The Weehawken Diary: Hong Kong Part Dos

Hong Kong Part 2

Tin Hau - the neighborhood where we stayed, you can see all the schoolkids headed up the stairs toward school.

HK is the city of buses, big and small.

Kwai Fong - HK's biggest port facility.

Good old Mrs. Tang - feeding us several course breakfast while hiking.

The Tangs' backpacks are like Mary Poppins bags, food just kept coming out.

Tung Chung - bedroom community near the airport.

Watching from the bus ride to Tung Chung.

Checking out the wet market - Lynne took a real interest in the fresh cuttlefish.

A variety of fresh meat products available.

You can buy fresh (code for living) frogs to cook at home, or some chopped pastry to eat now!

Pharmacy for traditional medicine.

View from our hiking trail - planes landing at airport on right, bridge to Macau in middle, jungle for hiking on the left.

Every time we'd take a water break, the Tangs would bring out more food!

Low tide along Lantau Island, more bridge building on horizon.

Several long sections of bamboo forest along the way.

In the village of Tai O - most buildings on stilts above tidal flats, they have running water coming in, but no plumbing going out :/

Hot and humid day for a hike.

Tai O is a lot like stepping into another country, does not feel like the super modern HK in any way.

Still a lot of people here make a living fishing.

Or also by selling delicious buttery waffles to visiting hikers.

There it is! A famous pink dolphin!

These are mostly a legend now, with only ~50 left in the waters around HK. With all the boat traffic and pollution coming down the river from China, it would be a tough place to make a living as a pink dolphin.

Kit and Mr Tang.

The whole hiking crew - Mr Tang, Mrs Tang, Calvin (in back), Lynne, Kit

Most the houses are built of metal sheeting, and must be like ovens during the summer.

Pondering life on a boat or in a stilt house.

Hiking buddies.

(Mrs Tang, Kit, Mr Tang)

Bus up to Big Buddha, watch out for feral cattle!

Entrance gate to Po Lin Monastery (aka Big Buddha).

And that, my friends, is one Big Buddha.

The monastery has been here for a long time, but the Buddha is a pretty recent addition and has turned it into a real destination for Buddhists.

Good view of the surrounding monastery.

Calvin at the wheel, driving us back from our hike

(on the left side of the road I might add)

Driving back to dinner in Calvin's van, this is a view of one of Kit's mission areas called Tsing Yi.

Sweet 'n Sour Pork, Calamari, Almond Chicken, Eggs & Cucumber, Fish Soup...

... Garlic Shrimp, Peppery Clams, Spicy Chicken.

Beautiful Hong Kong Temple.

Lunch with the Moore's (Kit's friend from BYU Chinese class now living near HK)

One of the many advantages of HK being an international city.

Turbo Jet hydrofoil boats (made by Boeing btw) bound for Macau

Riding in luxury.

Lots of cool harbor views during the jet boat ride to Macau. This building wasn't there during Kit's mission, but now the tallest in HK.

Fu Hua Hotel in Macau

(old city in the foreground, with the ridiculous casinos further away)

A few pics of casinos around Macau....

We spent our time inside the Venetian - one of the biggest buildings in the world (by square footage).

Serenading the tourists on the Grand Canal.

That's Lynne in the blue scarf... did we mention this casino is massive?

From the casino food court - famous Macanese Chicken, a blend of Chinese, Portuguese and Malaysian flavors.

Walking home through Old Macau - this is the old seat of government from Portuguese days, most original buildings still there but now turned into high-end shops.

Lynne's Senior Photoshoot

Hillcrest High - Class of 2006

That's the Ruins of St Pauls in the background, iconic part of Macau.

Kit led us pretty much right to the church building. The 4 wards who meet in this rented basement church building have exactly zero parking spots to share between them.

From the hotel, old residential Macau below with casinos thankfully far away.

Checking out the Macau shoe market.

10 AM in the street market is crazy, doesn't matter if you're buying fruit, shoes, or pajamas - you're going to get run over if you don't keep moving.

Happy shopper in her element.

Lynne's favorite shop in street market was the exotic plant store, too bad there's no room in the luggage for these.

Beautiful 'Suzhou Style' chinese garden. Suzhou is a town near Shanghai famous for limestone gardens, so this person imported a lot of stone and built a mini-one here in Macau.

Cute Chinese kids made us miss Addy - she would have loved all these fish!

So nice to sit and relax the feet a bit after walking all over the city.

This pretty much captures Macau city living - about everyone lives in 6 story walkups and has a bars over the porch to keep bandits out and your hanging laundry in.

Enjoying her 1st Macau Egg Tart - nothing in the world like 'em.

Back in HK and at the Happy Valley race track. This was one of the 1st things the British built after colonizing Hong Kong, and I can't imagine what the property must be worth now. It feels a lot like Central Park in NYC, completely ringed in by apartment towers.