This story is about Hong Kong and mountains and ferries and food and beer. What happened was, there’s a thirty-year-old picture I wanted to share and it brought the story to mind. I was sure I’d written it up but can’t find it here on the blog, hard as I try, so here we go. Happy ending promised!
The picture I wanted to share is from a business trip to Hong Kong in 1994 and hey, it turns out I have lots more pictures from that trip.
Kai Tak airport in 1994.
Rats for sale in a sketchy corner of Kowloon.
Kai Tak, what an airport that was. If you could open the plane’s windows, you’d have been able to grab laundry hung to dry on people’s balconies. My fast-talking HK friend said “Safest airport in the world! You know pilot paying 100% attention!”
My trip extended over a weekend and I wanted to get out of town so I read up on interesting walks; on paper of course, the Web only just barely existed. Lantau Island was recommended; there was a good hike up over the local mountains that reached a Trappist monastery with a well-reviewed milk bar. So I took the ferry from Central to Mui Wo.
The view from the ferry was great!
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I revisited Mui Wo in 2019, visiting the Big Buddha.
It was easy to find the hiking trail up the mountains, well-maintained but steep. I stopped to take pictures maybe more often than strictly necessary because it was in the high Celsius thirties with 99% humidity and my North-Euro metabolism wasn’t dealing well. Visions of Trappist ice-cream danced in my head as the sweat dripped off my chin.
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Having said that, I’m glad I stopped because the pictures please my eye. These are all Ektachrome; can’t remember whether I took them with the Pentax SLR or the little Nikon pocket camera.
Lantau has the new international airport on it now; I wonder if those green hills are still unspoiled.
Eventually, sweat-soaked and my body screaming for mercy, I reached a small mountaintop. I could see the monastery, but it was a couple of little mountains over, so I arrived in poor condition. Sadly for me, it was a Sunday so, commerce deferring to the sacred, the joint was closed. Poor Tim. Especially since I hadn’t brought anything to eat.
Fortunately I didn’t have to hike all the way back to Mui Wo; Almost straight downhill there there was a “Monastery Pier” with an occasional ferry to the nearby islet of Peng Chau and a connection back to Central. Looks like there still is.
It was midafternoon, the heat approaching its peak, and walking downhill has its own stresses and strains. By the time I got to the pier I was a sad excuse for a human. Here’s a picture of the ferry.
As you can see, it was pretty crowded, but unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to share the bench the big sweaty panting hungry-looking pink person was on.
Peng Chau itself was visually charming but the ferry connection was tight so I couldn’t explore.
Peng Chau waterfront in 1994. This is the picture I wanted to share that led me to (re?)tell this story. My conversational-media home on the Net is on Mastodon, but I like to keep an eye on Bluesky, so I post random pictures there under the tag #blueskyabove; this will be one.
Trudging onto the medium-sized ferry back home, I encountered a food-service option: A counter with one guy and a big steaming pot of soup behind it. My spirit lifted. The guy’s outfit might have once been white; he was unshaven and sweaty but then so was I, and my clothes were nothing to write home about either.
I stopped and pointed at the bowls. He filled one, then wanted to upsell me on a leathery, greasy-looking fried egg to go on top but there are limits. Disappointed, he stepped aside to put it back, revealing a small glass-fronted fridge, icicles hanging off it, full of big cans of San Miguel beer. My spirit lifted again.
The soup was salty and delicious. I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed a beer more in the thirty years since that day. The ferry was fast enough to generate a refreshing breeze all the way, and there were charming boats to photograph.
The tourist who walked off the boat at Central was a dry, well-hydrated, and cheerful specimen of humanity. The next day, my fast-talking HK friend said “You climb over Lantau in that weather yesterday? White guys so weird!” “It was great!” I told him, smirking obnoxiously.
I’ve been back to HK a few times over the years, but it’s not really a happy place any more.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: CraigM (Dec 16 2024, at 07:41)
This bears so many parallels with my experience, just a year or so later I made multiple trips of a couple of weeks each time. I was lucky to have time commitments every other day and generally free weekends, hence I spent as much time as possible walking/exploring the back streets of Kowloon and doing the tourist things on weekends … such great memories.
I arrived the first time after the flight and slog across town with luggage on the underground as a drenched (humidity was astounding!) thing, such a scary apparition for the local I was meeting that they're first concern was that I not expire. I very quickly grew to love the whole experience and have as many great memories as you of the pre-return HK.
With ref to Kai Tak, flights in and out fascinated me so much I one day hiked the neighbourhood that had the checkerboard warning painted buildings, just to observe the inbound flights direct attack from that vantage point.
Thanks for the great reminder/memories …
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