The next item is the security at Sydney Airport. The new title holder for the stupidest system in the world, just a wee slight little bit ahead of the USA's TSA imbecilic system, is that of Sydney International Airport. Yes, we all know by now that you cannot take liquids on the plane with you unless it's less than 100ml per container. Now the TSA requires that you go to the supermarket and purchase a transparent Ziploc bag. Non-Ziplocs are not permitted. In Oz, they are not interested in the amount you carry. They want to see it all. And we'll have none of that Ziploc stuff around here, mate! Take it all out of your bag. Of course, this rule is a well-kept secret. So the system works this way: you carry less than 100ml in your bag. It goes through the x–ray machine and you go through the metal
So early, even Starbucks was closed!
detector. You do not beep. When your bag comes through the x-ray machine, you are summoned by the dude and told that you have liquid in your bag. So now you must walk back through the metal detector (while someone else is coming in, so there are now two people in the metal detector – very effective) and go and empty your liquid container into a tray so that it can be x-rayed and your bag can be x-rayed and you can be metal detector-ed once again. But as you now go through the metal detector the third time, the dude who was sent back to his bag for the same reason as you bumps into you. In short, as stumbling, bumbling, ineffective and stupid system as can be created. Now Oz has as TV show that shows real life footage of how they trap people who are trying to enter Australia with all sorts of contraband. It's a serious documentary show. If they want to make real money, they should use footage from their outgoing security system and turn it into a reality comedy show.
Other than that the flight to Hong Kong was just fine. Once again we had a two-seat combo for the two of us, and watched some movies (isn't it amazing that you never remember what you watched on a plane ten hours after you watched it?) and had a nap before landing in Hong Kong at 4:00 a.m.(!) Australia now has daylight savings time in summer, so we landed in Hong Kong an hour earlier than our itinerary had indicated (the itinerary goes back to our reservation which was made in July). So upon arrival we were almost alone in Hong Kong's gargantuan airport at Lantau Island. The trains only start running at 5.30 a.m. and even Starbucks was closed! So we hung out a while and watched some camera crew making a movie (I guess shooting at that time of day assures you of very little public disturbance) and eventually when the train desk opened we bought a 3-day train pass and headed to the city.
A dream fulfilled
Hong Kong has forever been one of my dream places to visit. I've long been enchanted by the skyscrapers and the mountains behind, the incredibly beautiful I. M. Pei building – I don't remember to which bank it belongs – with its two aerials and its multiple triangles reaching up to the sky, which has been for me one of the most creative architectural expressions to ever grace a skyscraper. I had heard and been fascinated by the idea of an escalator that runs from the center of the city up to the suburbs on the mountain – in short, Hong Kong has been magical to me for many, many years. And so now, here we were, about to embark on one of my dreams.
The train from the airport into the city whizzes and an amazing speed, but it was still dark (sunrise was late in Hong Kong, especially when compared to early sunrise in Sydney), so when we got into Hong Kong Central station, it was still dark. Ah, but Starbucks here was open. So first things first, we sat down for coffee. Then we decided we would go to our hotel by bus. OK, so how do you find our which bus to take. Across from the station there's a bus terminus. So my wife went to the dispatcher to ask and he said no. 12. We didn't know if that meant platform 12 or bus no. 12. And to my great surprise (I don't know why it should have surprised me, though) I discovered that many people in Hong Kong do NOT speak any English! Eventually, after asking another dispatcher we discovered that it was bus no. 12 and we went about finding from which platform it departed.
