30 March 2025
Still alarmingly cheap
Hong Kong Star Ferry
Good news, it gets dark early enough for me to still be awake after the sun sets. I go to bed between 9 and 9:30pm when on holidays, and get up very early to go hiking most days. On a trip to Korea a few years ago I never saw the night.
Tonight I walked along Nathan road, wondered why people walk so damn slowly these days, then paid about $1 to ride a ferry to the other side of the harbour.
Over on the island side, there was no cheap food, only expensive experiences for the coiffed, so I scurried back to the poor side and had the same meal I had many years ago in the same place the first time I ever saw that meal... you will realise what I mean when you see it.
So now that I had 2 proper meals in a day and my old man joints have drained themselves of whatever fluid builds up due to plane travel, I can declare that tomorrow is a hiking day.
Unless I wake up with some form of sudden onset bird flu, or it is raining hard enough for there to be puddles.
A rather bland photo of a street scene, but this is Chungking mansions, the most infamous place remaining in Hong Kong. You can get a 'hotel room' in that building for $10 a night. A lot of dodgy guys hang around out front trying to sell you a suit or watch or some bitcoin. I think I walked through it once in the past, I will give it a miss this time.
I have distinct memories of this underpass that goes to the harbour. No one besides me uses it. They should just name it after me since I have used it on my own about 5 times in 15 years.
Right on the harbour is a pop up ballroom dancing event. There was no rug for me to cut so I chose to move on.
Everyone has seen the harbour, so it is just a token photo from me.
There is my boat! The older one on the right.
I think it still costs about $1 to ride. It must run at a loss. Presumably this means they have no money to perform maintenance. If one of them ever sinks they will cancel the whole thing.
The inside of the ferry is suitably old too.
I photograph the people taking photos.
Photo from a moving ferry almost at dusk, hand held, came out ok.
An Apple store over a highway, I wanted to go in there and ask them why they do not allow custom fonts to be rendered when served from local sites in Safari... but I chose to focus on finding food instead, Apple users can enjoy looking at crap fonts for the rest of their lives. Have I lost everyone?
All the food near the ferry station on the island side was far too expensive, so as mentioned above I travelled back under the harbour by train and was surprised to find myself at the very same Food Republic where I tried pepper lunch for the first time about 15 years ago. I probably did not get kim chi on it that time, but add kim chi, add egg, add mushrooms is my standard order, they did not have any mushrooms.
Now it is time for bed, tomorrows hike might evolve as it happens as there are a lot of trails to choose from.