones that I didn't think fit with the excellent narrative of our trip that Maura wrote.
Here's part 1:

We were on the 17th floor of our hotel, and this was the view down.  Not a nice view, actually, but kind of cool for a non-city-dweller like me.

This is what all of the streets looked like at night, pretty much.  There were signs on top of signs on top of signs as far as the eye could see, and we could read about 1% of them (so, hundreds).

I put the picture of Bruce Lee's awesome statue in the first post, but this is his star in the Avenue of the Stars.  There were a lot of other stars like this for actors we didn't recognize (and a very small number of ones that we did).

This is a view of Stanley Harbor.  The pier you can see behind the tree is the same pier as the one from the original Hong Kong post from a different angle.  The big building in the second is a historic building called the Murray House.

This is the outside of the Tin Hau Temple in Stanley.  It doesn't look as nice as most of the temples we've seen, but it was built in 1767 to worship Tin Hau, the goddess of the sea.

There's lots of statues like this at the temples.  I'm a fan.

Inside Tin Hau Temple in Stanley.  The fruit has been left as offerings, and the sticks in the mini-cauldrons are incense sticks left in prayer.

This is Maura eating lunch on that pier from the earlier picture.

The whole Stanley area was really nice.  Taichung isn't on the ocean, so we haven't spent much time around water this trip.

This tiny temple is built right above the water near Stanley.

There was a sign that indicated that these trees actually help keep the cliffs and walls from collapsing. 

I like this picture.

We stumbled onto a Buddhist monastery that wasn't listed on our map towards the end of our Stanley nature walk.  This statue of a goddess standing on a sea serpent was there, and you can see a few people praying to her in the picture.

This much smaller sculpture was there as well.  Some people had left coins in the serpent's mouth.

This was one of the better picture's taken out of the bus window on our trip back to Hong Kong.

Also out the bus window, this is a picture of a Ocean Park, a big amusement park/oceanarium.  The cable cars are one way of getting to the park, and I can only imagine how great the view is during the ride.

Another shot of the cable cars on their way to Ocean Park.  This picture is kind of ruined by the reflection from the bus window.

We saw a few of these cemetaries.  It's hard to tell, but the graves are very tightly packed in, and they ascend in many layers all the way up a cliff face in the distance.  Literally, they line the shelves of a cliff with as many graves as will fit, and there are lots of shelves.  This cemetary was Catholic, but we only saw it from the bus as we drove past.

More to come, when I get the chance.

Comments & Whatnot

Hello everybody,

First of all, thank you to everyone that has read our blog since we left on our big trip, and thank you especially to those of you that have sent kind words about the content of it.  Some of you have told us that you have been unable to leave comments on the posts, and we just discovered that that was totally our fault.  It's fixed now, and anyone should be able to leave comments, including anonymous ones (although make sure to tell us who you are!).  Also, we learned that we could add a link to the side of the page that allows you to "follow" our blog, which I'm pretty sure means that you should get an email whenever we make a new post.  If you're someone that eagerly anticipates our new posts (Hi Mom!), then you should definitely check that out.  Finally, if you are reading our blog NOT because you know us, but because you are planning for a trip to Taiwan (we have 30 page views from Russia in the last month, as well as several from all over the world), then feel free to leave questions in the comments; we'll do our best to answer them as helpfully as we can.

Thank you again to everyone,
Tom & Maura

A Weekend In Hong Kong

Written by Maura, photos and captions by Tom:

Flights 5 and 6 of this summer adventure were for this past weekend in Hong Kong. We were originally supposed to leave Taichung early Saturday morning, but due to the typhoon, we didn't take off until 6:00 pm. We got to the hotel in Hong Kong around 10 pm and spent the first night visiting the Temple Street Night Market very close to our hotel.

These booths went for several city blocks.  Most of the stuff was much nicer than the "NO FART" signs to the right.

Then, we wandered down to the Avenue of the Stars (like Hollywood's Walk of Fame) waterfront promenade. From there you could see across the river to Hong Kong Island which had probably the most amazing skyline I have ever seen.

The Avenue of the Stars was a big tribute to film and Chinese film stars, complete with a few awesome statues like this one.

Taking nighttime landscape pictures with my camera took a long time.  MANY pictures came out too blurry, but this skyline was too amazing to not try to capture.

See?

Bruce Lee was the biggest star (to my mostly ignorant mind, anyways) there, and he had the statue to prove it.

Saturday morning started with a trip to Stanley, a small fishing village on the far side of Hong Kong Island. We had to take the metro and then a bus to get there, but it was really nice. They had several beautiful temples and a great park with beautiful views all along the ocean.

We ate lunch on that pier to the left.

Then we went to Victoria Peak, the highest point around where you could see a breathtaking view of Hong Kong. However, it involved a terrifying tram ride up the mountain at a really steep angle pretty much the entire way. While I hated the ride up, it was worth it once we got to the top.

The ride up may have terrified Maura, but it did have awesome views like this throughout the trip.

