A quick drive to the Tai Wo metro station and down to Kowloon on the very clean, modern metro. The metro cars are articulated but there is no separation between cars so you can see from one end of the train to the other whenever it straightens out. It is surreal, like the endless reflection in face-to-face mirrors. When we emerged, the boardwalk was lined with schoolkids in uniform hamming it up for photos on their end of year trip and university graduates in robes, matching black pumps clutching their mortarboards to keep them from flying off into the bay.
We hopped onto the Star Ferry that runs from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, paying with the handy-dandy Octopus Card, the perfect combo between a debit card and a bus pass which works for everything in this town — bus, metro, the ferry, even buying treats in the local candy store. The view across the bay is spectacular — a line of green peaks the backdrop for an intense array of skyscrapers of every description. This land-strapped city, much of
which is built on reclaimed land (or newly-made sand bars trucked in from elsewhere), is growing further and further into the water by the minute. Waterfront properties aren’t for long, as new skyscrapers pop up between them and the bay. Piles of steel i-beams, undoubtedly being readied to sink into the ground as ballast for the towering structures lie around in massive rusty piles. Downtown Hong Kong, known as Central, is unbelievably dense. What Montreal has in underground, Hong Kong has in aboveground. Covered walkways go off in every imagineable direction and they’re packed with a full range of people, hunched over old ladies with grandkids strapped to their backs with colourful fabric, tall Western men in suits and pointy shoes hustling to their next appointment. In one section of town endless escalators take you up block after block, all a floor or two above ground level, which has spawned a whole new slew of businesses benefiting from the newfound visibility.
This city is all contrasts — skinny ladies decked out in the latest fashions teetering on their skyhigh pumps stride by little humpbacked grannies squatting by their food stalls, the narrowest alleys full of sweaty kitchen staff on their smoke break tucked in behind ridiculously high end retail stores, ultra-modern glass and concrete highrises ringed with rustic bamboo scaffolding. the narrrow bay and the tropical mountains have created a city, squeezing it into dense and dizzying heights.
After a nice walk through Central, we got on the tram up to the Peak for more spectacular scenery. The tram line is implausibly steep. Even the views couldn’t keep thoughts of cable failure out of my head.
We headed back down to find lunch. Aiming for the Cheung Wan Market, along with thousands of workers on their lunch hour, we settled for the food stalls on Stanley Street. The charming owner of stall number 5 convinced us that his homemade wonton soup was the ticket and we were happy to oblige. We perched on colourful plastic stools around a little white table in a long line of little white tables and wrestled the piping hot noodles into our mouths.
The way home was a comedy of errors as Henri forgot his new toy in the pharmacy, we got on the wrong bus and ended up walking much further than we needed to in the now blazing sun. A half hour of navigating the maze that is Abby and James’s neighbourhood later we raced to get in the pool.
A quick drive to the Tai Wo metro station and down to Kowloon on the very clean, modern metro. The metro cars are articulated but there is no separation between cars so you can see from one end of the train to the other whenever it straightens out. It is surreal, like the endless reflection in face-to-face mirrors. When we emerged, the boardwalk was lined with schoolkids in uniform hamming it up for photos on their end of year trip and university graduates in robes, matching black pumps clutching their mortarboards to keep them from flying off into the bay.
We hopped onto the Star Ferry that runs from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, paying with the handy-dandy Octopus Card, the perfect combo between a debit card and a bus pass which works for everything in this town — bus, metro, the ferry, even buying treats in the local candy store. The view across the bay is spectacular — a line of green peaks the backdrop for an intense array of skyscrapers of every description. This land-strapped city, much of 
which is built on reclaimed land (or newly-made sand bars trucked in from elsewhere), is growing further and further into the water by the minute. Waterfront properties aren’t for long, as new skyscrapers pop up between them and the bay. Piles of steel i-beams, undoubtedly being readied to sink into the ground as ballast for the towering structures lie around in massive rusty piles. Downtown Hong Kong, known as Central, is unbelievably dense. What Montreal has in underground, Hong Kong has in aboveground. Covered walkways go off in every imagineable direction and they’re packed with a full range of people, hunched over old ladies with grandkids strapped to their backs with colourful fabric, tall Western men in suits and pointy shoes hustling to their next appointment. In one section of town endless escalators take you up block after block, all a floor or two above ground level, which has spawned a whole new slew of businesses benefiting from the newfound visibility.
This city is all contrasts — skinny ladies decked out in the latest fashions teetering on their skyhigh pumps stride by little humpbacked grannies squatting by their food stalls, the narrowest alleys full of sweaty kitchen staff on their smoke break tucked in behind ridiculously high end retail stores, ultra-modern glass and concrete highrises ringed with rustic bamboo scaffolding. the narrrow bay and the tropical mountains have created a city, squeezing it into dense and dizzying heights.
After a nice walk through Central, we got on the tram up to the Peak for more spectacular scenery. The tram line is implausibly steep. Even the views couldn’t keep thoughts of cable failure out of my head.
We headed back down to find lunch. Aiming for the Cheung Wan Market, along with thousands of workers on their lunch hour, we settled for the food stalls on Stanley Street. The charming owner of stall number 5 convinced us that his homemade wonton soup was the ticket and we were happy to oblige. We perched on colourful plastic stools around a little white table in a long line of little white tables and wrestled the piping hot noodles into our mouths.
The way home was a comedy of errors as Henri forgot his new toy in the pharmacy, we got on the wrong bus and ended up walking much further than we needed to in the now blazing sun. A half hour of navigating the maze that is Abby and James’s neighbourhood later we raced to get in the pool.
1 comment:
We remember the Star Ferry so well, and the bamboo "add-ons" perched high above the street, looking very perilous indeed. Keep those images coming, Sas ...
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