Rotterdam approaches Hong Kong; the southeast side of the island is to the right and the eastern entrance to Victoria Harbour is to the left, with another ship ahead of us in the channel

Rotterdam is entering Victoria Harbour from the east side; we are looking at Kowloon

Stanley Market; Moss was unable to find replacement walking shoes

We tour Aberdeen Harbour aboard a sampan; in the background is the famous “Jumbo” floating restaurant
Squeekie in front of the restaurant on Victoria Peak where she enjoyed dinner with Chui family in 2005

The up-bound tram passes the down-bound tram on Victoria Peak

Squeek and Moss enjoy tea at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon

The famous night laser show on Hong Kong’s buildings

Squeekie about to board the Star Ferry for Hong Kong Island

Moss on the Star Ferry going over to Hong Kong Island

Moss photographing trams on Des Voeux Road in Hong Kong

Squeekie photographing trams on Des Voeux Road in Hong Kong

Squeekie inspects the Durian fruit at a small store in Hong Kong’s market district

The Legislative Council Building in Central Hong Kong, a democratic reminder from the days of British control

We wave a temporary farewell to Rotterdam as our bus leaves the cruise terminal headed for the airport

On the way to the airport, we see Hong Kong’s busy container terminal

A farewell view of Hong Kong across Victoria Harbour

Squeekie with her treasures purchased at the Hong Kong Disneyland store at the airport

We have arrived in Xian; this is our view of the airport from the bus taking us to the hotel


Day Forty-four (Wednesday, March 4, 2009)-- Squeekie and I awoke early and went out on Deck Six to watch Rotterdam come into Hong Kong. To my surprise (because we had approached from the southwest) our ship entered Victoria Harbour from the eastern entrance, and the high-rises of Kowloon were the first buildings we saw as we approached (see panorama picture). Unfortunately, the weather was very foggy and overcast, but the high-rise buildings of Hong Kong and Kowloon appeared to merge into the clouds in a very pretty way. Rotterdam threaded its way into the harbour and through the traffic of boats large and small—how difficult it must have been for Captain Olav to drive the vast liner in such a complex environment, but he did a great job. Ultimately Rotterdam was docked at the Ocean Terminal in Kowloon, just west of the Star Ferry terminal. Unfortunately, the Star Pisces liner had arrived just ahead of us and was parked on the outer side of the pier, where they had the best view of Hong Kong harbour and island, but we had almost as good a view. The ship’s bakers had prepared “star rolls” for breakfast today—we soon learned that these are the famous rolls eaten by riders on the Star Ferry ships. We have arrived in Hong Kong!

We had booked a “Highlights” tour to orient ourselves to the city, even though Squeek has been here before. Our tour started with a coach ride along the Kowloon waterfront, past the Peninsula Hotel and Nathan Road, through the traffic to the Cross Harbor Tunnel to the island, past the Happy Valley Race Track, and through the Aberdeen Tunnel to the southern part of Hong Kong Island. Squeekie pointed out some of the places she remembered from her earlier visit. We went over to Stanley Bay to visit the market, our first stop. I needed a new pair of walking shoes as the ones I had brought had failed yesterday, but I was unable to find any replacement—it seems that my feet are just too big for the sizes they market in Asia. (The same is true of shirts and pants, too.) I did get a rugby shirt and Squeekie got the grandpuppies a matched set of Burberry coats for the Seattle cold.

Back on the coach, we drove to Aberdeen Harbor where we boarded sampans for a little cruise through that harbor—we also saw the famous Jumbo floating restaurant. After our ride, we visited a jewelry manufacturer’s showroom, but their products were out of our price range. Then our motor coach wended its way up to the top of Victoria Peak. As you can see from the attached pictures, it was cold and foggy all day. When our tour arrived at the top “for the marvelous view,” we couldn’t see across the roadway much less down the mountain. Oh, Well! Squeekie also showed to me the restaurant where she and Leslee had been taken to dinner by Chuis—it looked like some place out of England, and was very nice. I’m sure that the view from there would have been marvelous in better weather. Then we all rode the Peak Tram down the hillside to the station in the Central District where our coach was waiting to return our group back to the ship. I am glad we took this tour; it was a good introduction to Hong Kong and we it enabled us to see and do things that would have been more difficult for us to do on our own. It was just too bad that there was so much fog inhibiting our view of the city.