It was absolutely amazing to see this huge metropolitan city with probably 100 skyscrapers pressed right up against the jungle with parts of it carved into the rain forest.

Even from this distance and angle, the city is too massive for my camera.

She's not holding on for dear life; Maura was actually perfectly content to enjoy the amazing view once we got off the tram.

This is a whole different side of the platform from the picture of Maura, which gives you an idea of the scope of the city.

While on Victoria Peak, we explored the walking trails they have through the forest and even discovered a very old stone staircase leading up the mountain. Well, what else can you do when you see an old stone staircase? We followed it of course!

It didn't help that there were lots of people on the original walking path, and NONE of them were going up this staircase, which was a little bit more overgrown and deserted-looking than this picture makes it appear.

We climbed this weaving path for about a half an hour before seeing a sign. Apparently we were on The Governor's Path.  Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, the British governor of Hong Kong had a summer house on the peak and used to walk around the grounds on this path. We finally came out to a wide open area from which was even higher than the part of the peak the tourists go to and could see an almost 360 degree view of the city, the jungle, and the ocean.

This is the view from the back of Victoria Peak.  There are islands for as far as the eye can see out there, mostly mountainous and seeming to be uninhabited.

This was the view from a random overpass on the way back to the tram.  The amazing views aren't just confined to the actual tourist attractions.

We then headed back down the peak on the tram. Apparently, they don't turn the seats around when you go back down, so while going up you are facing forwards going up what felt like a 30 degree angle, going down you are facing backwards going down what felt like a 30 degree angle - not fun. Anyway, we made it back to central Hong Kong Island and boarded the Star Ferry back to the Kowloon side of the city where our hotel was located.

Okay, fine this wasn't the ferry...

...This was.

It was almost 8:00 now, and every night Hong Kong puts on a light show with lasers set to music so we got a seat on the water front looking out towards the island (along with several hundreds of other people). While waiting for the show to start, we and the people around us noticed some dark clouds coming over the island, then the clouds covered the peak, then we watched as they crossed the river, and before you know it, it was raining on us.

You can see that it was cloudy, but the view was completely clear, and the weather seemed perfect for the light show.

Until 2 seconds later, when you can see that the buildings are obscured.  About 2 second later, I was worried that my cameras and wallet were permanently toast because I was completely saturated with rain.

But that doesn't really do it justice. We went from completely dry, not one drop of rain, to standing under a huge waterfall. We were completely drenched and everyone ran to hide under a covered part of the waterfront, so we all squeezed in and watched the show; no torrential downpour where you can't see 20 feet in front of you was going to stop the Hong Kong light show, apparently. Mostly, we listened to the music and towards the end of the 15 minute show, the rain completely stopped and we could see at least some of the lights. At this point, we couldn't do anything but laugh, which was a good attitude to have for the 10 block walk back to our hotel. Once we were in dry clothes again (which involved a few hours with a hair dryer, since we didn't bring any extra clothes or wallets), we went out to dinner at a Michelin rated restaurant across the street.

Monday morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed to the Hong Kong Museum of History. It was a fascinating place which documented the history of Hong Kong from Paleolithic time to 1997, when Britain gave Hong Kong back to China. It had lots of very interesting displays, on the aboriginal Taiwanese people, the waves of immigration from mainland China, the opium wars and British rule. If you ever go to Hong Kong, I highly recommend it.

It seriously starts with an exhibit about the Hong Kong area from 400,000,000 years ago.

They covered a lot of local traditions and religious practices in this area.

Maura may have been laughing at the dumb teenagers who were literally climbing on artifacts for pictures before getting chastised by the guards.

There were a couple of sections where they had life-size boats from different eras.

Then we hopped on the MRT (metro) and visited the Chi Lin Nunnery (Buddhist) and Nan Lian Gardens. They were both beautiful and again it was amazing to see the city and rain forest pressed together so closely. Unfortunately, it poured the entire time we were there, hence the ponchos.

They didn't allow pictures inside of the Nunnery, but this is a picture of the front of it.  The courtyard area is actually a lotus pond (more than 1, I suppose), but we stuck to the covered paths because of the rain.

Taken from the steps of the Nunnery and looking into the Nan Lian Garden across the street.

This is all right smack dab in the middle of a huge, bustling city, although it didn't feel that way from the inside at all.

We had hoped to visit the Tian Tan Buddha, but the rain delayed us and we weren't going to make it all the way there before our flight, so we checked on Trip Advisor and there was an amazing Taoist Temple about 200 yards from us, so we went and it was gorgeous. It was still raining, but we enjoyed ourselves before heading to the airport.

All of the temples that we have visited are very much active; that women with the burning incense sticks is praying to the gods in this particular temple, as are dozens of people out of the camera's view.

Despite not originally planning to go here, it was a highlight of the trip.

This pond was full of hundreds of fish (some that were surprisingly big) and turtles.

It wasn't too crowded while we were there, possibly because of the rain.

Again, this is right in the middle of a major city.

I love that you can see some highrises just past the pagoda, waterfall, and lotus pond.

All in all, it was a great city and a fun weekend.