Day 2 Hong Kong

After a refreshing sleep and a hearty breakfast we spent the morning in the room being boring (I have to spend part of each day with my books and writing to keep up with uni).

In the afternoon we went on a tour to see a temple - Man Mo - in the middle of a stand of high- rise buildings. Man Mo temples were once common as they honour the gods of commerce and literature. Apparently there is a god for almost every need, students pray to the god of literature for good results and the god of commerce for lots of money.

Here is the god of literature hiding behind a little lady I caught by surprise...

These coils in the centre of the building are all burning - the aroma is quite intense. The worshipers write their prayer on the red tag and the smoke from the burning coil takes the message to the spirit world.


I learned a lesson at Man Mo, not a profound one I'm afraid...use Maccas loos 'cause HK public toilets are still squat-to-pee ... aiming away from my jeans, NOT falling over whilst precariously balancing the weight of my camera hanging around my neck, and then making my knees work to stand me back up? an adventure I don't need.

From Man Mo we took a ride on the Peak Tram - not nearly as steep as the scenic railway - but provided spectacular views of Victoria Harbour.

Victoria Peak is 7,360km from Sydney.

From Victoria Peak we went to a little floating fishing village via sanpan. Once upon a time the fishermen and their families were considered not worthy of land, they lived their entire lives on their boats.

Hong Kong is truely a vertical city. 84% of the land is hills so with 16% of plains they make use of the only space available - up. Even the roads seem to go through buildings!

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Next we visisted a jewellery workshop but as it's a public holiday there was only one jeweller working and he was just resizing not creating. The showroom was gorgeous, could have done some serious bank-card damage but restrained myself (with MGM's enthusiastic help).

Our last stop of the day was Stanely markets where we did not have nearly enough time. I think this might have been the plan all along but poor MGM it backfired becasuse we are definately going back - so much fun, so many bargains!