Hong Kong Day 6 - All you can leave behind (Wednesday)

Last day and rather than be up bright and early I decided on a relatively late start, especially given my experiences from yesterday. My first destination didn’t open till 10 and I knew I didn’t need to get there for the opening anyway. My first stop was checking in my bags. For this I didn’t need to go to the airport early. I just had to head to one of the main airport MTR stops. They had full blown check in desks there and you even paid for your train fair when you would need it then and there as well. The Oyster system would cope. Clever really.

Baggage disposed of; I now had all I would have for the next 30+ hours. Hopefully nothing important had been left inside. I was heading to Ocean Park. This is a cross between a Sealife Centre (well a much better version anyway) and Alton Towers. A strange combination, especially when you throw in the pandas that they have recently acquired as well. Oddly enough it works though. None of it seems really out of place, and it’s all divided up nicely. There’s a kids area near the entrance and probably enough there to keep them entertained for most of the day. Alternatively for the adults there’s the main park which is a scenic cable car ride away across the headland. The views are stunning, especially as you go over the initial hill and start to look out over the south pacific. Lots of little islands in the distance, many overlapping. Great photo opportunity stuff. Shame that then cable car was so dirty! Thankfully for camera buffs there are plenty of chances to take photos once out of the cable car with carefully placed gaps in venues possibly designed for this. Being a panorama shot fan, I was in a mini paradise being able to take shots to the left, right, front and back.

I headed to the rear of the park first, heading down a series of escalators. There’s a back entrance to the park, I suspect for those who don’t like heights or cable car rides. It was a little bit like a flashback to the escalator journey up through the mid levels on central Hong Kong, but at least they were two-way and a lot fewer of them. There were a couple of rides down here and a show pool that was out of use, so it was relatively quiet. Well it would have been. I wasn’t to know in the ‘Runaway Train’ ride that the girl in front was a screamer. And she had a good set of lungs to prove it! I would hate to imagine what she would have been like on a ride that did more than up and down and round corners. I suspect the whole park would have known. I met up with the same group again on the next ride, though only because they couldn’t work out the difference between the entrance to the ride and the exit! It was the parks only water ride and I felt it prudent to get wet early so that I would have plenty of time to dry off. Singular flumes tend not to get you too wet unless you’re very unlucky and this was pretty much the case here, especially as I was in a boat on my own.

It was time to do the ocean part of the park. By fortuitous timing I arrived at the Sea Lion enclosure just in time for feeding. I chose not to spend money to throw them fish, but it was amusing to see someone standing by the enclosure selling vouchers to feed them. I ponder the idea that if they didn’t sell enough then the sea lions would be on an enforced diet, but obviously that would never be the case. They have some excellent aquaria in the place, sharks, tropics, deep water. They even have one that is deep enough for you to wind your way down through three floors. There was no rush to get around the place. Again I think I was there off season on a weekday, so it didn’t take anywhere near the day that some had suggested, but I still had an enjoyable four or five hours there. It was becoming a nice slow pace and good end to the holiday.

I was planning to continue this with a break for a few hours on one of the bays that are scattered around the south of the island. I’d picked the one I wanted on an earlier bus journey and fortunately I could walk to this place from the park. Even better, on the cable car back, I could see that there was a walkway that would take me off of the main road and away from the pollution. The path was pleasant and being empty offered plenty of chances of taking timed photos so that I could be included in the picture without any fear of someone running off with my camera, not that I think it would have been an issue if there were people around. It’s said that Hong Kong is a safe place and I can only concur. At no point did I come across any situation where I felt somewhere was risky to go, nor did I see any groups of youths hanging around. There are young people in Hong Kong; they just seem to spend most of their time wired into their MP3 players going wherever the music may take them!

The beach was more or less deserted. It may well have still been a nice warm day for most of us, but in Hong Kong anything below about 25C is considered too chilly for being out on a beach. This gives some wonderful undisturbed sunbathing opportunities. To be fair, that wasn’t my goal, it was far too late in the day. I just wanted to dip my toe and relax. I felt that it would be wrong to come out all this way, spend a lot of the time surrounded by water and then not get a little wet from it. I wasn’t going swimming; all my stuff was hopefully at the airport by now anyway. But a paddle was definitely in order. It was nice, not cold, and at least I could now claim that I’d been in the South Pacific. Of course, given time, tidal drift and the like, it probably had a fair chunk of water, if you can have a chunk of a liquid, that was from Brighton and Hove. Still, as they say, it’s location location location, not content! (Anyone who wants to tell me there is a way of working out do feel free!)

I’d got a little wetter than I had intended and didn’t have a towel. Drying wouldn’t be too much of a problem and I just sat on the beach watching the sun dip behind the peninsula that housed Ocean Park. Obviously I took advantage and grabbed some photos while I dried off. I definitely think that if I’m heading out to Hong Kong again I’ll be spending more time on the south of the island. I expect it will be more expensive, but it’s definitely more scenic. Very relaxing.

Waiting for the bus to take me to my penultimate stop in Hong Kong, the final one being the airport, I reminded about how there is still a heavy smoking population in the region. It’s certainly more noticeable now that smoking is banned in buildings in England. I do though suspect that such a ban wouldn’t make much difference to the over all health of the populous there. They must breathe in so much pollution from traffic that it’s the equivalent to several cigarettes a day. Given that, most probably doubt that some of the real thing can’t do that much more damage. There are a few who wear the equivalent of medical masks over their faces when out on the street, but they are definitely the minority and do have a slightly odd, comical while slightly menacing look about them.

When the bus arrived, as I had suspected, it was the most crowded transport that I’d been on all week. There was a reason for this. I was heading to where everyone else was. And everyone else was heading for Happy Valley. Happy Valley is one of two race courses in Hong Kong but is the only one that holds night races. Gambling is a big no no in China so the Valley is a chance for many to feed a tightly controlled addiction. It’s difficult to miss and possibly one of the oddest racecourses around. This is because it is smack in the middle of town. As you stand by the race circuit you have the finishing straight grandstand, tower up several stories behind you, and in front, just the other side of the oval are a series of tower blocks towering even higher, this time 10s of storey high. As a backdrop it is remarkable. The place is always packed and tonight was no exception. Everything you could want to help you is there. You can even sign up for a tour that will provide you with an assistant who will help explain and take you through the basics of gambling.

I was meeting a friend of a friend there to share a beer with and natter. It was nice, as I wouldn’t have had as much fun if I had been on my own. I think horse-racing it better shared. Having a few beers and talking between races is definitely needed otherwise there would be too much of a void. I suppose some of the hardened professionals need the time between races to do all their prep, look at the horses and stuff like that. Me, I just need to look at the names of the horses and riders and choose based on that. It’s not scientific, but hey, I left a major HK$20 up on the night. (If you want to realize how little that is, you should go back to one of the earlier days in this blog). Let’s just say I didn’t let the win go to my head. Of course I had to get a picture of me with my winning ticket, or at least a copy of it. I felt slightly sorry for the chap who congratulated me, probably thinking that I’d had a life changing win. Didn’t quite know the Cantonese for, ‘Actually, it’s more the fact that I’ve won at all, and even that was a total fluke’. He’s probably still wondering where the newspaper story of the big winner that evening disappeared to.

And that was it really. I had to leave before the end of the night to get back to the airport. Typically I had good connections and could have probably stayed for another race, but then why push it on the last day. Better to take ones time and savor the moment. I even managed to go through Times Square on the way home. It’s nothing like the one in New York, that much was noticeable. It had been a good day and a nice finish. Relaxing and fun, how a holiday should be. The flight back is probably best left to the history books.