Cane toads, Mahjong, Incense and Swastikas

21.11.2002 27 °C

Hi everyone from expensive Hong Kong!

I arrived here Sunday afternoon after a wonderful flight from Melbourne. Not much has changed since I was last here - it is still a frightfully expensive place and I'm still not vertically challenged like the rest of the locals! At a grand height of 5'5, this is very encouraging.

The main addition to HK (as far as I can see) is the very spiffy new Metro. Very clean, very efficient and quite reasonably priced. Curiously, it seems to be run by the Power Puff Girls (the Noughties answer to "Hello Kitty"). There are posters up all over the place with the Power Puff girls spreading important messages such as "please take care of the elderly" and "look after children". There is also a message flashing on various screens as follows "Be safe, be considerate, be a millionaire". Well I don't know who that philosophy works for, but it certainly isn't me! Grrrr.

On Sunday night I went walking through the Causeway Bay and Wan Chai districts on Hong Kong island. It was quite unlike Sunday night in Sydney....there were people everywhere and all the shops stayed open til 10pm! No wonder people go silly here with all the shopping. So far all I've spent money on is accommodation, food, transport and entrance to sites...and that is costing me an arm and a leg. Anyway, whilst wandering about, I was surprised to find what appeared to be sizable gathering of women in Victoria park...they were all sitting on the ground in large groups eating veges wrapped in banana leaves. When I asked someone what the significance of it was, they said "they are just eating dinner"! Very peculiar indeed.

Also discovered some Mahjong parlours where people sit around tables and flick domino type bits of plastic with pictures on them over and over and group them in some strange way. I don't quite understand the game from watching it. It is all too fast and furious to pick up quickly i think. Perhaps it is a Chinese version of Gin Rummy? A quirky looking fella followed me as I looked in all the parlours and advised me I wasn't allowed to go in...but I think he was just being mean. I enjoyed watching the frenetic pace at a local ping-pong club and how dexterously 3 year olds could hit the balls time and time again. I think Forrest Gump must have spent some time in HK when he was in Nam. He probably came to HK to recuperate after he got shot in the bum with that bullet Who knows!

Along Cannon St (2 streets back from my hotel), there are about 50 or so pet shops with exquisite cats and dogs. None of those big rotweilers and german shepherds etc.....but lots of shit-zus and pekingnese as well as himalayans, chinchillas and the odd feral kitty-cat. They have them in large enclosures with synthetic trees! Very adorable.

My last stop on Sunday night was at one of the markets....very smelly but quite fascinating...you can buy ginormous catfish, chickens hanging from the neck, shark fins and cane toads (they were about 100 of them nestled together in a container ready to be taken home and boiled/deep-fried for cooking). No doubt they have developed some fancy way of extracting the poison!

I awoke early on Monday and walked all the way down to HK Central (quite a hike!). The waterfront is quite interesting though and you really get a sense of just how utterly vertical HK island is! Not much sunlight penetrating the city cause of all those tall buildings. Surely that is very bad Feng Shui! I was talking to an American guy (a Noo Yawka) on the ferry back from Lantau island on Monday and he was saying that the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building (at least I THINK that's what HSBC stands for), was not built following consultation with a Feng Shui practitioner and whilst the building is quite an aesthetic delight, it is a Feng Shui nightmare! According to a book I was reading just before I left (The Power of Place - highly recommended), most Chinese people will consult a Feng Shui practitioner when they build a house/skyscraper/duckpond (etc.), particularly if they are setting up a business. You would think that such an important institution as the HSBC would have gotten their act together!?!?!

Anyway, I spent most of Monday out on Lantau Island, the largest but most sparsely populated of the 235 or so islands that make up HK. The reason for visiting Lantau Island was to see the Po Lin monastery and the giant Buddha. Can't give you stats on the Buddha, but it is the largest outdoor seated bronze one in the world. Very impressive...you walk up about 267 steps to get to the buddha and underneath him is a little museum with important Buddhist relics (some as small as grains of rice!). I was very curious to note that the giant Buddha had what appeared to be a swastika on his chest....I don't at all understand the significance of this, so if anyone is more cluey than I am, please feel free to englighten me (no pun intended). The monks at the monastery cooked up a very delicious vegetarian meal for lunch. Broth, chinese tea, rice, stir fry veges, tofu (I think Sanitarium pinched their recipe for "Not-Chicken" off the monks here), some tasty dim sim type things and scary looking and tasting mushrooms.

Monday night I took the Peak tram up to Victoria Peak to get a spectacular panorama of the city lights....the peak tram was set up in the late 1800s and was the first tram in HK. It must have been quite an engineering feat for its time...parts of it are pretty damn steep! I wandered back down through Hong Kong Park and ducked into the Hong Kong Shan-gri-La hotel for some dinner -NOT! I actually went in to check out the impressive foyer withbeautiful chandeliers, paintings and tapestries. Couldn't afford anything on the menu!! Ah well... I was going to go up Central Plaza (8th tallest building in the world at 374m) as well, but didn't think I'd be allowed to...there is the World (?) Accountancy Conference on in HK at the moment and there were policeman everywhere! I must have seen a couple of hundred in a block! Will probably try again tomorrow night.

