The Adventures of Jeanne B: Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Eastern plus 12 hours

We were excited for Hong Kong, especially because we were going to meet Liz and Tim!

The day dawned very hazy due to air pollution. It seemed like heavy fog, but it was air pollution.

Tim was sick, but Liz made it to the ship with some difficulty. Good old Cunard had given me the wrong berth number for the ship in the container port. She took a cab, was in the wrong place and thought she would be Shanghaied as she walked about a half mile through the port to the right location. We met up and it was great to see her! We were scheduled to be at the port in the city, but that fell apart at the end and we ended up at the container port.

We were welcomed to Hong Kong by the dragon dancers as we jumped on the ship shuttle and took off for town.

We took the ferry to Hong Kong Island.
We noticed hundreds and hundreds of young women sitting on the ground in groups eating, playing cards, painting toenails etc. We couldn't figure out what they were doing. Liz asked her friend and this is the explanation.

The hundreds of women you saw sitting around on cardboard boxes are some of the 150,000 Filipina maids "enjoying" their one day off a week. Many of them spend the day socializing with each other in Central (Indonesian and Indian maids congregate in Causeway Bay), as they have nowhere else to go and can't afford to spend it shopping at a mall or in a restaurant (and they tend to get chased out of malls even if they sit, don't know if you noticed that there are very few open seating areas in the malls here as opposed to the US, I have always suspected that one of the reasons is to keep the maids out). It is quite a contrast to see these women sitting in front of the Gucci, Prada, etc shops in Central. Many of them are second or even third generation maids, raising other people's kids while they see their own kids about once a year. This is a fairly common phenomena in Asia; for example if you go to Singapore, you will see maids hanging out in the Botanic Gardens on Sundays.

We finally found the escalators, but when I saw the sign I thought we were on another death hike like in Kota Kinabalu. If you look carefully you will see the escalators on the right side of the picture.

We had a hard time finding the escalators and so did this man who asked Liz for directions.

People could get off the escalators on each street and we wandered down lots of little streets and took in the sights. We also noticed a lot of bamboo scaffolding that didn't look very strong, but I am sure it was.

After a break at McSorely's, we took a cab to Victoria Peak.
Due to the pollution we didn't get a great view, but it was nice to see what we could.

Then we took a cable car down (this little girl's family was riding with us) and then the subway back to Liz and Tim's hotel.

A little Shopping was in order on the way to our harbour cruise on a junk. The junk has wonderful furniture and it was great to lounge around with a glass of wine while cruising the harbour. We enjoyed the lights around the harbour and the beautiful temperature.
Dinner was at Aqua known for its fantastic view of Hong Kong Harbour. We had a great window table that Liz reserved months ago. There is a synchronized light show (of the colored light buildings) with music at 8 PM every night. It was a perfect view for the show, her research paid off.