The hotel buzzer screamed a 5 am wake-up call. My children looked absolutely shattered as we knew they would be. Hong Kong was a purely adult indulgence, to finish off our trip with a touch of class. We couldn’t leave them at the Left Luggage Desk, so they had to come with us.
We anticipated a day of cajoling and bribery if we were to sample even half the itinerary planned for our “One day in Hong Kong” rampage.
We munched happily on our picnic whilst riding the underground MTR train, smiling happily at the early morning commuters staring back at us. This is Hong Kong, surely they must be used to the odd European face by now? Only later in the day did I notice a sign strictly prohibiting eating or drinking on the train.
Our first stop – a local street market. What delicacies could we spy? Fish were so fresh, they were flapping and fighting for their final breaths in the shallow plastic trays sitting on tables. Luckily for Danny, not a toad in sight to worry over (see Chinatown, San Francisco), but the boys didn’t mind the squids and other spiny, tentacled creatures dying a slow, harrowing, suffocating death.
Through the furniture market we browsed, and with a favourable exchange rate I spied some beautiful hand-crafted tables, dressers and stools. Tony, with usual male disinterest muttered “weight allowance” and sloped off.
Next, we solemnly entered the Man Mo Buddhist temple in the centre of the city. A traditional and historic temple, with incense sticks and candles slowly burning, it offered the peace needed for serenity and clear thought.
Built in the 19th century, it enshrines Man Cheong – the God of Literature and Kwan Yu the God of War. Legend and tradition dictates that if two people have a disagreement, both should make a promise of reconciliation in the temple and write it, along with a curse or punishment, on a piece of yellow paper. They then kill a chicken, chop off its head, let its blood drip onto the paper, and burn the paper. It is believed that because the promise is made before the gods, if the individual breaks the promise they will suffer the appropriate curse.
I like it! Can you imagine the damage Daniel could rage if only he could write? I remember one day, when my brother and I were 14 and 10 years old, respectively, we stood in the garden outside my bedroom window waiting for Mum to take us to school. She was ages. We got round to arguing and both parties threatened the tales we were going to tell Mum: blowing your nose on the curtains (my brother), stealing sweets from my Dad’s newsagents (me, of course), not owning up to breaking a glass pop bottle, resulting in my Mum needing stitches in her hand (me, again), looking at the rudy top shelf mags in the Newsagents with Grandad on a Saturday night (definitely not me).Of course, my Mum was ages precisely because she was standing at the other side of the net curtains, listening to our inadvertent confessions.
We would have fared much better by killing a slug and dripping it’s slime onto a written, cursed scrap of paper promising instant death to anyone being horrible. Much more fun.
By now, the staircases were stomping uphill, and the kids had the most fun clambering up about 20 sets of them to the summit; Tony not so joyous pushing the stroller behind us.
Bizarrely, half-way up Victoria Peak there exists a Botanical Gardens & Zoo, so we stopped off here to enjoy it awhile. The monkeys, lemurs and tamarins were going nuts and no sulking in a corner for them. They showed off more gymnastics action than a Chinese Olympic bootcamp.
We settled down for a picnic on the benches, with Holly, for some reason, peeing her pants in hysterics at an older lady practising Tai Chi. Being an eight year old, she stood directly behind her and also pretended to be a chameleon walking on scorching hot desert sands.
One of my highlights was a trip up the funicular tram to the top of Victoria Peak. My parents had memories of walking to its summit many years ago, past the stinking unsanitary peasants’ shacks to the wonders waiting above.
The guide book told me that in days gone by, the rich people lived at the base of the mountain, and the poorer residents were forced to trek up and down the hill for their own daily routine. As often happens, social change occurs, and suburbs switch places. An opulent gentleman had believed himself much superior to everybody else living in the City and decided to live at the very pinnacle of Victoria Peak, far away from the stench of the poor and the hum-drum banality of the nowhere-near-as-rich. So he built a railway, to carry himself up the mountainside to his residence in the heavens. Over time, the fairly rich followed him up there and the neighbourhoods swapped over.
The train journey was pretty steep, cut through housing estates, then stone sediment and finally a forest. The kids didn’t overly enjoy the “ride, ” tears and general wailing giving their game away. But, upon arrival, we enjoyed the Oriental kitch we had hoped for. The shopping complex at the top was a mecca for tourist tat: “Oops, I farted” alarm clocks, golden cats with mechanical waving arms, Mickey Mouse necklaces.