OK, so now we wait for the bus, and when it arrives we get on. So you pay for the bus, right, with your 3-day travel pass, right? Wrong. Either you have to have an octopus card which can be used for all the various forms of transport, or you have to have the exact change. Well, I had neither. So I offered the driver $20. He said "No change." I said OK. He shook his head and said again "No change." He then
Hong Kong's Central Bus Depot
had some words with the man sitting in the front row of the bus, and he started fishing around in his wallet and gave me change for $20, so I was able to give the driver exact change, and off we went. Well actually, we were already under way and this entire exchange took place while the driver was driving his double-decker bus through the streets of downtown (central) Hong Kong. And while I was handling the exchange with the driver, my wife was gazing in wonder at the astounding skyscrapers and snapping off pictures at an astonishing rate. So while the bus is traveling around downtown, everything is ok, but then, its starts climbing the mountain on narrow and seriously steep and very winding roads. In short, we wondered where to get off, so I asked the driver where to get off for Robinson Road and he sort of nodded that he would tell me (or that's what I understood). My wife, in the meantime, had struck up a conversation with some guy on the bus and he offered to tell us where to get off, which both he and the bus driver did. So off we get at the corner of Robinson Road and Seymour road, a few blocks from the hotel. So off we now go on foot toward the hotel: is it this way or that way, seeing as where it should say Robinson Road it says Seymour Road, and that's very confusing. So we went one way, then the other and then returned once we figured out that the sign referred to Seymour Road but we were indeed on Robinson Road. We walked the few blocks in a few minutes only to discover that the bus has a bus stop outside the door of the hotel! I guess that we learn from this that rather than ask the driver for the street, ask him for the hotel (which is what we did later with a cab driver).
We arrive to the lobby to a very efficient front desk staff person who had our reservation ready, but didn't yet have a double-bed room ready (not surprising seeing that it was now all of about 9:30 a.m.) No problem: we left our luggage with the concierge and off we traipsed to discover the city. Our program had just
Hong Kong's Ohel Leah Synagogue
Our first stop was to visit the Ohel Leah Synagogue at the other end of Robinson Road. [By the way, the name of our hotel is Bishop Lei International House and it's owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Hong Kong (and named for a former bishop of Hong Kong, I guess) and offers corporate rates for guests of the Synagogue (check out the shul's web site). However, I found a better rate on Agoda.com which has become my favorite online hotel booking website.] Back to synagogue affairs, our arrival to the shul was met by a policeman stationed outside who questioned us in great detail as to our need to be there. It seems that the local members of the community and the adjacent JCC (also very impressive) carry a membership card, and all others go through this security check. I have no problem with it, but it is rather lengthy. Anyway, after examining our passports in great detail, page by page, he decided to let us in through the metal detector and into the lobby. The shul is very beautiful; built by David, one of the Sassoon family brothers in memory of his mother. This is the famous Sassoon family formerly of Baghdad and Bombay and Shanghai and Hong Kong. An Iraqi-Indian Jewish family who were traders throughout the east and earned knighthoods from Queen Victoria (I think). They are not the same Sassoon family (but are related) who built the Ohel Shelomo shul in Kobe, Japan – just so you know. The Kadoorie family, also of Baghdad, Bombay and Shanghai and Hong Kong, donated land for the Jewish Recreation Club alongside the shul, which now has a skyscraper on it as well as the JCC, a kosher restaurant and a kosher coffee-shop as well as a kosher food store, swimming pool, library, lecture halls and meeting rooms; quite an amazing array of facilities. I don't know why I am so amazed by this, after all, Hong Kong has had a thriving Jewish community for over 100 years, has a K-12 Jewish day school. I guess it's still amazement that Jews ever arrived to this part of the world. But Hong
Stairs down and escalator up
Kong is SUCH a metropolitan, cosmopolitan city, that it shouldn't surprise me at all. But it is China, after all –more about that later – and it's not where I expect to find Jews. So we toured the shul and JCC facilities, learned about the history of the community, and then a cup of tea in the coffee shop.
Afterwards, at about noon, we walked toward the escalator only to discover that at 10 a.m., it ceases to run down the mountain and now only runs up (I knew about this system, but not about the time). Well, faced with this very easily surmountable problem, we started walking down the stairs that run alongside the escalator ( a useful alternative seeing that – as we were to discover a few days later, sometimes the escalator is closed for repairs in certain sections so you have to walk the stairs anyway). Now, as I said before, riding the Hong Kong Central to Mid Levels Escalator has been one of my fantasies for many years (yes, I know it's a weird fantasy, but so be it) and down we walked to the city's downtown area, known simply as Central. It took us about 15 minutes down the various staircases. For those who don't know, the escalator is not a single escalator but rather a series of escalators and angled travelators that are connected by walkways in a step type fashion that take you street by street down (or up, depending on the time of day) from Mid-Levels (the suburb half-way up the mountain) down to Central (you already know what that is). So at the street level you walk straight and level and between streets you escalate or travelate down or up. I hope it's now clear.
