Hong Kong Island Tour

To begin day 2 we took a tour that covered Hong Kong Island. We had an amazing guide that was very candid about life in Hong Kong. It was very evident that most Hong Kong folk do not want to be a part of China. He also described his housing (aka "pigeon hole"), that is provided to him for approx $200 US/month from the government. He gets around 230 sq ft to call home. One room with the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living room all combined - with one window. If you want to know how many families are living in a gov't housing complex, just count the windows.

Our first stop was a buddhist temple. Holy smokiness. This wasn't like anything I had seen before in Japan. What made it really neat was that our guide was buddhist so he explained some of the rituals behind what they do, and showed us how they pray.
The spirals above me are slow-burning incense! A prayer card is inserted in the middle, and as long as the coils keep burning, it is like a constant prayer!

A closer view of the incense coils:

One of the places to pray - there were 3 bowls in which to place your incense sticks after saying your prayer:

Another place to pray:
In addition to this portion of the temple, we were allowed access to view the "Ancestry Hall". The Ancestry Hall is where they actually keep the remains of their loved ones. It is a wall of 1" x 4" boxes containing the remains and a picture of the person on the outside. It was really quite eery, but then again - where would you bury the deceased? There isn't enough room!

Outside of the temple, there was this cool randomly "checkered" building:

After the temple we went to take the tram ride up to the top of Victoria's Peak! It was a steep climb up, but it was beautiful when we got up there! It was a little foggy due to Typhoon Perma that had just saturated the Philippines. Luckily, Typhoon Perma stayed away from Hong Kong and Typhoon Melor turned in time to miss Okinawa! Nothing like tracking two typhoons while on vacation when you have sporadic internet access!


Michael tried to capture the massive shipyard, but this was the clearest we could get it:

There were residential homes above us, but they would cost you about $12 million to purchase (and they weren't THAT big). You were paying for a stand-alone residence and privacy.

Once we finished here, we took a bus down from Victoria's Peak (which was a nail-biter), and went to Shum Wan Pier. This pier will be closing up in the next few years. The only room for growth in Hong Kong is either up ... or in the water. Remember the Ocean Park that we visited the day before? They have re-claimed their land to build a hotel and more roller coasters and are forcing the fishermen out. The only compensation the government can give them is one of the aforementioned "pigeon holes" for their family to live.
This was a floating restaurant on the water. Our guide told us to skip it ... the best part of the restaurant was the boat ride out there:

There were some crazy big yachts:
Usually I don't take the picture ... I guess I have a hard time multi-tasking (you know, clicking the picture and smiling) - this was the best one.
This was the top part of the boat we were on:
Traps:
Many people actually live on the boats.
In order to get off the boat we were on, you had to pay the driver (it wasn't mentioned or posted anywhere that there was a fee prior to this tour). Good thing our guide told us about this before we boarded, otherwise we would have all been sitting about 30 feet from the dock for a long time wondering why we weren't pulling up to off-load. He literally stopped the boat away from the dock so we all had to dig out money ... then he let us off.
Our final stop was at the Stanley Market. It was not that great. People wouldn't barter with you and everything was really expensive. We were pretty bummed!

After our disappointing afternoon at Stanley Market, we went to the shopping district right next to our hotel so I could get a new Kate ... and then we seriously hit H&M. For dinner we went to an amazing Thai restaurant (with some of the best chicken/cashew curry I have ever had!) at the Hong Kong Golf Club (Mary Thai). We topped the night off with a swim in the roof-top pool and a soak in the jacuzzi.