14 April 2019
One sided
Accidentally stumbling onto the Hong Kong film awards
I have stayed in Hong Kong for 4 days and not crossed the harbour. The entire time I have been here I have stayed on the Kowloon side, not the Hong Kong island side. There is a method to my madness. I will be back in 6 days time and staying in a hotel on the other side, so my goal then will be to not come to the Kowloon side. Because I am one sided. I think thats what everyone means when they describe me as one dimensional?
I cant do it, I cannot not mention the rain. It is raining again, very hard at times. This stifled any faint notions of climbing up something at night. Instead I headed on a big loop of the main areas, thinking they would provide the most shelter, and a lot of the time they did. First I took in the ferry terminal before heading to the opera house where I stumbled onto the Hong Kong film awards. I had no idea this was occurring, I simply heard screaming girls and instinctively headed towards the RUCKUS. Ruckus is word of the day. As you will see I did not get to see any of the actual stars, but from the signs and announcers I think I worked out that at one point none other than Andy Lau walked past. This is the second time I accidentally found myself within metres of the most popular people in the whole city, years ago in career I stumbled onto an appearance by none other than Super Junior in Seoul, the original K-pop boy band.
After a great dinner featuring one of my old favourites which I have not had for years, it was time to splash back to my hotel where I am now enjoying squid flavoured popcorn (an accidental purchase).
Tomorrow I head just up the road to Guangzhou, a city substantially larger than Hong Kong. Wikipedia says the metro area of Guangzhou contains about 25 million people (coincidentally, just below Seoul), but its next door to Shenzhen which is apparently another 23 million people. In fact, the whole Pearl River Delta is basically one big mega city. Many of the cities metros (subways) now join together. The total population of this mega city is about 120 million, of which Hong Kong is a mere 7 million. Just a small town then.
There really is a lot of Jesus related stuff going on in Hong Kong. I feel as though a lot of it is fairly recent. Big money in Jesus it seems.
My journey took me past a newly constructed arts centre. I dont really understand what the point of it is, but it has this little wooden house.
These people happily posed for my photo in the rain.
If you climb up to the roof of the ferry terminal you can go out the back and get an amazing view of the harbour. It seems a very under populated location given the amazing view.
When I first came to Hong Kong those buildings were either not there or under construction. The very tall building on the left disappearing into the clouds has a roof top infinity pool that you have probably seen girls with huge fake boobs swimming in, its a favourite thing to stick on the Australian news website whenever they have a story about something rich Asians are up to. It was actually featured this week in a story about slavery in Hong Kong.
Like I said, great view from the top of the ferry terminal.
Here are some actual ferries, their terminal is made of solid gold.
Andy Lau was going past as I took this photo.
After Andy they were waiting for other people, lots of signs, flowers. Some of the signs are electronic, many say 'Please do not touch my 193'. Google has no info on this!
Random tourist pirate ship.
Eventually the pirate ship sailed off into the night.
In case you dont like pirate ships, heres the same shot without the ship.
For dinner I had Lanzhou beef noodle. It is the same all over the world, in Australia its what you get from Noodle Kingdom originally but now there are lots of places actually called Lanzhou Beef Noodle springing up all over the place. The noodles are pulled by hand just before cooking. The chefs filthy hands add to the flavour.
One last shot of a rainy Hong Kong glowing street.