I am guilty of neglecting this blog over the past few weeks, so to all those who actually read it faithfully (Linds!) I am sorry.
HONG KONG: To recap my trip to Hong Kong, all I can say is holy overcrowded! I try to think of the places I have visited, and what struck me the most about them. And for Hong Kong the most prominent thing is the sheer number of people that live there. I should also mention that when I first left the aiport on their fabulous express train into the city I was struck by the beautiful mountains that stand in the backdrop to the soaring cityscape. I was also struck by the many islands that surround Hong Kong's main island. I have always thought that it was just one big island, but the majority of Hong Kong proper lies outside the main island where the financial district is. I was very lucky in Hong Kong to have my old teacher Chris Coates and my Auntie Colleen to show me around. I also took one of those one day city tours that takes you to all the most popular tourist haunts. On the tour we visted the Man Mo Temple which is a very old Taoist Temple found in the antique district of Hong Kong and also near the spot where the British first put down the Union Jack and took possession of Hong Kong. "Man" means literature or words and "Mo" means war or weapons, so it is the temple of literature and war. The temple is a beautiful old building, hidden in a bustling commercial area of town. When you walk in, there is a huge ornamental door that is only opened on very special occasions. It is said that it is opened for all the bad spirits to leave. The temple houses the statues of both the Gods of Man and Mo, and in the middle is a huge section where you burn offerings to the heavens. The offerings are these huge coiled incense cages, you write down your prayers and intentions and tie them underneath the cage and then you light it and it burns for a whole month. As the smoke rises it carries your prayers to the heavens and to the Gods.
After the Man Mo temple we visited the famous Victoria Peak. We got to take the tram, which sits on a 45 degree slope and carries you up from the base of the hill to the top which is 1800 ft. above sea level. Unfortunately, the air pollution over Hong Kong is really bad and so you cannot see very well past the harbour. But from the pictures taken in the past, it's supposed to have an amazing view.
After the Peak, we drove to Aberdeen Harbour which used to be home to a huge fishing village. It has since been reduced to only about 100 families and has been been pushed further offshore into a large canal. This is due to the fact that waterfront real estate demands have made it much more profitable to have the Royal Yacht Club there instead. In Aberdeen Harbour is also the famous floating restaurant which I think has been in some Jackie Chan movie or something. We took a ride on a fishing boat through the floating village, which has larger sea bound ships and then smaller ones where the fishing families live. There is a floating community centre and a shower/bathroom area, it is really interesting to see a lifestyle like that being sustained in this day. It seems that most of the families dont' make a living from fishing, but rather the tourists that come to see them, go figure.
From Aberdeen Harbour, we drove through Repulse Bay which is a popular beach for swimming in the summertime. The tour guide told us an interesting fact, that they used to have a problem with shark attacks about 10 years ago and so the government was forced to install these giant shark nets to protect the local swimmers at the beach.
Our last stop was to Stanley Market which was a nice shopping area on Hong Kong's North side. None of their prices could even compare to the stuff you get in Thailand and India, but lo and behold, I bought a pair of shoes anyways!
On the last night I was in Hong Kong, I went out with Chris and his friends to the trendy Lan Kwai Fong area of town. This place puts all the other partying towns i've seen to shame. On Fridays and Saturdays (I went on a Saturday) the street is blocked off for pedestrian traffic only. In Hong Kong, 2 very cool things are allowed to happen: 1) You can buy a drink from a 7 Eleven or any bar and take it with you on the street or into another bar and 2) The bars are opened all night! So between walking around with your drinks and having no last call, it gets pretty wild in Lan Kwai Fong. It's also one of the few places in the city where you find the local Hong Kong Chinese and the "Gwai Los" (foreigners) mixing together. It's pretty amazing to see the number of ex-pats that live in Hong Kong, and I think it really tells you something about the cosmopolitan and liberal atmosphere of the place. After Lan Kwai Fong we headed over to Wan Chai which is also knows the Red Light District. It's not as bad as you might think, but walk into any bar and you automatically know who the working girls are. To put it truthfully, these places exhibit a certain bit of hedonism, and you can see that in the way some of the men who live here get caught up in the culture. One good feature about all these places is that they all have live bands that play all the latest music.
SHANGHAI:Shanghai was really amazing because it was completely unlike anything I expected. I have always tended to think of China in much the same way I see India, heavily populated, very rich or very poor, modern, but still behind the times and it was NONE of these things! Shangai is really something to see. The roads are clean, and well organized. There are lots of new cars, lots of new shopping malls, beautiful skyscrapers, and wherever there is greenspace in the city, it is well manicured and always clean. It was also very, very cold, and I think colder climates tends to make a culture more subdued. Ray was saying that in Toronto when it's cold, the whole place looks dead, and people just run from their heated cars to their heated offices to their heated houses. And in China its somewhat like this, there aren't as many people on the streets, as you would find in Bangalore or Bangkok.
I visited the famous Bund River, which has the Pearl Tower and a lot of pretty skyscrapers along it's shores.
If there is one thing that struck me about Shanghai it's the bad drivers. In India, the roads are completely chaotic, there are no lanes, often you can't tell where the road ends and the sidewalk begins. But in China there are very clean lines, and traffic signals, and yet people do not observe any right of way, sometimes they ignore the lights, and I swear on the drive from the airport to my Aunt's house I saw 4 accidents alone. I guess some stereotypes do exist for a reason!!
I also visited a small canal town, called Zhujiajiao, just outside of metropolitan Shanghai It had cobblestone streets running next to small canals, both of which are used to get around the city. There were tonnes of antique and curiousity shops, and often you could bargain them down to one tenth of their asking price. But still, the prices weren't as good as in Thailand or India. Besides the cold weather, Shanghai was full of pleasant surprises. My Aunt took me for many delicious meals, and I was pleased to see that a lot of the food that the locals ate is available in Toronto, and is almost as good.
On the last night we were there my aunt took me to a cute area of town which also had cobblestone streets, a starbucks, jazzbars and lots trendy stores. I was shocked to see a place like this in the heart of Shanghai, it looked like a scene out of trendy Manhattan or something.
At the end of the 7 days, I was exhausted, and a little glad to be returning to Bangalore. I realized with each new place that I visited that there may be different cultures and languages, but in the end we are all people who are trying to survive. And I think the best sights in all the places were the local people, the way they exuded the life of the place more than any of the sites or cliches that we have come to recognize as outsiders.
his family, to spend some quality time in the mountains. The air is fresher, the sky is bluer, the stars are brighter, and I honestly think your food digests faster up there too! I had the wonderfully talented Erica, stuffing me with all kinds of yummy food, every three hours on the hour. So in order to earn these delicious meals, I had to walk and walk and walk just so I wouldn't look as blobbish as I felt! We went out to the forest on the 23rd to cut our own Christmas tree, we ended up chopping off the top of a fir tree, but i'm sure it will grow back by next year! It's amazing to see how the labourers climb trees that are like 50 ft tall with only their bare feet, and chop off limbs while clinging to the trunk! It's like extreme sports Indian style.
