Day 59 - Saturday Feb 25 Hong Kong Day 3

Hong Kong Day 3 photos

position at 6:30am: N22 17.48 latitude E114 09.55 longitude
(Hong Kong)
temperature: 61F, 98% humidity, cloudy and foggy
distance since FLL: 20,509 miles

Our last day in Hong Kong began with a leisurely Compass Rose breakfast. Today we are doing museums in Kowloon and most of them do not open until 10 am. We left the ship around 9:15am and got the No. 2 bus at the Star Ferry to go to the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum. This tomb was found in 1955 while excavating for an apartment complex. It is dated from the Eastern Han Dynasty, roughly AD25-220. Since the find was relatively recent, we thought this would be an interesting visit. It turns out that it was, but even more interesting was the Lei Cheng Garden next to it. Our bus instructions said to get off on Tonkin St. This was not very helpful as the bus drove a couple miles at least on Tonkin with several stops. (Also, we did not have any map that went that far out into the suburbs! We knew it was in the Lei Cheung UK Resettlement Estate, described as a large block of towering apartment buildings, but that did not help much either. We knew it was in the Sham Shui Po part of town, but again without a map of that section, we didn't really know where we were going or how far it was off the edge of the best map that we had.) But, thanks to Debbie asking the very helpful bus driver for help, we were dropped off at the first stop after the bus had turned off Tonkin.

She had a HKTB brochure that gave the name in Chinese and he looked at that and grunted and pointed her back behind the line. We sat and tried to get out at the next bus stop near the MTR stop since we had walking directions from there as well. He closed the doors on Debbie and shouted NO and waved her back to her seat. We sat down until he hollered for her at the next stop and gestured across and over this side street Po On Road. We walked back to the corner cross walk and then entered the walled garden from the Po On Rd. side. After we wandered around in there, we found an attendant in a guard booth on the Tonkin St. side who directed us to walk out of Lei Cheng Uk Estate - Han Garden and to find the Tomb Museum next door on the other side of the wall of the garden (and actually on Tonkin). (This was not really as complicated or nervewracking as it sounds!)

The garden was beautiful and just delightful. Locals were out 'airing out' their song birds and doing Tai Chi. There were ponds with fish and turtles in them, rock sculptures, pagodas, bridges and more. Check out the pictures. As far as the museum went, the tomb was still intact and you could view into it. It had 4 rooms laid out in a X-shape, and you could see a video describing the work and how they did things. They did not have any of the items found in the tomb displayed there, only pictures. But later in the day, we saw the actual items in the Hong Kong Museum of History. We spent maybe an hour in the museum and the adjacent garden, and then caught bus 2 back to the Star Ferry terminal. While waiting for the bus, a local asked us if we needed any help :). (How did they know we were not from around here?) There was a hanging duck restaurant right at the bus stop where we waited. This gave us plenty of time to study the window display. Some things were recognizable, and some things weren't. And, some of the things you thought you recognized, but you cannot believe anyone would display much less buy and eat (a sphincter?).

At the Ferry Terminal, we needed some change. So, we stopped in a bakery and bought a Red Bean Paste Bun for 3 HKD, breaking a 20 to get change. We took the bun with us on bus 5 up to the Hong Kong Museum (getting off right at the Ramada Inn and walking over a pedestrian overpass). The History Museum and Science Museum are in back-to-back buildings there. Before going in to the museums, we stopped outside and ate our bun. (It was yummy!)

