This is continued from one of my earlier posts.
We thanked the lady who had ordered for us and then we kept walking down the streets. Countless Chinese signs and decorative string lights hung above us. We saw pigs, ducks, and chickens hanging from butcher shop windows. Then we spotted an an Irish pub on the corner and went in to relax for a while.
We walked to a Taoist temple that was dwarfed by skyscrapers around it. In the entrance I saw a lady kneeling in front of large metal incinerator. She got up and threw some paper inside. On the other side I saw plaques and pictures telling the history of the temple. This temple helped establish the first children's school in Hong Kong. I walked into a small, dim room. I saw a row of statues to my right that were unfamiliar. They didn't look like Chinese statues I'd seen in Vietnam or Thailand.
I walked to the back corner of the room and took a pictures of a statue that caught my eye. It was a bearded man dressed in a yellow, black and red. He looked like an emperor. A small, cracked statue of a man in black knelt by his side. Maybe he was a guard. Beneath them were flowers in a beautiful vase and a bowl filled with sand that held burning incense sticks. I watched a man kneel in front of them. He bowed and burned incense. Then he dropped some coins at their feet. Other worshipers left oranges.
I entered the main room and smoke from the incense stung my eyes. Most of the smoke came from cone-shaped coils that hung above my head. I took some more pictures of the statues as Taoists knelt and burned incense.
We kept walking on our tour of the city. We passed shops filled with Chinese statues and furniture. We turned to go down a street filled with traditional medicines. There was a store that sold shark fins and bones. Other traditional ingredients included lizards, seahorses, goat hooves and mushrooms. They filled up bins in the shops.
We reached the end of our planned walking tour. We had arrived at Western Market. It was like a mini-mall. It had souvenir shops, cloth stores, and restaurants. And we went up an escalator and were surprised to see ballroom dancing.
We decided to catch a red double-decker bus to go to Victoria Peak Tram Station. As we crossed a street we saw a model making a commercial. She was wearing sunglasses, an unzipped white coat with a pink bikini top and skirt, and tall white boots. I think she was selling shampoo, but I don't really remember.
We got on the wrong bus, and we had a little trouble getting a cab. Finally we got to the station. We took the Tram up and saw a wonderful view of the Hong Kong skyline below. We took tons of pictures and walked around the shops. We went to an American themed restaurant and waited for the sunset. We took more pictures of the skyline and then we went down to Lan Kwai Fong Street. It had lots of bars and restaurants. We hung out in a British pub and some of us watched a football (soccer) match.
I went back early with two friends and we got a little lost. We found the subway just before it closed. Then we got off at a station in Kowloon with only a small map on the back of our hostel's business card to guide us. We got mixed up and walked the wrong direction. Finally we found a street we recognized. We had walked around for about 30 minutes. We were exhausted.
The next day our group split up. Two of my friends went on a boat tour. On part of their trip they sailed past Macao. The rest of us walked around Kowloon for a while and then went to Stanley Market. We walked past a pet fish market, a flower street, and a bird market. Then we took a taxi.
At Stanley Market I bought a cheap painting of a Chinese junk (ship) in the harbor. I also bought a framed Chinese character that stood for friendship and one that said year of the rooster. I wish I had bought a Chinese stamp with a stone-carved handle. There were jade statues, toys, t-shirts, and tons of other souvenirs you could buy.
We went back on a bus. At night, we watched a laser light show from Kowloon near the Star Ferry. Across the harbor, the skyscrapers in Hong Kong shot green lasers into the sky from their roofs. Some buildings lit up like neon signs. The lasers strafed the sky like they were shooting at alien invaders in Star Wars. I felt like I had arrived in the future.
After the light show we went to the Peninsula Hotel. We heard it was one of the nicest hotels in Asia. We went up to see the view and to use the nice bathrooms we had heard about. We got into the nicest elevator I have ever been in. It had strange grooves in the walls and the lights dimmed when we reached the bar's floor. We ordered drinks in the bar, and then we went to the bathroom. The men's and women's restrooms were marked by a light shining in the shapes of the letters m and f on the doors. We walked in, and a man directed us behind a curtain. We used stone toilets in front of a window that looked out over Kowloon. Then the man turned on the faucets for us to wash our hands and gave us towels. The women said they were confused when they went in. They didn't see the stalls. They had to push open the doors which were blended in with the wall. I don't even have to tell you that was the nicest bathroom I've ever used.
That's about it.
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