This weekend was unusual, as this entry’s title says. Don’t worry; next weekend, I should be in Seoul.
Last Wednesday was an honorary member of le week-end (the word that us cultured multilingual types like to use) due to its impossibly clear weather. I decided to go to Cheung Chau—not the first time I’d made that decision. Just as had happened every time before, I ended up not going: I played tour guide to Catherine’s friend from Semester at Sea, taking a few hours from TST to Wanchai to Statue Square through the bank buildings through HK Park to Admiralty and back to TST. The weather was so good (sunny, clear, fairly dry, temperate, breezy) that… I’m not even kidding… we could see the other side of the harbor.
Not only that, but looking from the Avenue of Stars one could make out details on estates stretching east along the Island, down to what looked like Shaukeiwan or so. Amazing.
Thursday had the same weather. I had class.
By Friday the weather was getting back to normal: after our two days of perfect weather, the sticky summer nastiness is setting in. This makes my sight-seeing missions within Hong Kong even more urgent than before. So, on Friday, I saw… nothing. Good Thai food, though.
Saturday I did a little better. I went with Andrea to Cheung Chau… just kidding, I tried and failed to go there yet again. We took the ferry from Tuen Mun to Tai O, which I hadn’t yet seen (I’m the last person in the University, maybe). Wandered around, gawked at weird fish products, etc.
After that it was off by a typically Lantau-ish (heaving, bumpy) bus to Mui Wo, where we went to Silvermine Beach and missed a few ferries. The ferry to Cheung Chau was badly timed: we didn’t even get to miss it.
After a fast ferry and some quick food in Central, I wandered around aimlessly for a while while Andrea and Chloe watched The Painted Veil at Palace ifc. Met up with various people, did various things, chased various people around LKF and Soho, and ended up home in a rather bad mood around 06:00. It was fun up until the last couple hours: I hadn’t been out in Central since February. Highlight: really cool music at an African place (“Makumba”) in Soho.
The late and rough end to the evening nixed my plans to go to Shenzhen (see, I was planning to cross the border) with Trevor and some of his colleagues on a practical, bargain-hunting visit. It was kind of nice, though, to spend a weekend without going through a single immigration checkpoint.
Today, instead of going to Shenzhen, I went to the Nanlian Garden and Chi Lin nunnery, in Diamond Hill, and Wong Tai Sin. They were very cool.
Afterward, I went to Becky’s church across the street from Baptist U. in Kowloon Tong (just a couple stops back up the line) to check out a couple Kazakhs and their instruments of musical distraction. Unfortunately, I was ambushed by a sort of halfway service pieced together around their performance (just about long enough to pass around the money bags). Their instruments were neat, though. Escaping at a break, I saw the Festival Walk megamall… very impressive, even for Hong Kong. Especially the random ice rink. It had a Yoshinoya, so I was able to put together my beloved beef bowl + 2 cups chili flakes + kimchi concoction for dinner before the long trek back to Tuen Mun. I was tempted to zip up the East Rail to the Shatin Racecourse, since it was a race day, but I think that if I see a race at all it should probably be in Happy Valley. Even without packing that extra sight in, it was a pretty productive weekend.
I’m only missing a few Hong Kong sights now… a lot of a few. Ocean Park, Sai Kung, Cheung Chau, Lamma (Powerstation Beach is supposedly not all that’s to it), a race at Happy Valley, the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery and the Heritage Museum at Sha Tin… and I’m sure I’m missing a ton more. Hmm, the Sheung Shui/Fanling/Tai Po Market old stuff area… the list keeps growing when I turn around.
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