Hong Kong, continued...
We stayed in HK city for a few days, hopping from squalid backpacker places to average guesthouses. Staying in the city was good, as it gave one a feel of the intensity of the place. Hundreds of thousands of people everywhere at any hour of the day or night. Arriving during the new year festival probably contributed to it also, it was busy but definitely not chaotic or crazy. Not like China. We had heard that the government was putting on a massive new years fireworks display in the harbour, so we walked down to the water to check it out.
The fireworks display was spectacular. Well, it sounded spectacular. It sounded like millions of 
dollars worth of fireworks exploding... Inside a cloud.Unfortunately there was a blanket of fog so thick on the city that we only really got to experience the audio component of the extravaganza.
dollars worth of fireworks exploding... Inside a cloud.Unfortunately there was a blanket of fog so thick on the city that we only really got to experience the audio component of the extravaganza.The cloud was so thick that not even a flash was visable when the shells exploded, only here and there would the periphery of a firework be seen. After a while the crowd started 'oooohing' and 'ahhhing' the loud noises alone.
After a couple of days staying in the city, we decided to indulge our islomania and go stay on Lamma Island. Kelly had stayed there a few years back, and she gave it quite a talking up. It did not disappoint. The island is HK's third largest, at 14 square kilometers, and has around 6000 residents living in a number of villages over the island. There are no cars on the island, so the
villages are linked by tracks for bicycles and pedestrians. It is only a 20min ferry ride from HK Central to Lamma Island, however the change is immediately noticeable in the pace of living. After we arrived and found somewhere to stay I went for a walk around the island, getting out of the main village I felt that the city was far behind. The track wound its way out past the standard Chinese tiled apartment buildings and through small villages of ramshackle houses with restaurants where your meal is cooked in the family home. There are a few decent looking beaches on the island, and it is a reasonably popular day outing for HK residents. When evening fell, the island grew much quieter and the tracks I was walking became deserted. Wanting to see the entire island I headed for the most remote corner, where there was the highest mountain. 
Many of the villages I passed on the way had vegetable gardens, and nearly every house had a small shrine at its entrance with incense and offerings for the new year.
It was dusk by the time I reached the base of Shan Tel Tong (aka Mt Stenhouse), however having come all this way I thought I would give it a shot. It isn't very high at 353m and I did have a torch with me, so I started climbing.
By the time I was half way up I realised that it would not be easy climbing down holding a torch (should have taken a headlamp), also that fog had obscured the top of the mountain completely.
I made it to the top, to be rewarded with the lovely view below.
On the way down I made it to a fork in the track I had noticed on my ascent. When I first passed it I realised it would be very hard for me to tell which way to go coming down in the dark, so I marked the way I had come with sticks on the ground. Now, you would have thought that this indicated a level of common sense and responsibility. Apparently not. I reached the fork in the path but couldn't help but wonder where the other track led, so instead of taking the marked track I headed off into the rapidly darkening unknown.
Naturally this track evaporated so quickly that I couldn't have gone back to the fork in the road even if I had wanted, so I just headed in a roughly down kind of direction. Most of the descent was done in a half sliding, half scrambling manner, trying to dodge the undergrowth and slow myself down enough that I could stop before any major drops.
I made it to the bottom in one piece, and took a track back to the village.
On a non-HK related note, I now have my Russian visa, and am flying to Beijing on Friday to start my trip across into Russia. Should be fun. Hopefully I will have time to write about the end of the HK trip, and the brief visit to Macau.
I have put more HK photos up on my Flickr site...
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