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| view of Nathan Road from my room |
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| Breakfast Cafe |
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| $3 club omlete |
Once breakfast was done, I took the MTR to Central and found the bus stop that would take me to Stanley, a coastal town about 30 minutes away with historical roots. The bus arrived after 15 min and the AC was welcoming. All the main buses in HK (except for the mini busses) are double decker and the top deck always affords great views of the city. Sitting at the back of the bus I took many pictures of the city as we traveled along one of the main elevated arteries of the city.
The bus left the main HK downtown by passing through a long tunnel through the mountain. On the other side the buildings were not as densley placed, and we ended up driving alongside a cliff with great views of the oceans and surrounding islands.
We passed through Repulse Bay, which is a very expensive and ritzy touristy area. There's a large sandy beach and many large resort type buildings. I thought it was a terrible name for such a beautiful place but I later found out on Wikipedia that it was called Repulse Bay because the bay was originally notorious for pirate attacks on merchant ships passing through. It was named Repulse Bay when the British "repulsed" the pirates from the area. Though I think "Pirate Bay" would have been a better name.
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| Repulse Bay |
As we continued past Repulse bay, Stanley emerged from the trees!
Upon arrival I checked the bus schedule to see the frequency of the buses and then made my way across the road to the market. Ohh yah! And HK roads drive on the opposite side of the roads so navigating across the roads was always a weird mind reversal for me. Instinctualy I look left first when crossing a road because that's where a car can hit you from first. However, I'd been trying to get in the habit of whatever my instinct was in my mind I'd try to reverse it and just look the other way quickly. After a few days of this not working I ended up not thinking about it and just looking every direction possible for cars before I went anywhere. This proved to be much easier on my brain and by the end of the trip I was starting to get used to where to expect cars to come from.
Now Stanley is actually located among a thin piece of land connecting 2 island masses, so it has 2 sides to it, both surrounded by water. I decided to explore the older side first. As I walked towards the Stanley Flea market the sun was out and I realized I had gotten a bit of a sunburn from the day before. Not wanting to ruin my trip with a bad sunburn I entered a drug store. Several white tourists were in there buying stuff and I picked some sun screen and got in line. I could hear the clerk speaking in broken English to the tourists ahead of me. As I approached the counter she was looking down at the register and started speaking English. But when she looked up she saw me and then said "oops!" and started to speak in Cantonese! I'd finally done it! I've blended in with the locals. I don't know why but I was really proud of this and it made my day. It felt like a secret compliment. And of course I didn't break the illusion with the clerk because I some-what know the Cantonese numbers and was able to pay properly and say thank you.
Outside the store behind a pillar I applied the sunscreen and entered the flea market. It had a lot of touristy stuff which was to be expected, but the best part was that it was outside, yet air conditioned. I used this as a central cooling spot throughout the day.
One end of the market opens up to the Stanley Waterfront, which is a nice promenade along the coast. There are many large red rocks and not much for beaches in this area.
Along the far side of the waterfront were a handful of fishing boats parked in the water. One guy was scraping the barnacles off the bottom of his boat. Looked like hard work from underneath my umbrella blocking the sun.
I walked along the promenade to a park with a set of paths built into the hill. It was well maintained and felt like a bit of a nature walk. They were doing a bit of maintenance on one of the stairs and the worker had put a bucket of cement in the middle of the stairs that I didn't see and I accidentally kicked it over spilling some of the thick cement down the stairs. I tried to recover it but the guy said it was okay.
Part of the path lead down to the rocks and I was able to scramble around among the rocks which I always prefer to a straight path. I crawled around and made my way to what I thought was a secret beach. Turns out there was a path to it but it felt more special to me cause I had found the secret way. There was only 1 couple on the beach who left when I arrived. They probably thought I was some creep coming out of the trees with his camera. Whatever. haha
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| Secret beach |
There were some boats parked in a neighbouring bay that I snapped some pictures of.
As I walked back onto the path through the forest I was startled by a large spider to the left of me a few feet from the path hanging in the middle of the air on his giant web. The guy must have been about as large as my hand! (maybe 7inches in diameter) Woaaah! Though this one wasn't as scary as the last big spider I saw. I stopped for some photos. It was too far away to really get an idea of the scale unfortunately.
I was sweating like crazy in this jungle area so after finding several dead ends I made my way back out of the park the way I came in.
Next I headed back through the market to cool down and over to the Stanley Main Beach. I wasn't sure what to expect over there but ya... it was just a big beach. It looked more like a tourist/local beach with a swimming area, showers, lifeguard etc. Nothing really special here so I sat down at some BBQ pits for a rest in the shade. Now this BBQ pit idea is great. I wished we had more like this in Vancouver. It's basically a public area where you can bring your own charcoal and then have your own outdoor bbq at the beach without having to bring your bbq. A couple beside me were bbqing some meat and it smelled delicous.
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| Stanley Main Beach |
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| BBQ pits |
It was starting to get late in the day and I needed to head back to HK to visit Lil at her workplace at the HK University (HKU). I jumped back on the bus for the ride back into town.
Before going straight to the university, I checked out Cyberport which is a ritzy area with some large technology companies and crazy architecture. Some of the appartments were called "Bell Air" and they looked really expensive to live in.
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| first bit of haze I experienced in HK |
After getting off on the wrong stop I finally made it to HKU! I was excited because this really felt like a "locals only" sort of experience and I was eager to see the university because so much of my school and work life revolved around SFU.
I called lil periodically and she would tell me to walk down a corridor, turn left, take an elevator, go through these doors etc. It felt like we were meeting at some secret location like in the movies. After 10 minutes we finally met up outside the library! It was fitting because we had first really become friends working at the SFU library as Media Technicians.
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| Media Tech friendships are for life! |
She took me upstairs to meet her colleagues and show me their office space. It was surreal being there with her helping her with some PHP questions at her desk.
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| Famous HKU Clock Tower |
The university was celebrating it's centennial that year and you could tell it was old by looking at the style of architecture in some of the areas of the university. Lil toured me around the interesting spots and we ended at one of the cafeterias for diner. The prices were very reasonable and I think the total came to around $7 for the both of us. We shared some duck, chicken, and tonkatsu curry.
Once we finished diner we made our way outside onto a bus that took us to the Peak Tram. The Peak Tram was first built in 1888 and I couldn't imagine taking it back then. The incline of the tram must have been a good 45 degrees going up the mountain for 1.4km. It was dark and trees surrounded most of the tram so there wasn't much of a view going up (so no pics).
Upon reaching the top, we had purchased tickets to go to the top of the lookout tower so we made our way up the building to the top! Once we stepped outside we were a bit disheartened because there was so much fog cover you could barely see the city! We went back downstairs to another public viewing area that was a bit lower down and the view was MUCH better. The clouds looked to only be covering the observation tower, but below it was clear.
We wandered around the top for a bit (lots of shopping etc. though most of it was closed because it was past 10pm). Lil recommended this HK style restaurant so we went in for some drinks. She had a HK style hot milk tea and I had this HK specialty of red bean with ice cream on top. It was nice and refreshing. We also had these "piggy buns" which were buns with some sweet stuff on top.
It was getting late so we made our way back to the tram. Just as the tram started back downhill lighting struck and the rain started pouring down! Luckily we were inside the tram and the bus was right there for us at the bottom of the tram station. We said our goodbyes and headed back to our homes. I couldn't believe how much the lighting was striking. It was like someone was switching the light switches on and off repeatedly for an hour. Light switch rave! From my hostel window I took pictures for a good 10 minutes trying to capture some of the lighting. Shortly after I passed out knowing I'd have to check out of the hostel in the morning.
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