Victoria Peak

OK, so let’s back up a bit.  I (LJ) wasn’t especially up to writing yesterday, and if you’ve read EB’s account you’ll understand why.  I’ll put up a rebuttal later.

We had our first – and turns out only – day with a guide on Friday.  We almost always use guides when we come to a country where we know nothing.  They help you cut through lines with their credentials, know when and where to go to the hotspots, tell you what’s overrated and what is the “do not miss.”  So we were looking forward to a guide in HK.

Our guide was a nice enough guy and, once he realized he had to speak slowly and look at us in order to be understood, we got along pretty well.  I’m not giving his name here, or the organization he works for because while he was a nice guy – he wasn’t a tour guide.  He guided us in and out of taxis OK, which, honestly, we can do ourselves just about anywhere in the world.  We didn’t ever use public transportation, though, which in HK isn’t a problem because as it turns out taxis are dirt cheap.

Our first trip was up to the top of Victoria’s Peak.  You’ve read about the ride up.  Very corkscrewed back and forth.  I would point out (a) there was absolutely no alcohol involved and (b) our breakfast was very “western” – cheese omlette, bacon, croissant, fruit, coffee – nothing out of the ordinary.  As we were riding up, the only slip I could conceive of was that I took my morning vitamins with tap water rather than bottled – surely that tiny sip less than an hour earlier wouldn’t have had such a profound effect, though!

Anyhow, I kept telling myself, “You’ll be fine.”

Mind over matter and all that.

And we  got to the top and got out at a big high-end mall.

Here’s the other thing about us and tourism.  We don’t contribute much to the economy.  If you can’t consume it on-site or don’t absolutely need it in the immediate short term (say, a clean and non-puke smelling shirt), we ain’t buying it.  The exception tends to be a few postcards.  That’s it.

Besides, malls are universal.  Why go halfway around the world to visit The Gap or Old Navy?  You can buy that same stuff either online or at home.  There’s not a reason in the world to tote it along with you, especially if your bag is already packed to the max with things that you truly DO have to have to live.

So we were there for the vistas and the views, which would have been great, except that it was foggy.  Not “bike down a mountain in Hawaii after watching the sun rise over a volcano” foggy (for those who remember that adventure), but foggy enough that there wasn’t anything spectacular about it. 

Yeah, you could see the bay, you could see a bunch of tall buildings on both sides of the bay.  There was a tourists marker that pointed out the purpose of those buildings.  The ones we could see, anyhow.  We took them at their word that the others were there.

And the guide read us the marker.   Not that it was written in Cantonese or Mandarin (both of which, along with English are the official languages of HK), but read us the English version.

Tall buildings are only interesting if you or someone you know live or work in them.  Otherwise, they’re just big tall buildings.  Nobody cares what happens in them.

He did explain some of the decorations out for the New Years celebration.  Cherry blossoms are big, as are miniature orange trees with little oranges on them.  Chinese New Year is big.  Got it.

30 minutes up top looking at the views and it was time to climb in that damned taxi and head down the mountain.

South China Sea