Long walks and avoiding the protests

And yet I woke up at 5.30am on the nose. I mean bang on 5.30am not on my nose. It was that wide awake feeling you know will not be quashed any time soon with German counting so I browsed for a while.

I managed to get Leilei up just before 10 as breakfast finishes at 10:30, and I just managed to get a last-minute omelette and he managed loads of pains au chocolat after a sweet cereal - well we are on holiday I suppose. Blimey there were a lot of fatties eating breakfast...this is certainly not mainland China.

After breakfast we went for a longish walk towards the harbour in the heat and the rain that Hong Kong sometimes affords. While he was taking a few photos a couple of mainland girls came up to him to ask to take a photo with him - I was jealous! It wasn’t that long ago that would happen to me but he has stolen my thunder (well that is part of his Chinese name).

Looking over the harbour before he got accosted by women

We found a tube station and got an Octopus card though I keep calling it an Oyster card, and took the tube back one stop to the hotel. Lunch was simple noodles for Leilei and a sandwich for me from 7-11 as we were planning to see a Hong Kong-based mate tonight. I also managed a wee Skol and a tad of sleep before 4pm when I got up to check the news. I’d heard about the recent protests and it was Sunday, and then I saw what was happening. Apparently people were already setting up and it was around where we were due to meet up at Wanchai. In fact, according to some reports Wanchai was to be where the march would end. I IM’d my mate who seemed to think all the action was in Victoria Park so we should be ok.

Well I checked again and saw a tweet that didn’t fill me with such confidence, and he checked and found the MTR tube was filling up. Then I got a phone call and realised he’d realised the extent of the situation, and that even if we managed to meet up we’d be taken by the throngs of the crowd and wouldn’t have any say as to where we’d want to go. Not to mention I’d be responsible for a minor, and even if I wasn’t there were reports of bomb-making equipment having been found. We agreed to postpone till tomorrow. Relieved, I looked at some more news and it dawned on me this was taking place not much more than a mile away, but with a harbour between us.

With a little time on our hands Leilei and I took the MTR a few stops to Lok Fu to see the sight of Kowloon Walled City. It would have been great to explore before it was knocked down in the early 90s, but there are still a couple of places here with thin alleyways that feel seedy but safe. Leilei was in his element looking at the cars; the skirted vans, each one apparently unique, and a supercar every few minutes.

We walked through strange walkways in the general direction of the park, noting the different pathways for joggers, cylists, and walkers. Kowloon Walled City Park reminded me of something, and I wondered if it was where I went in 2008 to restart my visa. We had hoped to go to the old landing strip of Kai Tak airport, but they were busy building a new MTR station.

Strange walkways

We were in the area I had to stay with Xixi in 2008 and it brought back mixed emotions. We then took the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui to see the lights from HK Island. It was far more packed than this morning, and loads of people were walking against our direction. As it was 8.15pm I guessed we’d just missed a fireworks display. Literally more than half the people were taking pictures of the anonymous lights on the other side of the river. At least put some people in them. I wonder if WeChat has a clever algorithm that finds these pictures and replaces them with a stock picture (that is actually better) and displays a copy of this instead of the hundreds of thousands of virtually identical ones. Like they may do for sunsets over the sea. Wouldn’t it be funny if they did? Like Google (reasonably) does to people’s uploaded MP3s.

Almost everyone was taking pictures of the lights with no human in them

One more stop up north to Jordan and we went to see the Temple Street Night Market, but it dawned on us that it was in fact the same place we went to last night. We’d planned to get a bite to eat there but Ll was tired and to be fair we’d walked over 20,000 steps today according to my phone, so as I still had a pack of noodles we went back and he had that, and had a shower while I went out to get a bite. 65 HKD for a bit of beef on rice was pretty pricey even for here, given the size of the place, but I didn’t complain, and ate it as quickly as possible as I was being asked why I was taking so long….