We went back to Hong Kong station and decided to hop on the subway and go to… somewhere. At some stage we decided to get off and go for a walk, wherever it was, it was very different from the downtown area, much less western and much more Chinese, and less wealthy looking. We walked about and found a park on the waterfront where I sat down a took a nap on the bench while my wife joined some lady there doing Tai Chi. I know this because while I was napping my wife took
Inside the funicular (I love that word!) to the Peak
pictures of me napping and of her Tai Chi partner. After the nap and the Tai Chi lesson, we walked back to the train and headed back to Hong Kong station (our 3rd visit there today) and started the climb up the escalator to the hotel.
By now the room was available and up we went to the 16th floor. Well, good that we didn't have a cat with us, because we would NOT have been able to swing it in the room. The room was small – I suspect it was a single room with a big bed, rather than a double room – but oh, the view! From our bay window we had a panoramic view of all of the downtown's skyscrapers, Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. Amazing! So even though the room was small it more than made up for it with the simply spectacular scenery that was visible from our window, and we had a hard time tearing ourselves from that view, both day and night. As a matter of fact later that night we actually got out of bed to see the city under the light of a full moon.
After a brief respite at the hotel we took a bus to the Victoria Peak tram. Good that we went when we did because it was an off-peak hour (peak-Peak, get it?) and the lines were short. We waited about 5-8 minutes in the line and boarded the funicular (I love that word) the makes the very steep climb to the peak of the Peak. There we walked about and went to see the view from the top. OML! What an amazing view. This is something that you cannot get used to and about 500 photos later we were still mesmerized. We stayed until dark and watched as the city changed colors and the lights came on. Fantastic! Also, from the top, over and above the view to the city and Kowloon across the harbor, there is also a wonderful view down to Stanley, which looks a lot like down to Sea Point from Cape Town's Table Mountain.
From the peak looking down to Stanley
The following morning we woke up early because we had a reservation on item no. 2 on our list of things to do here in Hong Kong, which is to visit the big Buddha in Ngong Ping on Lantau Island. I am always entertained by the title "World's Largest …" Like in Bangkok there is the world's largest reclining Buddha. By the way, it's also gilded, like I mentioned in an earlier post. So this Buddha, on Lantau Island, is the World's Largest Bronze Seated Buddha. And large it sure is – it's 34 meters high! Anyway, back to the morning. We had a quick snack for breakfast and made our way to the escalator. We discovered along the way that there is a short cut from the hotel to the escalator that we weren't aware of before, so now we'd be able to get on/off closer to the hotel.
As we were making our way down with all the folks going down to the city to work, I noticed how many men were dressed in black suits. Men In Black. It reminded me very much of Tokyo, where everyone dresses the same. So here we are in Hong Kong, and all the men are in black business suits, white shirts and grey ties. It's like they are all in uniform. No pink ties or yellow ones or any bright color. Bland, White and Grey. That's it. I find that unusual, but I guess that in Hong Kong there is some kind of expected dress code in the business world.
Once we got down to the bottom we made our way into the station. Hong Kong Central Station is huge, folks. It's Grand Central PLUS Penn Station times Twenty. You have to walk hundreds of meters to get from one place to another, and then of course there are multiple levels. We hopped on the train to Lantau Island, where the airport is also located, by the way, but to get to the airport you take the airport express and we were on the other train. When we arrived to the station on
Looking Down through the crystal cabin floor
the island, we discovered to our great delight that the station is adjacent to (a) the cable station where you get the cable car to Ngong Ping, and (b) Hong Kong's largest (no, not the World's Largest) Outlet Mall! Yahoo! We have where to go after the Buddha!