Tuesday I started off the day by walking through the SoHo (South of Hollywood St) district of HK island and also visited the fresh food markets up towards Robinson Heights (not far from Victoria peak). There is a hillside escalator link here which goes for about 800m up the hillside. It's a pretty cool way of seeing the city suburbs. Of course I walked up the hill instead of using the escalator (i'm trying to get fit ok?! ). Passed lots of grocery shops selling sun-dried delicacies and I think the locals were as fascinated as I was with my fascination with their delicacies (tu comprende?). I also visited the Man Mo temple, the oldest temple in HK - it is dedicated to the Gods of Literature (Man) and War (Mo) and has huge incense spirals (much like Chinese lantern shaped mosqito coils) hanging from the roof and lots and lots of joss sticks (incense) people bring in and dedicate, along with fruit, to the Gods and Buddha. I can still smell it now!
On Tuesday afternoon I caught a ferry out to the island of Cheung Chau. Michael Palin visited the island on his Around the World in 80 Days trek so of course, I had to do the trek also. Cheung Chau was a nice change from the business of HK island...there are no cars there ( just mad cyclists and golf buggy drivers) but there are lots of boats nestled in the harbour like a Greek fishing village. There wasn't much to do there, but it was a charming place to spend a couple of hours meandering through the villages - got to watch people playing Mahjong again too - I don't get it at all, but I am utterly intrigued.

When I got back to town I hit mainland HK starting from Kowloon. I walked all the way up to Mong Kok (too far!) and visited some of the night markets. I was surprised to read (somewhere) that Mao Zedong was a huge fan of Kung Fu movies.

I clocked up a total of just under 16km on Tuesday so you can imagine my feet were a little sore by the time I finished up. I picked up a pedometer from the Australian Geographic Shop (retail prince of $29.95 - bargain!) a couple of months ago and it's a great motivator. It also tells the time which is particularly useful when I'm not travelling with a watch. Today (Wed) I've only managed 13.957 km, but I'm yet to go out for dinner so no doubt I'll hit above 14

OK so finally today.... I was umming and ah-ing about what to do today as everything is so
jolly expensive here and all....... I figured that I may not come back here for quite a while though because of the exorbitant expenses - as much as I thoroughly enjoy the place. I settled on Macau, and a quick duck into (The PR of) China (I had made the effort to get the visa, considering I was originally going to be in Hongkers for 6-7 days). Good choice. I got to go through immigration a whopping 8 times! In spite of the handovers of HK and Macau (in 1997 and 1999 respectively), they are places which very much have separate identities (not to mention currencies and bureauxracy) and you still need a visa for China, and also must pass those lovely smiling faces of customs officers to visit all of them.

Anyway, I didn't spend that long in the city of Zhu-hai (Special Economic Zone) because there isn't a whole lot to see there. I think Sun Yat-Sen was either born there or spent an important part of his life there, but aside from that the place is of little interest....Got to take snaps of the border gate though (without having my film thrown away by security) and wandered through some more markets! Also got asked at least 30 times if I would like a taxi (no thank you very very much).

Macau is quite lovely....it is very much like a grungy version of Lisbon, however the 'tourist' strip is quite polished up and reminiscent of a seaside resort (like Cascais, Denise). The most picturesque site in Macau would have to have been the Ruin's of St Paul's Church. The church was (according to my sources), designed by an Italian Jesuit and built in 1602 by Japanese Refugees who had fled anti-Christian persecution in Nagasaki. There was a whopping big typhoon back in the mid 19th Century when it was pretty much ruined. The museum below is purported to contain a special relic (the right arm bone) of St Francis Xavier! I also went to the Kum Iam temple where there are lots of joss sticks and lanterns and 18 gold plated men encased in glass - one of them is supposed to be Marco Polo, ie. the one with elephantrhinitis.

Also went to Monte Fort (old Jesuit castle ruins), Camoes Gardens and grottoes ( very very pretty), the Lisboa Hotel/Casino (no money with which to punt, alas), and walked part of the Macau Grand Prix track! They had the GP last weekend so the place is still abuzz. And last but not least, I visited the site of the changeover ceremony when Macau was officially returned to the PRC. A pretty gold lotus flower blooms at the site.

I'm off to Nam tomorrow (Yipeee!). Met a Canuck guy (who likes clocking up countries by working for various NGOS all over the globe) last night who spent 2 years living in Saigon who gave me lots of good advice......i.e. make sure you don't have a hairy chest if you are lying on the beach because whole families will come and take turns plucking your chest hairs! Lucky for me I'm not a hairy chested/backed bloke!) Anyway Not sure what the access to Net will be like there but hopefully I will get online every few days. So please, keep the emails coming

Belinda x