After lunch we carried on before heading across to the Museum of Hong Kong. The fixed exhibit was the traditional "history of..." exhibition charting Hong Kong from perhistoria to modern (well, the 90s) times. As ever, Britain played a large part in Hong Kong's history by breaking down the Chinese by importing drugs to the area and advancing towards to capital until the Chinese capitulated and signed over first Hong Kong island and then Kowloon and the New Territories to Britain.
The second exhibit seemed to be about banking (and HSBC in particular, of course) so we skipped out to go to the adjacent science museum to finally see the National Geographic young wildlife photographer of the year exhibition that we'd missed out on in London last year.
Once we had finished browsing through the impressive collection, we headed back to the docks. As we waited for night to fall we popped into an amusement arcade and went head to head on Mario Kart GP2, which was as fun as ever.
Hong Kong is famous for it's night-time harbour sound and light show a symphony of lights which holds the world record for the longest daily sound and light show. Every day at 8pm music is piped onto the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui and the lights on buildings on the island flash and lasers shine into the sky in time with the music. It's pretty cheesy, but every day crowds line up, people set up camera tripods and everyone waits for the show to start. The mist still hung over the island so the view wasn't as clear as in the pictures. We wandered up the Avenue of Stars - the HK equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and stopped off for a drink in one of the many quayside bars and then wandered back while taking in the light show.
Also on the avenue was a display of the Olympic mascots, which seemed to all be pandas. Some of the sports they were partaking in were obvious, but some were more confusing...
Once the show was over we decided to cross the harbour and take the train up to The Peak. The train runs on a pulley system, but even so the track was seriously steep. Starting at the base of the hill the journey ran uphill at steep angle. We started out at "ground level" and soon were rising above the sky-scrapers towards the summit. The Peak is predictably tourist trap-esque and the centre is full of tacky over-priced souvenir shops and places like Hard Rock Cafe. We went to one of the over priced restaurants which was pretty nice, but seemed to be lacking the live music indicated by the guide book. We got a seat with a view (again foggy) and a menu full of the promise of freshly cooked food. After ordering, the waiter returned to inform us that Emma's choice had run out so a replacement was ordered. After a few minutes, our meals turned up. A few minutes later another waiter arrived with Emma's original choice. He seemed very confused that we both had food, but unfortunately didn't decide to leave the extra meal with us.
After we got back to sea level we decided to go for a walk over the many elevated walkways back to Central, stopping to get some "lines of lights" photos along the way.
The next day we took the MTR out to Lantau island, adjacent to the new airport and took the cable car out to Ngong Ping, home of the world's largest outdoor bronze Buddha. There seem to be so many of these things around that there needs to be multiple categories to have records in. Biggest/smallest, indoors/outdoors, bronze...
The journey takes about 20 minutes and gives an aerial view of the new airport, before going over the hills of Lantau island to Ngong Ping village. If the Peak was a tourist trap, then Ngong Ping is a tourist death-trap. The entire cable car complex has been built to look old, but they did a pretty poor job as everything looks like it's made out of plastic. Overpriced cafes and souvenir shops line the path to the monastery at the foot of the steps up to the Buddha itself.
Apparently Buddha like oranges, so there were plenty of orange bushes around and small piles of offerings in front of the statues. Then we started up the hundreds of stairs. I know I'm not that fit, but daaaaaaaaaaaamn there was a lot of stairs.
After getting the cable car back to Tung Chung, we walked around the shopping centre there taking in another supermarket, complete with more live fish tanks and piles of durian fruits.
That evening we ventured back to Yau Ma Tei to take in a night market. Essentially, it was a market along a street full of stalls selling tat, knocked off toys and clothes. Afterwards we were guided into another random building, up a staircase and into a first floor restaurant, practically invisible from the street (in fact, it took us several attempts to find the building). This was another traditional place, full of Cantonese where very few of the waiters spoke English. We ordered the duck pancakes and a whole sliced duck arrived.
Afterwards we wandered back towards the harbour. As we neared the harbour we passed the Sheraton hotel. After my experiences in Frankfurt and Sheraton Preferred Guest card in my wallet I dragged Emma inside for a drink. The bar was on the top floor with an amazing view over the harbour. Of course, the drinks of choice were cocktails - margaritas, daiquiri and other strong vodka drinks that looked pretty space-age under the mood lighting. Very Lost In Translation
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