Hong Kong (March 29& 30) - bamboo

Bamboo is an amazing plant. What does this have to do with Hong Kong? Scaffolding. Throughout China, bamboo is used instead of iron pipes to construct scaffolding. There is nothing surprising about it's use in simple applications similar to those built in our country using 2x4 lumber.


What is impressive is that cured bamboo is used for scaffolding going much higher...


Instead of using clamps, lengths of bamboo are tied together.


The entire scaffolding is then covered with netting...


...to direct to course of any falling object.

Length of cured bamboo is so strong it can be used six times before being replaced.

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Hong Kong (March 29 & 30) - On The Land

The marine terminal in Kowloon (across Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong) is part of a huge, mostly very upscale mall complex that is part of the local equivalent of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, including prices.


In one store window was an incredible (real?) ivory carving.





Turning down one of the side streets, the character of the shops changed markedly.














Built on steep hills and ever mindful of limited space, streets in Hong Kong are often steep and narrow.


Some spiral. As landfill projects steadily make the harbor smaller, streets that once ran long the edge of the harbor are well inland. One of our fellow passengers, a retired USN Captain who brought his ship into Victoria Harbor just twenty years, expressed shocked at how much it has shrunk.

Steep hills are a challenge for pedestrians as well as cars. In the Soho District this problem is mitigated by the longest escalator in the world.





It is not one continuous escalator, but rather a series similar to people-movers in airports.





I need to research it's total length and rise, but it certainly is long and accomplished an ascent that would be exhausting by stairs. And sometimes stairs is the only option because there sonly one escalator. It goes up at times of day when the majority of the foot traffic is going that direction and down at other times. If you need to go up when it is going down, start walking.


To get to the top of Victoria Peak, the steep ride on the cable car...


...is the tourist attraction although we had better views from the bus we took one way.

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Hong Kong (March 29 & 30) - Chinese Medicine

Chinese traditional medicines are very different than western medicines in appearance, but it would be wrong to assume that appearance and the manner in which they are dispensed reflect negatively on their importance and curative abilities.


This is a statue of Shennong, the father of Chinese Medicine.

Hong Kong is a clearinghouse for Chinese medicine ingredients from all over the world. One example is ginseng.


The plants shown are (right to left) five and six years old and come from China. Next to them was dried ginseng from other places including British Columbia and Wisconsin.

We walked through a section of Hong Kong where there we many wholesale and retail businesses.












The number of businesses, the volume of business being conducted and the prices of items on display drove home the fact that the Chinese pharmaceutical industry is huge, albeit very different and much less dominated by a few gigantic firms than in the western world.

Walking down a street we came across what appeared to be a flower shop surrounded by nothing but purveyors of Chinese medicines. Curious.


Our guide explained that the massive arrangements were expressions of good will and hope for success for a newly opened medicine shop. My faith in the Chinese sense of order was restored.

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Hong Kong (March 29 & 30) - Taoist Temple

We were repeatedly told that chinese people are very superstitious and that their superstitions permeate their lives. We visited a Taoist temple. To enter the temple we had to step over the threshold 10" high.

Let me digress for a moment. We have stepped over raised thresholds on numerous occasions including at the Summer Palace and Forbidden City. The raised threshold is intended to keep out ghosts. The Chinese believe that ghosts have no legs nor can they fly. Ghosts therefore cannot pass over a barrier on the ground. Presumably the raised hatchways here aboard VOYAGER reflect a more utilitarian belief.

Returning to the description of our visit to the Taoist Temple, it was darker and more enclosed than the one we had visited in Zhujiajiao. Inside the air was thick with smoke. The smoke came from incense. Some incense was being burned in front of shrines. The one below was the shrine of the Twelve Judges of Hell.


In Taoism, when a person dies they come before one of the judges who decides whether the person has been so good that they can spin up to Heaven, so bad they remain in Hell, or somewhere in between. If in between, the person is reborn in a new life. The quality of the new life reflects the person's behavior in their previous life. Incense burned at this shrine seeks a favorable judgment for a person.

Other shrines are for other types of requests; some general and some specific. To westerners some of the statues of deities may appear amusing, but they are not intended to be humorous.





In the middle of the temple was a place to hang a coil of incense with a red banner attached to it.





The coil of incense is an offering to the gods to look favorably on the request written on the red banner. The biggest coils burn for three months.

If you look closely at the picture above you can see smoke rising towards an opening tithe ceiling. It is an imperfect system. I rarely think of a city's air as being clean and refreshing, but the first breath of it upon emerging from the temple was great.

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Halong Bay (April 01)

According to our guide, there are1,969 island in Halong Bay. Composed primarily of limestone and jutting out of the sea, most are too vertical and too arid for human occupation. Nestling in between some of the islands are floating villages. The people who live in these villages are fishermen and their families. Some even have rudimentary school.

We entered Halong Bay before sunrise. There was a substantial haze, making picture taking even more difficult.











After the ship docked, we headed out on a kayaking adventure. A bus took us to a pier where we boarded a sampan.





Only about 30 tourist sampans where moving around with at least 100 more at anchor. Our guide told us that on weekends it was not unusual for the demand for such craft to exceed the supply. Some offer weekend trips, staying out overnight among the island.

The sampan took us across an open part of the bay and in between some of the islands.











We arrived at one of the fishing villages.





In the picture below, note the round of huge lightbulbs above the boat's cabin. The fisherman use the lights to attract squid at night.


We transferred from the sampan to kayaks.


Off we went.














Throughout the day, vendors were never far away.


Yes the man in the picture above is wearing a box on his head. Even when the sampan was moving, boats trying to sell something would come along side.


In general the people we saw were reserved, but we did get some smiles and a wave.


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