In the afternoon Squeekie and I put on our nice clothes and walked a couple of blocks from our anchorage to the famous Peninsula Hotel, where we enjoyed a British-style high tea in their marvelously restored lobby. We ate tea sandwiches, scones, and sweets just like proper British people, and it almost seemed as though we were NOT in China except for the reality that there were many Chinese people there having tea. After tea, we explored the hotel and its gift shop for some souvenirs. It was wonderful to experience this last remnant of the British control of Hong Kong (along, that is, with the traffic driving on the left side of the road).

Next we walked a few blocks up Nathan Road, Kowloon’s main shopping thoroughfare; late in the afternoon it was already alive with commerce and greed, buzzing with neon lights, swarming with traffic, and compacted with people in search of anything and everything. It didn’t take but a moment for me to become intensely annoyed by all the hawkers trying to sell us watches or have clothing tailored. I was hoping to find a store at which to purchase a replacement lens for my camera, and a new long telephoto; we did stop in one store and found a new 18-55mm lens, but I really didn’t like the constant bickering there. I always felt as though I was being cheated. Eventually I did buy the lens there but I was happy to GET OUT of there as quickly as I could. Finally, Squeekie got me back to the mall in the Ocean Terminal, where the stores were neater and the sales people politer and seemingly more honest. I found a Sigma 150-500mm telephoto lens that was exactly what I had hoped to find, and the price was very affordable. I also got some replacement walking shoes and Squeek found some long underwear because we were afraid of how cold it would be at the Great Wall.

With the shopping out of the way, we returned to the ship in time to see Hong Kong’s famous laser light show across the harbour. Despite the continuing fog which subdued the lights, enough showed that Squeekie and I were able to get some very nice pictures. Then I turned in but Squeek went back to the terminal-side mall for some final browsing.

A bit of history-- Hong Kong was an island with a small, unimportant fishing village located in the islands not far away from where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. When Great Britain declared war on China in 1839, this area (also where formerly Portuguese Macau is to be found) was the site of some of the fighting. Imperial China, despite its size and wealth, was badly defeated by Great Britain (who fought only China’s coastal fortresses and cities, and did not try to invade the country itself), in large measure because Britain had military forces strengthened by the Industrial Revolution, while China’s Emperor and Mandarins refused to even talk to Europeans much less to try to understand the technical revolution then underway in the western world. In the Treaty of Nanking of 1842 which ended this war, China surrendered Hong Kong island (and some other territories) to Britain, and agreed to permit Britain to trade not just in Canton, but also in Shanghai and elsewhere. This treaty was the beginning of the end of China’s Imperial Dynasties which had ruled the land for some 2,000 years. The treaty turned over IN PERPETUITY Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and several other islands to Britain, later, in 1896, additional land—known as the New Territories—was LEASED to Britain to expand Hong Kong’s land. From 1842 onward the tiny fishing village became a major centre of commerce and trade in the Far East, and the Hong Kong Dollar (Americans tend to forget that the “dollar” originally began as a Chinese unit of currency specifically intended for foreign trade) an important silver coin in the Pacific Basin mercantile region.

After 1900, with problems in Europe in the fore, the British government understood that it would be unable to defend Hong Kong against direct attack from determined enemies, and sought assistance. At first the Japanese were tabbed for help (the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1906), but from the mid-1920s onward the Americans were seen as possible helpers. With the collapse of the Chinese Imperial government in 1912, and the decline of China into Civil War in the 1920s, both the British and the Americans operated “police” military naval forces on China’s main rivers, the Pearl, the Yellow, and the Yangtze. Hong Kong remained an important mercantile place throughout this time, but was a target of the Japanese in December 1941. Most Americans are not aware that at the very moment the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, other Japanese military forces were bombing (and invading) British Hong Kong and the then-American controlled Philippine Islands. The British forces in Hong Kong surrendered on Christmas Day 1941, and the Japanese began a rule over Hong Kong which is still remembered in pain and anger by older Chinese to this day. When the war ended and the British Empire began its decline, Hong Kong residents began to worry about their future, especially after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the victory of the Communists. The crucial date was 1996, when the “New Territory” lease expired and that land should be handed back to China. Would this happen? Could Britain defend what would remain of Hong Kong? Complicating this issue was the economic development of Hong Kong. As Communist China endured serious economic decline, the tiny British Colony became an example of how capitalism could improve the lives of many if not most in a community. Would Communist China permit Hong Kong to remain Capitalist?

