We landed in Hong Kong a few days ago. Filled with trepidation I was not looking forward to spending five days here! Five days of potential protests! Five days staring at the four walls of our hotel room!
But this hasn’t happened. We have been out every day. We have passed two protest pickets. The first one was in Kowloon. It was small but noisy. Not at all intimidating and quite exciting! The next couple of hours passed calmly and without any incident. We boarded the ferry back to Hong Kong island without any sense of foreboding.
We made our way into the centre of the city and climbed steps up the side of a bridge to cross over the street. As we neared the top we could hear chanting. We looked down. Thousands of people, most dressed in black with some wearing masks, were chanting what sounded like ‘Freedom Hong Kong’. Police cars, their blue lights flashing ominously, had surrounded the protesters. I took a photo on my phone and we hurried across the bridge and into the station.
It was heaving! A kind young girl helped my husband and I get tickets for the MTR (the underground train) and, after dicing with death just to get onto the escalator, we boarded our train. It was 4:00 pm and not yet peak hour but the station was amass with people of all ages hell bent on getting out of town.
We got back to our hotel and I had a long soaking bath. It left me feeling less stressed and much cooler! Having lived in South Africa for many years I was always on my guard. It was indoctrinated into us to hang onto our handbags. Seeing luggage or bags left unattended always resulted in a check to find the owner or reporting it to the police. ANC bomb threats were a part of our lives, much like the IRA in Britain. But time has moved on and the terrorist threats in England are largely only highlighted at airports and wherever crowds gather. They don’t affect our normal daily lives.
But we had survived unscathed and I moved on. The next day we went on a coach trip to see the world’s second largest Buddha. The cable car ride up to the top of the mountain was spectacular. We had glass windows and a glass floor so views were totally unrestricted!
It was another blisteringly hot, humid day so the climb up 260 steps to reach the Buddha was more of a challenge than usual! We had a halfway rest break when a Chinese couple asked us to take a photograph of them standing in front of the Buddha and they returned the favour.
We then moved on to a small fishing village where the main industry is drying fish. They are the lowest caste so cannot live on land. They have built their houses on stilts above the water or live on their boats. Bizarre in this day and age! It gave poverty a whole new meaning seeing how they had to survive. Without their small dried fishing industry (fascinating once your olfactory senses became immune to the strong smell!) they would have nothing.
Sunday morning we tried to get to the top of one of the small hills, climbing steps between huge tower blocks which is where the majority of people live. We had been warned to be back by 2:00 pm as that was when the protest march had been predicted in a park very near our hotel. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing in the cool and safety of our very pleasant room.
Later on we went back up to the 41st floor and had a most enjoyable meal watching the spectacular light show. Lasers and moving pictures formed a magnificent background as we had panoramic views across the whole coastline.
We fly to Auckland today. It’s raining so we are once more immobile. Not ideal but have little desire to get wet and clammy before our long haul flight. So it will soon be goodbye Hong Kong, hello New Zealand…. 👠
Jenny Burrell 