First of all, happy Independence Day Hong Kong! 19 years ago today was the first day that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was in existence and under the control of the Peoples' Republic of China instead of Britain. Apparently there used to be fireworks, but not anymore :(
Last night after I wrote my blog we headed out. Firstly, we walked around the streets near our hotel and found a little noodle canteen to eat at for dinner. Mum had wonton soup and I had shrimp dumpling soup - mmmmm!
Then we decided to go up Victoria Peak again, but this time at night to see all the buildings lit up! So we went and got the tram. The queue was much longer than Monday morning, but we still got on in the first tram load. Turns out they can carry lots of people!
We got to the top and looked at the view from a lookout (not the one we paid to go up the other day) and as we did it started pouring with rain! We got out our umbrellas and enjoyed the view nevertheless. Once again it was stunning - but this time as well as the magnificent skyline, we were treated to the twinkling lights and animations of the buildings as well. We stood and enjoyed the view for a while before deciding to head back down. However, the tram queue by this point was horrendously long. Lucky for us, the phone the hotel gave us has citymapper on it and we were able to locate a bus to take us back down the hill. We only had to wait 20 minutes and it dropped us right outside the station - woohoo!! We got to bed quite late but it was worth it.
Up this morning and we decided to do a day trip to one of Hong Kong's approximately 250 islands. We picked to go to Cheung Chau - next to Lantau that we went to yesterday and home to 30,000 people. The island is 3 square kilometres in size and hosts the Jiao Bun Festival (see bun tower photos from Wednesday's post at the museum) in April each year. We got the fast ferry which took about 35 minutes and then went exploring. The humidity must have been even worse today, because I have never sweated like I did today in my life. It was absolutely disgusting! I was saturated.
We walked to Pak Tai Temple (which was weirdly sitting right on the edge of a basketball court!), explored inside and then set off up to the North Lookout Pavillion - the highest point on the island. The climb up was steep in parts and at one point it belted down rain for about 5 minutes. There were butterflies that looked just like leaves that kept fluttering around our feet too!! We also saw a cemetery part way up which had a lovely view of Lantau Island.
Once at the top we enjoyed the lovely views. In one direction you could see the town on Cheung Chau, and in the other you could see Victoria Peak and Lamma Island. You could also see a huge grey rain cloud pouring itself over those areas - and it moved very fast!! We continued down another path and by this point I was so sweaty that my singlet was soaked except for one tiny part. Mum thought you guys wouldn't believe us so she kindly took a photo - thanks mum!! Haha. We have seen so many people carrying umbrellas to shade from the sun and yet thought they were silly and that it wouldn't make any difference. We used ours on the rest of the walk and it made a massive difference!
We headed back the way we had come and walked into the town. Tung Wan Beach was our next stop. We hired a locker, stored our belongings and went for a swim. We were lucky that even though we could see huge grey rainclouds over the city, Cheung Chau was sunny and fine after that 5 minute downpour! We enjoyed the cool seawater and swam out to some platforms that were located about 50m offshore. After a while we started to feel that despite our sunscreen we might be getting burnt or affected by the sun, so we got out and quickly dried off in the heat. We were very grateful for the swim though after our walk up the hill and our sweatiness!!!
On our way back towards the ferry terminal, we bought one of the famous Cheung Chau buns each. Mine was lotus seed paste inside and tasted a little like peanut butter, while mum had red bean paste. We also enjoyed another egg tart each!! Then walking along the Main Street near the ferry we bought a mango mochi and a strawberry mochi (like Wednesday - covered in rice flour dough) and had a cider. We sat waiting for the ferry and were treated to the absolute worst singing busker I've ever heard (even worse than the one in Estonia two years ago - it was atrocious!). Finally the ferry arrived and we scampered off to get a seat.
We had a quick look inside a shopping centre upon arriving back in the city. There was a crocheted kids playground type thing and I took a photo for you Robyn! I really don't know what people are on about with shopping here. It's not cheap, it's actually the same as or more than home to purchase clothes here. And I haven't seen anything particularly nice anyway! Ah well, my bank account is happy anyway :):)
We headed back and had a rest at the hotel for a couple of hours. Then we set out walking in our local area. We went to Victoria Park (which was opened by Alexander Grantham in 1957, mum and I had a laugh putting on our best 'Downton Abbey' posh accents!), a huge local park full of different sports courts (including basketball, handball, volleyball etc) as well as a toy boat pool and some greenery (even some patches of grass - unusual from what we've seen so far here!!). There were hundreds of women seated on picnic rugs on the concrete paths, so many that we thought it actually quite strange. We wondered if there had been some kind of rally or something.
We walked north to the next metro stop, Fortress Hill, and had a quick look in some shops and markets. Then we found the restaurant which we had researched - Tim Ho Wan. This is a branch from the original version of the restaurant in central, but it's a cheap dim sum restaurant with one Michelin star. The food was delicious! We ordered rice with egg and beef, beef balls with bean curd skin, barbecue pork buns (their speciality), shrimp and pork dumplings and fried turnip cake. All were yummy but I think my favourite was the turnip cake! The staff were very efficient and welcoming and we had a great experience eating there.
Afterwards, we walked back and now we are having a fairly early night. We have walked and done so much this week and our legs hurt!!
Tomorrow we are off to Macau for the day - another big day coming up!!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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