Today was the start of the preparation for Chinese New Year (of the Rabbit) and so everywhere was decked in cherry-red felt material and bunny rabbit decor. Jessica Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Lindt chocolate bunnies scanned our every move.
Our first activity was the Wheel of Fortune spinning wheel, sitting in one of those foyer areas you find in large shopping centres (normally offering you the chance to win some super-fast lads car). Waiting patiently for their turn, the over-excited boys swung and swung to their little hearts content, and Joe forgot to let go and tripped off the podium into the audience below. A good start.
After a bowl of cheap McNoodles each, we hiked further into the clouds onto the Observation Deck, which was really high.
From behind the glass-barriered edge, we looked out onto an amazing panorama of Hong Kong harbour – a forest of tower block housing and office units, hemmed in by a sweeping blanket of woodland.
We tricked the kids into queuing for the funicular back down the slope. And just for fun, I barged the opposition out of the way and bagsied front seat rows for extra pleasure. The joy of seeing their little faces howling again; I wish my camera wasn’t broken.
A short bus trip down to the harbour and we caught a Star Ferry to Kowloon on the North Shore. The 15 minute journey took us from the high rise wharf in the south to the more retail side of town in the north. I think.
We metro-ed it to the Flower Market, which was crammed full of the most colourful, beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen. Buckets full of orchids and birds of paradise, in every colour of the rainbow. Row after row of shops competed to sell flowers only seen in the best florists back in England. (Not a Bloomin’ Marvellous or Floral ‘n’ Hardy in sight).
Vendors sell little golden ribbons and bows for you to tie onto the branches of shrubs, usually miniature orange trees. Internet research told me that people used to write their wishes on a piece of paper tied to an orange. They threw the orange into Hong Kong’s Lam Tseun wishing tree and if the paper caught in the branches and hung there, their wishes would come true.
I suppose these marketplace trees and attached bows symbolise these wishing trees. A lovely fairy-tale idea.
We carefully avoided the Bird Market nearby, as I didn’t want myself or the children to be left with distressing images of poor little chaffinches trapped in tiny wicker cages, or de-capitated chickens with paper curses swinging off their feet.
So, we headed for the Goldfish Market instead, not nearly so cute, but less likely to cause bad dreams and nightmares. We marvelled at tank after tank of multi-coloured goldfish bobbing merrily along. Personally, I don’t understand why people own fish, except maybe tropical ones.
My Mum used to have a tropical fish tank at her hairdressers salon. We added to the collection over the years, and one kind customer even given Mum a pitbull of a fish one day as a present. The old dears loved the neon guppies and angel fish tiddling around, until one day we realised why the fish were disappearing one by one, Scooby Doo style. We caught the shark munching half a Kissing Gourami in it’s mouth, and threw it down the toilet – now we knew why the old lady had given us such an unusual gift. (PS. This isn't a photo of my Mum - she would kill me for letting you think this was her).
Anyway, the boys for some unknown reason were entranced by the fish, and Holly enjoyed the cute little kittens and puppies for sale. I like to imagine they were destined to be pets, too.
About this point, the day took an irretrievable turn for the worse. Jetlag and a stream of early morning wake-ups took their toll. Danny got tummy ache and was the first to begin sobbing. As any good parent would, I tried to find a cheery diversion for him, and headed for the cheap market stalls. One ginormous bag of pick ‘n’ mix sweets later, everyone’s a winner. Trying to grab the sweet seller’s attention whilst standing next a horde of rotund blabbering Hong Kong women, each clutching a bag of strawberry bonbons to their breasts, was not an easy task.
Daniel perked up and then Holly decided to get tummy ache and, in all honesty, didn’t really get over it for the rest of the day. She is a toughie, but when’s she’s tired her body struggles with niggly aches and complaints. We did our best to ignore her, plying her with more chewy toffees and back to the map for further study.
As I had broken my camera in the rainforest (see Dorrigo National Park, Australia), I bought a nice new replacement on the Electronic Goods road. Being Hong Kong, all trading deals must be finely embellished, with one party coming out with a slightly better deal than he had hoped for. For example, I was given a free memory card, a free camera case and least importantly, a free Hello Kitty mug, which I gave to a girl at the ice cream parlour. (Even I have limits on hoarding).
Deflated and in need of a tonic, we tucked into the last ice cream of our holiday. The children were absolutely knackered and the grown-ups sadly aware that the final seconds of the trip were ticking away into the twilight sky.
