One Day To See Hong Kong

We only spent one day in Hong Kong.  Since we wanted to make the most out of it, we took a hop-on hop-off bus tour.  We wore headsets so that we could hear information about what we passed.  Sometimes my mom would hear this information in Japanese as I like to change her commentary language to be funny.

At one point we learned that some Chinese believe in cursing others.  According to them, to curse someone you write down information about the person you want to curse on a human-shaped piece of paper and take it to a special lady who has the ability to curse.  She will then repeatedly beat it with a shoe.  Then she will toss it into a small fire and, voila, you have cursed somebody.  Curses usually cost about HKD 40 and can last from a week to an eternity.

As were driving around the city there are some things that I noticed.  First off some of the buildings were clean, modern sky scrapers.  Others were dirty, ugly, and definitely well used.

We drove past a lot buildings that were having construction done on them and noticed that they used bamboo for scaffolding instead of the metal commonly used in the US.  It must be a very dense, strong wood to be sturdy enough for this.

The streets and sidewalks were narrow.  This resulted in a lot of slow moving traffic on the roads.

When we got off the bus tour we went on some very long escalators.  These are listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest set of outdoor covered escalators.  From midnight to morning they go downhill then the rest of the day they change direction and go uphill.  This is very convenient for pedestrians because that region of the island is very hilly which would make it exhausting to traverse.  These escalators go over the roads so you don't even have to wait to cross the street.

Me in between two escalators

After the escalators, we stopped at a small Chinese temple called Man Mo Temple.  People were lighting incense inside as food for gods and spirits.  The pleasant aroma of the incense smelled smoky, like a fire, but slightly more fragrant.  It was small and simple, lightly decorated on the outside.  Unlike some churches and worshipping places you may find this one was more like a little hut on the inside.