The History Museum tracks the history of Hong Kong for 6,000. It has an entrance fee of 10HKD (~1.4USD), and you can rent audioguides for another 10HKD. Doing this one museum could be an all day effort, especially if you listen to all the audioguide entries and see all the videos in the museum. We listened to about a third of the audioguide selections and spent more than 3 hours there. They had ancient glass items and gold items displayed, a life-size victorian-era streetscape with intact shops in it, A life-size fishing junk boat that you could go on, a piece of Hong Kong Harborfront from the Victorian Era complete with boats docked and anchored, 10-meter high bun towers for Taoist festivals, a Hakka peasant family dwelling, and primitive peoples living on sand beaches, WWII occupation, .... It went on and on. Much of it was stunning and as a whole it was mind-boggling. We went through old Hong Kong, up and down stairs, just as we had yesterday in the real place, but this time with out traffic and children interviewing us! It was just like being there, but without the sensory assault (though they did have sound playing at a lesser volume that put you in a mind of the real thing!). If you are interested in the history of Hong Kong, this is where you want to go. Even if you are not interested in history, it is all enclosed and climate controlled, it is handicap accessible and visually and auditorially stimulating. It is all excellently done, designed, laid out and signed in English. There are lots of places to sit and take it all in. It was one of the best museums we have ever visited. It is all here, including the relics from the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb that we visited in the morning. We bought a couple of items in the gift shop and asked the saleswoman if there was a place close by where we could eat some Dim Sum. (Yes, believe it or not, Debbie was willing to give it another try!) Well, the clerk glanced at her watch (it was about 2:40pm) and then wrote down in both English and Chinese, the name of 2 restaurants and said they were side by side right across the street. It turned out that it was right across the street in front of the Science Museum, but Debbie spotted it as we did a 360 degree aerial survey from atop the overhead footbridge looking for it. We went to the basement one first since she told us to go to the basement. Once down there, they told us they were closed. It looked like they were setting up for a private banquet or something. The woman told us we could come back after 6pm. Uh, no thanks. We went upstairs to the other, Chiu Chow, and we ate there and it was good. A much different experience than the day before at more or less the same price. Lunch was winding down but there were still 4 or 5 tables of families eating a Saturday Dim Sum and they were all Chinese. We were given hot clothes to wash our hands with and we saw no one using tea to wash dishes. All these were good signs. We ordered essentially the same thing we did yesterday, but today the food that came out was what we ordered and more or less what we expected. There was a surprise or two, but they actually turned out to be pleasant surprises. We ordered golden fried dumplings and these turned out to be a dessert-type dumpling with sesame seeds and peanuts inside the dumpling with a little sweet syrup also. Quite delicious. The fried rice noodle and beef satay that we ordered was an enormous serving and it came so long after the rest of the dishes that we thought it had been ignored, so we ate it last and could not finish it all. At the end when we requested the bill, they served us 4 tiny, tiny, thimble-sized bowls of what looked like tea on a tiny tray. It was boiling hot and very bitter. We did try it, but it was not to our taste. Debbie later read in our guidebook that this was indeed a special tea of Chiu Chow cuisine, and most non-locals found it too strong.

After our lunch, we caught the 5 bus back to the Star Ferry Terminal and then walked over to the Hong Kong Art Museum, about a 5 minute walk. The entrance fee is $10HKD. As the name suggests, the museum shows exclusively Chinese works, both modern and ancient. In particular, the ancient pieces in glass and gold are noteworthy and make the visit worth the time and effort. The museum also has a area where you can do your own paper pressings of Chinese glyphs for things like luck, and fortune, etc. We did a set of these as souvenirs. We also were able to pick up little cheat sheet that gave the years for each of the dynasties here. This way, when something was said to be from the Qing Dynasty, we could put a year range to that piece. It took an hour or so to go through the highlights of this museum. It was finally raining when we left the art museum. This morning and early afternoon has been the clearest and greatest visibility since we arrived. We could clearly see the top of Victoria Peak from Kowloon, but we had already been up there and did not go back up. It was about 6:00pm when we got back to the mall where our ship is docked. We stopped by the Optical Shop and picked up Clay's new glasses and were at dinner in Compass Rose by 6:45pm. After dinner, Debbie did 2 loads of laundry and mercifully had the place completely to herself. Clay had about $35HKD left on him and went back out to the mall. Was the money just burning a hole in his pocket? No, there were Malteasers over there. He could not rest without having all the maltballs he could afford. Clay has a bad chocolate malted milkball jones!

In the vein of having local entertainers on this trip, there was a dixieland jazz band. Apparently, Jamie and Dag are big dixieland jazz fans and found a bar near the pier called Ned Kelly's Last Stand (same name as the band) and invited them to the ship to perform. So, at 6:30pm the band played on the staircase in the Main Atrium. They could be heard in Compass Rose and played for about an hour.
The ship left on time, just after 11pm. Good bye to Hong Kong. We had a fantastic time there and really wish we had more sea days for recovering! Oh, well. One sea day and then we start touring in Vietnam.

Hong Kong Day 3 photos