How Ya Going?: Honk Kong Island Tour

A couple of days after arriving in Hong Kong, we went on a tour of Hong Kong Island. This is where the new international airport is located and also where a lot of the huge business building are found. Hong Kong only occupies a very small part of the mainland. It looks like it's a part of China, but it's actually not. It never was. For a long time it was under British rule, but only recently has Hong Kong become independent. Our tour guide, Andy, also pointed out that in China the main dialect spoken there is Mandarin; in Hong Kong the main dialect spoken is Cantonese. Both are forms of Chinese. In terms of language, the only similarity is that both Hong Kong and China also speak English.

Anyway, some of the places that we visited on this tour was an old Taoist temple; Victoria's Peak which we travelled to by a trolley; we drove through one of the ritzier areas and by a beach called Repulse Bay; we also enjoyed a boat ride through the oldest fishing village in Hong Kong, the Aberdeen Fishing Village; and we made a final stop at Stanley Market. There are an awful lot of markets in Hong Kong!!!

But I'll let you check out the pictures. =) Enjoy!!

The temple was pretty neat. They do a lot of things in three's. To enter the temple, you're supposed to hit a drum 3 times and a bell 3 times. This is an attempt to alert the Taoist 'gods' that one has entered the temple. And the people in the temple will also burn incense as an offering to the gods. And they burn 3 sticks of incense, of course. The smell of it was strong, but not as strong as the temple we visited later on in our visit. But that's another post.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to take as many pictures as we would've liked. There were some places where you weren't allowed to take pictures, and obviously, taking pictures of people who were praying is against the rules as well. Nevertheless, it was a great place to visit. It would've been nice to have visited a Taoist temple when I was back in high school studying world religion. Oh well. =)

This is the view from the trolley we took up to Victoria's Peak. Basically, it's a mountain located in the Western half of Hong Kong island. 'The Peak' itself is actually occupied by a telecommunications facility (I think) and so the public is not allowed to go up there. However, the rest of the area consists of a public park and some residential areas. In fact, there's a five hour hiking trail there; it would've been nice to do, but because we were on a tour we were pressed for time. It would've been awesome to explore the surrounding area.

Now this is one of many views from The Peak. Fantastic!!

This is a view from our drive towards the fishing village...

This is one of the boats that we rode through the fishing village. It was actually taken at the end of our ride, but I posted it here so that you could all see the boat.

These are some of the boats in the village. Very old.

A jumbo floating restaurant. Kind of cool, but our tour guide said the food here wasn't of great quality and went on to suggest some other restaurants around Hong Kong to check out if we felt the need. That's too bad because on the outside it looks like a pretty neat place to be having a meal.

More boats. The fishers actually live in them. However, the village has been bought out by Ocean Park, which is an amusement park. They want to build a series of hotels and resorts on it. In a way it's kind of sad, but at the same time there's no one to continue the fishing tradition. This is because the children of the fishers have been educated and would rather work in a different industry and, of course, money.