Jacynthe à HK: La Chine avec Jo - partie 1 : aberdeen+repulse bay+stanley

Je dois avouer que j'ai délaissé mon blogue, il y a de cela déjà plusieurs mois. Il y a environ un 4 semaines, ce moment a marqué mon un an de retour à Montréal. Le temps passe vite, ce qui m'a toujours plu, ne vous détrompez pas! À part bien sûr, lorsque je me rends compte qu'il y a plusieurs mois où je n'ai pas fait certaines activités que j'apprécie spécialement. Alors, le temps devient mon pire ennemi, rien de moins!

Tout récemment, certains signes ont fait surface et m'ont rappeler l'existence de ce blogue et mon envie d'écrire et de partager cette expérience. Alors, voici la suite de mon dernier message. Mieux vaut tard que jamais!

Leaving Kowloon

Jo already arrived in HK a couple of days ago and I was really happy to have her visiting me in Asia. I already brought her to my favorite dumpling place to have a try and went out in Lan Kwai Fong for a beer in front of 7 eleven. (here are some pics from Jo)

With my term paper handed, we left for a day trip to visit the towns along the south coast of the Hong Kong Island: Aberdeen, Repulse Bay and Stanley.
Jo met me in Hung Hom at the Student Halls where I was staying since I wanted to take her on the ferry between Hung Hom in Kowloon and Central on Hong Kong Island. (taking that ferry is maybe one of the things I miss the most...)

After getting to the Central ferry pier, we walked on the foot bridge beside the huge construction side between the IFC towers and the new convention centre to the exchange square were we took the bus to Aberdeen.
We decided to walk a little on the aberdeen promenade along the water where you could see all the small boats and kiosks selling dried tiny fishes.

This picture is a detail of the entrance for the dock where you take a small boat to the famous boat restaurant of Aberdeen. I heard that it was a bit of a tourist scam but didn't have the chance to try it for myself. (maybe next time I am around HK!)

Repulse Bay

After walking and taking pictures in Aberdeen, we look for the bus to go to Repulse Bay. After waiting for the big bus, we then saw the mini bus around the block and took it. I was happy that Jo could experience these mini buses that are typical in HK. It is an experience in itself! We stopped at Repulse Bay beach that is in front of the well known apartment buildings with large openings in to let the mountain dragon plunging in the ocean.

We find a spot on the beach to sit on our towels in bikini. The weather was no so great at the beginning but then the clouds stopped buttering the sun so we had a sunny warm day in the end.
The installation at the beach were great; Showers and lockers were available and well maintain.

While we were there in bikini, there were many groups of Asian tourists that came on the beach wearing all the same color cap. It was a little weird to be part of the attraction.

I tried to get in the water a little but it was so cold compare to the Philippines that I just went in up to the knees.

At one end of the beach, there is the Tin Hau temple (the goddess of the sea). There is a Tin Hau temple in nearly every fishermen small villages in HK. The picture below show the goddess statue in background. It must be around 15 feet high.

Jo practicing her Chinese posing.

The little bronze statues are all polished in some areas because the visitors believe that they will be lucky if they rub the head or belly or feet of these representations.

Beside the temple, we walked around a little to see what Repulse Bay had to offer. There is beside the building were you can get change a large construction that is completely empty. It was looking like a big empty shopping centre to be with no sign about when it was going to open. Results of the recession? I wouldn't be able to tell but it looked dead and odd.
We wanted to eat a little something for lunch but because we were there during the week, nothing was open on the beach. We went back up closer to the road to find a restaurant and the only one we could find was a disgustingly looking Pizza Hut. We couldn't quite believe that this was want we were going to eat and after my recent experience with pizza in Philippines, I didn't really wanted to try again soon. After looking for another option for quite some time, we manage to find this small tea place on the second floor of a building that was inside a spa centre. Thank God, they were serving amazing tea and snacks. We had to agree that this was worth the time it took to find the perfect lunch.

Stanley : mon coup de coeur

After tanning in bikini, eating lunch and admiring temples, we took again the bus to our final stop: Stanley. This is one of my favorite places but not because of its famous market!

At one end of the waterfront promenade, there is the Murray's house, a restored Victorian building from 1844. This construction was initially built in the Central area before it got dismantled in 1982 to give room to the head office of the Bank of China. At first, the authorities were supposed to just demolished the building but people complained so much that they actually dismantle the building to rebuild it eventually somewhere. It took 16 years to find the right spot. Once they completed the reconstruction, 6 columns were remaining. They never found where to put them in the building so they left them outside in front of the house.

On the other side of the waterfront promenade, there is this row of little shops. I like the design of this part: modern, subtle and working well with the rest of the area.

This is were Jo and I bought a card with our name written in Chinese. They actually find characters that sound like the syllables of the westerner's name. Since my name is also the one of a flower, I asked my classmate Thomas at PolyU to tell me the Cantonese version and he was nice enough to find it for me: Fung Seun Jay. These 3 characters are individually for "wind or trust", "letter" and the last one is "son". I then decide to forget about the French version of my name and ask for the Chinese version on the card. Since most of Chinese people have an english name that is not related to their Chinese one, I thought it was more then normal for me to have my Cantonese name!

These are the 6 columns remaining from the reconstruction. I heard that the markups that were done in 1982 during the dismantling were so poorly done that it didn't help to find where these were supposed to go. Luckily the house is still standing to this day.

Jo practicing again her Chinese pose.

Inside Murray's house; wood structure is nice. Restaurants in the building didn't quite attract me. I preferred the ones along the promenade.

Temple beside the Murray's house. Since Stanley is also a fisherman village, there is also up the hill a Tin Hau temple (the goddess of the sea). The village is also the place where the famous dragon boat races occur in HK. Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to catch the event since I left HK too early.