Today we know what happened. When Britain decided to return not just the New Territories but ALL of Hong Kong, the Communist government of China was already in the process of rethinking how the nation should be run. Today, all of China (or much of it, apparently) is benefiting from an injection of Capitalist economics; Hong Kong is administered as a separate (but NOT independent) administrative region which retains much of its British-taught democratic politics. In this tour Squeekie and I saw this clearly.


Day Forty-five (Thursday, March 5, 2009)-- Squeekie and I got a VERY EARLY start today, so we could pack for our overland excursion which begins this afternoon. Fortunately, we still have time this morning for additional sightseeing, and Squeekie has something special for me. It was still foggy so a visit to Victoria Peak was out, but we took the Star Ferry over to Central Wharf to visit the island. As we took the short ride across Victoria Harbour, I was reminded of riding on the last San Francisco ferries in 1954, when I stayed with Gama. We rode on the upper, First Class, deck and got some nice pictures despite the foggy conditions.

A short walk took us to Des Veoux Road, where the British-style double-decker trams still run. Squeek and I took LOTS of pictures of these little beauties, and then we climbed aboard for a ride west into the Chinese market district. We got off and walked around for awhile before getting back aboard the trams to go east. Squeekie wanted to walk over to the lower Victoria Peak tram station, so we got off the tram and walked up the hill for several blocks. They have a museum at this station so I was able to get technical information about the peak tram, but no history book was to be found Then it was walk back to the Central Wharf ferry terminal and back across to Kowloon. In the ferry depot on the Kowloon side I found a book on the history of the Star Ferries, and purchased it. It is, however, too bad that similar books do not exist for the history of the peak tram and the double decker tram cars.

Once back on the ship we prepared for our journey into the interior of China, had some ice cream in the Lido, then placed phone calls to both Leslee and Lynn’s mom. At 2:30 pm our “China Overland Adventure” began. We departed the Rotterdam aboard a bus that took us to Hong Kong’s International Airport over on Lantau Island. As we threaded our way through the traffic we passed the tremendous container terminal just west of Kowloon; I confess that I have never seen such a busy container terminal ever before. We also passed over the new bridges which have been built to connect Lantau to the New Territories and Kowloon. Squeekie took a picture of the airport train at the side of the expressway, and I tried to get a picture for her of the exit to Hong Kong Disneyland. Pictures were tough because it rained heavily (but sporadically) all afternoon.

Hong Kong International is HUGE, and very efficient in its layout. I was quite impressed, and Squeek was eager to share with me her earlier visit to the facility. After we went through security we were given time to explore before our plane left. Squeek wished to find if there was a store for Hong Kong Disneyland, and a brief survey led to the discovery of the “Magic of Hong Kong Disneyland.” The store was filled with all sorts of merchandise from the park. We purchased shirts and some little stuff.

We flew to Xian on China Eastern Airlines, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared it might be. The flight was bumpy, but we got to the Xian airport with little trouble. However, the women in our group were horrified to learn at the Xian Airport that the toilets were squatter type, smelled very badly, and were without toilet paper. Ugh!!!

We met our guide outside of the immigration area. Her name was Lin and she was VERY GOOD. A bus took us into Xian. It was night by this time, but I was surprised to see that Xian is a big and busy city, very modern in appearance. Our hotel, the Shangri-La, was of five star status, and very modern and nice. After dropping our bags Squeek and I went downstairs for a bit of dinner—we shared a Reuben sandwich and each had some mushroom soup. Then we went off to bed because we have a busy day tomorrow.