As night-time approached, the city adopted her second schizophrenic personality. The daytime tedium of scurrying about trying to buy, sell, work and generally ferret, was now a box firmly closed.
A new box opened, a Jack-in-the-Box, bounding with the happy energy of a promising night out. The streets became a chaotic mix of steaming food stalls, furry-costumed street promoters, tourists, adolescent teenagers and neon flashing signs; it was just like the Channel 4 TV advert floating past, just before Desperate Housewives on a Wednesday night.
Revitalised, we drew a line under Part One: Daytime, and slipped into Part Two: The Evening. I got down to the serious business of bric-a-brac shopping in Temple Street night market. Just a little bit of luggage allowance had been reserved for statues, trinkets and unnecessary knick-knacks.
With classic timing, Holly’s whingeing really kicked in and I couldn’t concentrate on shopping. I think she had been bribed by Tony. I really needed to buy my marble dragon and a quartz Buddha, but just couldn’t focus.
Fighting against time, we hit the harbourside for the 8pm Symphony of Lights show – the skyscrapers would flash with iconic neon rays of light. Personally, I had seen enough flashing lights in Las Vegas, and my bar was raised. Nothing less than the Aurora Borealis would rock my world now.
Pushing a woozy eight year old around in a pushchair takes time and effort, so realistically we didn’t get close enough to the waterfront to fully enjoy the show. We watched it from a behind some building works a few hundred feet away - not quite the vantage point I had hope for, but Holly was now in tears.
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| View from Google Images - not from the building site. |
Blaming false advertising, I expected a ballet of lights pirouetting in time with Handel’s Water Music. The previously-mentioned dancing bunnies on the side of a tower block failed to ignite my passion a second time over. Perhaps we were just in the wrong place at the right time. Well, slightly late as well, if truth be told.
That’s me – I’m always trying to squeeze one last tiny piece of fun into the day, and ruining all of it by running around and missing the main event. The game was over in our race against the clock in Hong Kong. I was happy with a Silver Medal rating on the day – some stones were left turned, but no complaints.
Stalls selling every kind of rabbit-related trimmings and toxic-coloured confectionary, funfair competitions where you poke things and throw things. I even bought a plastic orange tree with smiley white rabbit beaming out from underneath it. My pet rabbit will take pride of place on my mantelpiece, when of course we do get a house.
We people-watched the old and the young as they mooched around the market stalls, arm linking arm, beaming their child-like smiles, enjoying the magic of a party season just beginning.
Our last stop was McDonalds, our promise and our bribe to the kids if they could just keep their eyes open and feet marching for a little while longer.
Holly was asleep in the pushchair and as it was about 2am Sydney-time, Danny was also a little bit frazzled. We offered Joe a cheeseburger, not a Happy Meal, no toy, no gimmick, just a burger. He was so excited about his pending midnight feast, until Tony came out with two cheeseburgers. He burst into tears with a “That’s not what I wanted. I wanted chips”.
Holly was asleep in the pushchair and as it was about 2am Sydney-time, Danny was also a little bit frazzled. We offered Joe a cheeseburger, not a Happy Meal, no toy, no gimmick, just a burger. He was so excited about his pending midnight feast, until Tony came out with two cheeseburgers. He burst into tears with a “That’s not what I wanted. I wanted chips”. Stuffed with two burgers, we waived “goodbye” to the final entry on our To Do list – a genuine Hong Kong food stall feast. Farewell Mr Deep Fried Grasshopper, you had a lucky escape.
We took our last underground trip with the quiet reserve usually suffered by excessively drunk souls on the Last Train Home on a Friday night. Bursting with experience and grub, we longed for the cool, crisp sheets of our 4 star hotel suite.
The day was over after what I can only describe as an Ironman show of fortitude. We ticked pretty much all the boxes and knew we couldn’t have packed more into the day.
I am not a city girl by choice. A skyscraper is a skyscraper to me – not an artistic display of wealth and global dominance. I am not desperate to have Sex in the City, I prefer a camp site and a local pub for my pleasure. But I was satisfied that I had visited the place.
Hong Kong gave me a small invite into her personality – colourful, hectic, not particularly warm, but a with hint of childish spirit.
Our final day of travelling was done, and we packed our obese bags one last time. Like many occasions on our trip, I didn’t have time to sit down and contemplate the day there and then. What did I like? What excited me? What were the disappointments? That would be a treat for the 12 hour plane journey home tomorrow.
Our heads hit the sheets at 2am, faintly aware of the wake up call booked for two hours time.