I had booked us the cable car online, because we had been warned about the looooong lines there. Now even though it was relatively early (we arrived an hour ahead of our reserved time) we got our tickets and went to the line for the reserved ticket folks.
Now, what I had not told my wife was that I had reserved us a place on The Crystal Cabin, which is a cable car with a glass floor, so when we left the cable station, my wife was looking at the scenery all around and not looking down. When I said, look at your shoes, her jaw dropped! Here we were suspended above the river with an absolutely clear view of the river beneath us, so it looked like we were suspended in mid-air. I tell you, it's an amazing, exciting and thrilling experience. OK, so off we go from the cable station across the river, to where we can see another cable-station-looking thing, but it's not a cable station. In other words, the station that looks like a station isn’t a station, it's just a place where the cable cars turn and head off into the wild blue yonder for the rest of this 25-minute cable car ride over the mountains. The views are fantastic and breathtaking, and in the distance you can start seeing the huge Buddha sitting in his lotus leaf. Well, I can't carry on writing about how amazing the cable car ride was because you'll all get bored.
25 minutes after boarding the cable car we got off at Ngong Ping which is a recreated Chinese village and is really one big open-air shopping mall offering souvenirs of a variety of types from clothing to kitschy stuff to semi-precious
Ngong Ping – The Buddha is visible from 20 minutes away
(a) Create a tourist site,
(b) make the trip there exciting,
(c) sell stuff that people want,
(d) show them something amazing.
If you build it, they will come – to coin a well-known phrase (thank you James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner). My wife found some stuff she wanted and I found another CD of Buddhist music to listen to in the car.
The Buddha itself, perched high on the mountain, is accessible via staircase of a few hundred steps. Many of the faithful were making a pilgrimage there and were praying in various places around the site, and as they made their way to the top, they bowed and prostrated themselves. That's like over 300 times on the way up. True believers.
Now while all this is going on, my wife says: "Look at that woman's heels." And so I look, and true, her boots have strange heels. "Take a picture" says she. And so we are now climbing the stairs, camera-ready, waiting for an opportunity to take a sneak snap of the dame of the heels. So what impressed you most at the statue of the huge Buddha on the mountain? Oh, some gal's heels. Hmmm…. What a riot!
I think I must have been a Buddhist in a previous life. There is something there that touches me in a very, very deep place. It's very interesting because much of what (the original) Buddha teaches is also in Pikei Avot in different words, and though I love Pirkei Avot very much, and I believe that it is the true ethical point of all of Judaism, for some reason I find that Buddhist texts go to a place in me where Pirkei Avot doesn't. Very strange.
Hong Kong's Central Station is HUGE and PACKED all day
We shared the cable car with a family visiting from Shanghai. How do you tell Chinese families from Hong Kong from Chinese families from the mainland? Simple – the number of children. Mainland families have one child only. The son spoke English, that's how we knew where they were from. Anyway, we met them again in the outlet mall and it was like a gathering of old pals. There's a camaraderie that develops when you do something with total strangers that later has the strangest follow-ups. We speak no common language yet we were able to share our delight at one another's purchases.
That's another thing about what I heard about Hong Kong being the un-China. But it's not, really. Hong Kong is very Chinese. Yes, we westerners love it because of its cosmopolitan ambience, but this is a Chinese city. Most of its residents speak no English. The dialect they speak here is not quite Mandarin and not quite
"The World's Largest" Permanent Light and Sound Show. Hong Kong Island, from Kowloon
Back in the shopping mall we came across a Rockport store with shoes on sale and an extra 10% off if you take 2 pairs. Well, my feet have been giving me endless trouble of late, and my wife encouraged me to try on some shoes. I did so somewhat half heartedly, because I really wasn't in the mood for shoe shopping. So I tried one pair and it was ok – I have a pair like it at home. My wife came over with another pair and I tried that one, and it happened. The Rockport Experience happened to me in Hong Kong. I put my foot into the shoe and my foot experienced a celebratory carnival. This was a happy foot! Joyous, in fact! Bliss! So the other foot wanted in too, and thus one pair of shoes was added to my collection of Rockports. My wife was not yet satisfied with the first pair and so she brought me another pair, and here too, it was a holiday! So off I went with two new pairs of Rockport shoes. The pair I had been wearing was bought in Vancouver about ten years ago. Well, suffice it to say that the old pair didn't leave the mall with us… We did some more shopping, found some clothes for my wife, and some food for the two of us and then we started making our way back to the city.
