5th April 1984 Still in Honkers

Thursday 5^th April  Started raining during the night – light rain but nevertheless wet. Went over to the island just after nine, I think. Bumped into Chris and Linda – Chris had just had his passport stolen from his pack (T.C.s, tickets and Russian visas as well). [Visas for the Soviet Union were not attached to the passport in those days.I still have a photocopy of mine, which I will post at the appropriate time and you will see how the Russian Embassy transliterated my name without knowing how it's pronounced.]

   I walked up to Queen’s Road West area in search of Man Mo Temple. I couldn’t find it - I thought

 I had left the map at the hotel (didn’t look hard enough in my bag). But I did pass through Hollywood Road markets – lots of meat, vegetables, live fish in buckets or tanks – dead fish on ice. However, the smell wasn’t very pleasant – just very wet because of the continuing light drizzle and their hoses.

I caught a tram heading towards Wanchai and got off near Queensway Plaza. Took some flash pictures under cover in the gardens. Had some lunch – chicken sandwich, Fanta root beer and some bland tapioca-type pudding ($8.90). I found my map and caught the tram back to Queen’s Road West Area and found Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. There were a lot of school children around – there’s a school next to the temple. Took pictures inside then went back downhill and caught the tram to Pottinger Street. Changed $US70 T.C. for $545.50 at Amex before seeing Steve Ho at Kinefoto. There I bought 40 rolls of film, a lens hood and some spare batteries. All this came to $1175, but I didn’t have enough cash so I used $100T.C. and $HK400 cash. Then I went back to the hotel for a sleep. It was very foggy on the harbour (and all over the place) and the boats were all blowing their horns, sounding like lost Loch Ness Monsters.

   Inside the Man Mo Temple are a lot of Chinese statues, huge coils of burning incense, incense sticks and candles (the floor is slippery with wax) and little electric light bulbs representing candle flames. In the lesser section there were a couple of drowsy Chinamen.

Photo kindly donated by TripAdvisor

  The Chinese in Hong Kong have an amazing propensity to sleep anywhere. Apart from the down and outs (there are beggars in the streets, blind, holding out a cup, sitting on a cushion, one looked as if he was in agony or was crying. Very depressing.) You see Chinese sleeping standing up on the MTR, or ferry or in a restaurant – anywhere, just about. One reason attributable for this is that they work so hard, in employment or study. They also have to very often share a room with several other people, with disturbed sleep patterns. Ok, so who noticed the spilt infinitive?

  The places  I have been to in Hong Kong have been quite clean. The only dirty/grimy places seem to be old accommodation blocks which are just old and grimy. I would hate to have to live in one. They hang their washing outside to dry. The rooms must get very hot because of the lack of air conditioning, though there are some with ceiling fans.

   In both Bangkok and Hong Kong are armies of road sweepers with straw brooms and long-handled pans, and they sweep up little bits of paper and cigarette butts from the streets and arcades. They can’t seem to be able to do much about the in-ground dirt, of course. There’s a lot of smog in Bangkok and the buildings are grimy because of it. The MTR in Hong Kong is kept scruptitiously [neoligism] clean, and you very rarely see any graffiti – anywhere.

   In the afternoon I had a sleep. Later I saw Chris and Linda about their problem and went wandering around Kowloon (putting in a reprint order for a picture of a tuktuk for people who didn’t get a photo of one).

  I had a look in the Hong Kong Space Museum which is right down at the bottom of Nathan Road, and there are some interesting exhibits, though I skimmed through or skipped most of them. There is also some kind of planetarium show but I didn’t feel like listening to Cantonese so I didn’t go.

  Then I went looking around for somewhere cheap to eat and in desperation I went, oh shameful, into a MacDonalds. Blerk a bit. I had a McChicken which was far too salty and a vanilla thick thickshake, which was actually nice. This was $11.50, I think. There were a lot of visiting Americans in there.

  Went back to the hotel and packed