Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 11:23 PM
Subject: Day 4, 5/24/08
This was a pretty good day. I woke up fairly early and after a quick breakfast (buffet style with Chinese, Indian and western food) I grabbed my camera bag and headed out to find the China Ferry Terminal so I could buy my ticket for passage to Mainland China. The ferry runs every 2 hours between Kowloon, where I am staying, and Shekou in the PRC, but the boats can fill up so buying early will guarantee I can get a seat. I somewhat remembered the location from my first trip here two years ago, and after a couple of wrong turns, I finally found it and bought my ticket for a 5:45 PM passage. That left me with most of the day to sightsee.
Kowloon, which means “nine dragons”, is part of a peninsula on the southern end of China and is part of the “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region”, as it is now known since being turned back over to China in 1997. Hong Kong maintains independent government, its own immigration authority (no visa required) and its own currency, the Hong Kong Dollar. I wandered around for a couple of hours, did a little shopping and tried my best to avoid the swarms of Indian tailors trying to sell you a suit, shirts, or whatever they can. These guys station themselves on every heavily traveled block and try their best to get the attention of every western man passing by; they seem to ignore the Chinese. The pitch is always something like; “Hey boss, you need a new suit? Shirts? Very good quality!” First it is a bit amusing, then it just gets annoying. After two hours of this and easily 50 such encounters, one more asked me “Sir, you looking for a tailor?” I answered, “Why, do you know where I could find one?” He started to look excited but after a second he realized I was being sarcastic and just smirked.
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| Hong Kong Island viewed from Kowloon |
I returned to my hotel for a bit to cool off and get more water (very warm and humid as usual) and headed back out. I found the local subway station called Tsim sha Tsui (pronounced chim-shah-chee) and took the train under the harbor to Hong Kong Island, a short trip. The subway ride seemed pretty reasonable at HK$8.50, around $1.20 US. I didn’t spend much time on the island. I was in the Central Business District which was pretty much just tall buildings, a few street musicians, but not much that I was interested in. I did take quite a few pictures though. At the waterfront I passed by the Star Ferry Terminal from which you can ride a ferry back to Kowloon across the harbor. I decided to take that rather than try to find the subway station again and I am really glad I did, it cost only HK$ 2.20, about $0.30 and was just about as fast as the subway. The boats look like they were built in the early part of the 20th century – riveted steel on the outside, lacquered wood on the inside, a real step back in time.
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| The Star Ferry |
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| Inside the Star Ferry |
By the time I got back it was nearly check out time, which was 2:00. I still had 3+ hours to kill, so I went back to Delaney’s, the Irish pub from the night before, and had some lunch and a couple of pints while watching, of all things, a program on ESPN about professional bass fishing in Alabama. No one in the pub seemed very interested, go figure.
The ferry ride to Shekou is about 20 miles and takes 1 hour. It is interesting to note that for this 20 miles you are constantly passing container ships large and small, docks for loading large container ships, floating barges with cranes for loading small container ships, and tugs which position the barges. The volume of goods shipping through here is mind boggling.
I got through Chinese immigration with no problems (whew!) and walked to my hotel, the Nan Hai, which is only 1 block from the ferry terminal. I got checked in, which always seems to take 20 minutes here, not sure why. The room is nice, as usual has no alarm clock, and has the hardest beds I have ever seen. And I don’t mean “firm”, I mean “hard”!! If you sat down to quickly I think you would bruise your tail bone.
I was not the least bit hungry for dinner, but I did meet up with Larry, my Chinese coworker, and we had a few beers and caught up on things.
More tomorrow
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