Two of the items on our list of things to see and places to go were now off the list. The third item we wanted to see was the light and sound show on the buildings on the sea-front of Hong Kong. For this we had to return to Hong Kong and then switch trains and go to Kowloon side of the city to view The World's Largest
The handles are cleaned and disinfected every two hours
Permanent Light and Sound Show. The show is made up of lasers and lights and music projected onto and from the buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbor.
Well, while I am glad we saw it because it's one of those iconic experiences you are supposed to have in Hong Kong, in truth, it was a little underwhelming. But it was a fun thing to do and afterwards we hopped on the underground once again, back to Hong Kong Station and up the escalator and – via the newly discovered shortcut – back to our hotel for a well-deserved sleep.
We had no specific plan for our last day in Hong Kong. We leave for Bangkok this evening so we have to check out by 12 p.m. (by which time the escalator is already going up only). However, the hotel has a shuttle that goes to the station every now and again, and there's also the regular bus. In the end we decided to be ready before 10 a.m., check out, leave our luggage with the concierge, and take the escalator down to Hong Kong Station. From there it was across the harbor to Mong Kok on the Kowloon side, where we decided to visit the local market.
We arrived there about 11.00 a.m. and they were just setting up the market. It was fascinating to watch how quickly they build their stalls and then how they populate them with their wares. While they were doing that we walked about looking for a battery for my wife's camera which has been giving us endless trouble since the battery is old and doesn't charge that well. We walked by store after store, up stairs and down in search of the elusive battery, but with no luck. Eventually, when we were in fact searching for something completely different (a bathroom) we happened upon a camera store and lo and behold, they had a battery. Rejoice, rejoice! So we now had a battery and the market was sufficiently stalled up for people to visit and off we went to shop. We had a great time in the market and got a lot of great stuff at good prices – and some stuff that turned out to be junk as well. So it goes… ah, well. We also stopped in at a non-Starbucks coffee shop and their coffee was great! But being the loyal customers we are, this was our only such
Well-dressed watchdog in Mong Kok Market
Now here something happened that for me was beyond belief. We were seated by the gate waiting for the flight to be called. Our boarding passes said that boarding would start 45 minutes prior to departure. Not an unusual amount of time for a 777. However, 45 minutes prior to takeoff came and went, and we were still seated, waiting for the flight to be called. At 30 minutes, I said to my wife that the flight will leave late because it hasn't yet been called. At 20 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time, first and business class passengers were called, followed shortly by us folk traveling in coach. Boarding went as smooth as butter. Everyone got on line, and proceeded to board, find their seats, place their carry-on luggage on the overhead bins, sit down and buckle up. The plane was completely full – and it left the gate exactly on time! Unbelievable! No one stood around to chat with someone else, or to ask the flight attendant for a drink, or to walk the aisles for some exercise, or yell across the plane at a neighbor or friend – all the things that I am accustomed to when I fly El Al. Here it was simple and orderly, and very, very efficient.
Once on board we were served our kosher meals just after the folks in front of us got their Muslim meals and the guy next to me got his Indian vegetarian meal. We chatted briefly and found out he was from Sri Lanka and going to visit Bangkok. He then slipped his shoes off and OMG – the entire aircraft was swathed in the rather extremely pungent aromas of seldom washed feet gone sockless in shoes. OMG! OMG! OMG! I almost passed out. I was very thankful for his spicy vegetarian meal as the wonderful spices and herbs fought a powerful, brave and valiant (but eventually losing) battle against the feet.
So I dove into my Hermolis Kosher meal which was delicious, plentiful and tasty and not related at all to the meal from Sydney. A few short TV shows later and we were on the ground in Bangkok. Picked up our bags, hopped on the airport express train into town (15 minutes) then into a cab and we were home again on Soi 23. G'night!
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