Saturday, March 30, 2019

Hong Kong 4: The final day spent in the local park, aviary, and the nearby inhumane zoo

Miles had been having some stomach problems yesterday but they got worse today.  So, it was a short day.  I ended up just going to local Hong Kong Park to walk around and look at the gardens and aviary and then went a few minutes away to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens.  The Park was absolutely fantastic.  There were turtles, flowers, and a beautiful aviary, with tons of birds.  When I walked a few minutes away, to the Zoo and Gardens, it was like a totally different world.  Birds were in tiny enclosures and all sorts of monkeys were in even smaller enclosures.  It was truly awful.  The entrance to the zoo had an arch with a plaque stating that it was made in the memory of those that died in World War 1 and 2, aiding the British.  It is a shame that such an embarrassing display was made in honor of those people.  And botanical gardens?  I saw nothing resembling such.

This was what I saw at Hong Kong Park.




This is one picture from the zoo and then a picture of an odd street performer outside of the metro station that led to 10k Buddha yesterday. 

Friday, March 29, 2019

Hong Kong 3: 10k Buddhas, 2 temples, a garden, and the Kowloon Walled City Park

I originally planned to take us to the giant Buddha in Ngong Ping, but the only way to get there is by a 40 minute subway followed by either a 25 minute skyride or a bus that was over an hour.  Neither seemed like a fun experience, so I decided to stay nearer to the city.

We first went to the 10k Buddhas Monastery.  At first, I took us the wrong route, as another entranceway looked like it would be the right place.  We took escalators up onto a mountainside and it turned out to be the Po Fook Hill Cemetery.  We went back down, and took a left and took a narrow path to the correct place.  There were many life sized Buddhas on the way up and many were very creative for such an endeavor.  This is why I am showing so many pictures.



Near the top there was a temple and open area with a pagoda.  The inside of the temple was incredibly beautiful, and it seemed to be where the rest of the ten thousand Buddhas were.



We climbed a bit farther up, where we found some smaller temples and then construction blocking our way.  We came down the way we came up and saw a sign warning of fake monks asking for alms. Then we took the train to our next stop, the Chi Lin Nunnery.  This was a nice set of entryways, followed by an absolutely beautiful inner temple.  Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed.



Across the street was the Nan Lien Garden.  This was a very nice place, but I was hoping for flowers or insects, of which they had none.  I wondered if they were using insecticide, which would explain why insect populations have been decimated worldwide.



We took the subway just one stop in order to see the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple.  This temple had heavy construction going on, and so was divided into two parts.  At first we went to the garden portion.  We had to return to the entrance and going alongside a mall of fortune tellers before finding the side entrance to the main temple.  It was quite beautiful and there were many people praying out front.



Our final stop for the day was a twenty minute walk away, the Kowloon Walled City Park.  This park was built on the remains of the old walled city, which was apparently known as being a haven for criminals.  The place was absolutely beautiful, and I loved the historic twist to it.  We found an area that had historic pictures of the area with description and the park actually had flowers in it!  I really enjoyed the layout.  I almost skipped it because the reviews online were not as good as the other places we went to, which would have been a shame because it was my favorite of the day.



Right outside the park was a bus stop.  Miles decided that we should just wait for the bus instead of walking ten minutes to the train station.  Within seconds of reaching the bus stop overhang, it started raining.  The bus drive was slow, due to Hong Kong traffic, but we never had to walk in the pouring rain.  It also made me realize that there were no bridges between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.  I should have realized this before when we went to the night show, but I didn't notice.  Our bus had to go in a tunnel to bring us home.  We again went to the Japanese Ramen restaurant.

Hong Kong 2: The people, the Symphony of Lights, and the Dragon's Back Trail

I haven't spoken much yet about Hong Kong itself yet.  The city is much more multicultural than Taipei, which is not surprising.  People here are also more fashion conscious, opting for many western fashion trends.  People are, however, much less interested in being polite.  People will cut you off without so much as a thought.  One person, during the hike that I will talk about on this post, while on a mountain trail, threw an empty bottle into the woods, hooking it over their head like the basketball shot.  It was almost cartoonish how it was done.  We have witnessed countless occasions of people having complete disregard for others.  I have read about this sort of behavior on mainland China, but was not expecting it from Hong Kong.

Two nights ago I took Miles out to the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, to watch the nightly Symphony of Lights.  At 8:00 PM, every night, a few buildings on each side of the water synchronize lighting to music played on both sides of the water.  It was a night that the words on the buildings would be written in English.  It was cute, with decent music, but it was a shame that only about 7-10 buildings participated.  Though, to be fair, even getting that many buildings to sign up for a free nightly performance is commendable.  There were hundreds that lined up on our side for it.



Afterwards we walked a little along the water, eventually catching what I believe to be the Hong Kong Dukling ship, which has been sailing for sixty years.



I was exhausted the next day, so I went back to sleep after breakfast until noon.  We took the train and then the bus, to reach the southern entrance to the Dragon's Back Trail.  We began the trail at 2:15.  We climbed the steps upward until we were on the dragon's back, the top of the mountain that had a trail that led from peak to peak.  The views were very nice.



After about two kilometers, the trail led us down to a flat trail that encircled the mountain, bringing us north, east, and then southeast to Big Wave Bay.  There were handful of good views to be found.  It was at the point of the second picture below that I witness the man hurl the bottle into the vegetation, while his woman companion watched.  I glared before moving on.



Just as we were about to begin our descent, Miles pointed out these two bugs.  He actually thought this first bug was an ant carrying things, but when I got back to review the pictures, I found that this was not the case.  I don't know what that bug was.



We reached the beach at 5:05.  It was really an unremarkable looking beach to me, but the guide that I followed for guiding us through the hike recommended it.



We took a minibus back to the train station and then went home.  We then returned to the Japanese ramen restaurant before relaxing for the rest of the night.