Day 5 Hong Kong

An active and enjoyable day in this great city.  I posted yesterday a picture taken from our hotel bedroom.  The view is spectacular and outstanding but we both agree it doesn’t bare comparison with the view from our bedroom at home.  The views across to St. Mary’s through to Tresco are far better than anything that man could assemble!  I hope Colin and Sheila are enjoying it.  We are staying in Kowloon on the Chinese mainland and the picture showed the buildings on Hong Kong island where the main commercial sector is.  We looked for a local Chinese restaurant last evening but without much success.  There are Italian, French, German, Japanese restaurants and even steak houses around here but we couldn’t find an available Chinese.  Then we remembered our hotel had a Michelin starred Chinese restaurant and so we decided to push the boat out (not too expensive – no more than a meal at St. Martin’s Bistro) and enjoyed a meal whose quality was superior to any Chinese we had tried previously.  One thing we immediately felt when walking about was that the city has a good atmosphere, we feel perfectly safe and people smile a lot.

 The weather here is fine although at the moment there is a haze which our taxi driver explained was smog from the factories of China which comes this way in certain wind directions.  We did one of the recommended tourist things and went to the “Peak” on Hong Kong island and did the 2 mile circular walk round the park before descending in the funicular railway.  It would have been much more impressive if it wasn’t for the haze – as our photos show.

This evening we went to a steak house for a good meal and then went along the sea wall to watch a light show which occurs nightly at 8pm.  As you can see a lot of the buildings use lasers and other effects to do a Picadilly Circus on a far larger scale.  You can book to go on a boat to see both sides of the water but we were too late to book that and on reflection we are glad that we didn’t.

There is always some activity on the waterway between us and Hong Kong, ranging from 2 cruiseliners today, large container boats, pleasure craft and fishing boats.  A bit more than St. Mary's harbour experience.