Wednesday February 7th:
See how I've changed the format up on y'all! Just keeping you on your toes.
Alright, so on with today's adventures.
I decided last night that I didn't really feel like visiting the giant buddah on Lantau island today - I've done a lot of getting away from it all in the last few days, but today I felt like getting back amongst the hustle and bustle. So I made my way to the island, with the intention of exploring the streets and sights of Wan Chai. I began by going to check out the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention centre - you might've seen pictures of it, it's the wierd spaceship looking building that juts out into the harbour - where the handover of powe from Britain to China occured in 1997. I wasn't a big fan of the building itself from afar, but from close up, it's quite impressive - the shapes and patterns are very pretty. Additionally, they've got a couple of terribly ugly statues out the front, one is the 'Golden Bauhinia', a 6 metres high, gold plated statue of...... Hong Kong's national (territiorial? Special Administrative Regional?) flower. Apparently they're big on their Bauhinia around here. The other statue is a massive black obelisk with some kind of flame on top, erected 2 years after the handover, informing us how well it all wnet and how awesome the Chinese government is.
Anyway, I also saw some filming going on while at the convention centre - a young couple walking along the waterfront there - and it made me think about the ridiculous number of Cantonese soaps that are on TV over here - I'm kinda suprised that I haven't seen any filming previously - of the 12 or 13 channels I get on the TV in my room, it seems that at any one time, at least 5 of them are required to be playing a soap opera - it's quite fun to watch when you have no idea what's going on - you can even make up your own stories and dialogues (There you go, an insight into how I spend my evenings in Hong Kong :p).
At around 10 past 11, I headed off, on my way to scope out the Noonday gun. Now, the noonday gun is a small cannon on the waterfront in Causeway bay, which is fired at noon every day of the year. The tradition was started over 150 years ago, when the shipping company Jardine used to salute the departure of its owner from the port by firing a gun - but a british officer, new to Hong Kong, was none to happy about this when a shot was fired across the bow of his ship, so he ordered that Jardine fire a shot once every day, at noon, as a way of keeping time in the then tiny colony of Hong Kong. Anyway, I made my way across to Causeway Bay, had quite some trouble finding the gun (you've gotta go into a hotel car park, then through an underground tunnel and back up again in order to cross the massive road that separates the gun from, well, basically the rest of the world.) and arrived with about 10 minutes to spare. Anyway, the guy went up and fired the gun (a smalled area is gated off until after the firing, when it's opened for half an hour each day), and I took a very cool series of photos, including one just at the moment of firing (By the way, I've decided that I'm gonna post a 'best of' of the photos I've taken once I get back home, so keep an eye on the blog after I return for all the photo-ey goodness), then went and took a look at the gun (which isn't the original - they replaced the 6 pound gun with a 3 pounder after noise complaints in the 60s), then continued on.
Taking a very nice walk through the back streets of Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, I worked my through to the Hopewell Centre - a huge, 66 story cylindrical building with a revolving restaurant at the top. Now, I found that the Hopwell was interesting for a couple of reasons - first of all, it's set pretty far back towards the hills, relative to the other tall buildings in the area. This means that the Hopwell centre has 2 entrances on 2 different levels - not a huge thing, heck we have something similar (albeit at a much smaller scale :p) at my place. But here's the thing. Hopewell's front entrance is on the Ground floor. It's rear entrance? The 17th floor. Yes, the 17th floor. The slope is so steep that there's 17 floors worth of hill between the back and the front entrance of the building. Pretty impressive if you ask me. The other exciting thing about Hopwell is an observation elevator, which ferries people up and down along the outside of the building between the 17th and 55th floors. Which makes for some -very- spectacular views.
Returning to Kowloon, I dropped by the massive Union Square project - a construction site more than anything at the moment, in a couple of years, it'll be home to HK's tallest building (at almost 500m).
Anyway, that's all I got for tonight, hope all is well over there, look forward to hearing from y'all.
See how I've changed the format up on y'all! Just keeping you on your toes.
Alright, so on with today's adventures.
I decided last night that I didn't really feel like visiting the giant buddah on Lantau island today - I've done a lot of getting away from it all in the last few days, but today I felt like getting back amongst the hustle and bustle. So I made my way to the island, with the intention of exploring the streets and sights of Wan Chai. I began by going to check out the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention centre - you might've seen pictures of it, it's the wierd spaceship looking building that juts out into the harbour - where the handover of powe from Britain to China occured in 1997. I wasn't a big fan of the building itself from afar, but from close up, it's quite impressive - the shapes and patterns are very pretty. Additionally, they've got a couple of terribly ugly statues out the front, one is the 'Golden Bauhinia', a 6 metres high, gold plated statue of...... Hong Kong's national (territiorial? Special Administrative Regional?) flower. Apparently they're big on their Bauhinia around here. The other statue is a massive black obelisk with some kind of flame on top, erected 2 years after the handover, informing us how well it all wnet and how awesome the Chinese government is.
Anyway, I also saw some filming going on while at the convention centre - a young couple walking along the waterfront there - and it made me think about the ridiculous number of Cantonese soaps that are on TV over here - I'm kinda suprised that I haven't seen any filming previously - of the 12 or 13 channels I get on the TV in my room, it seems that at any one time, at least 5 of them are required to be playing a soap opera - it's quite fun to watch when you have no idea what's going on - you can even make up your own stories and dialogues (There you go, an insight into how I spend my evenings in Hong Kong :p).
At around 10 past 11, I headed off, on my way to scope out the Noonday gun. Now, the noonday gun is a small cannon on the waterfront in Causeway bay, which is fired at noon every day of the year. The tradition was started over 150 years ago, when the shipping company Jardine used to salute the departure of its owner from the port by firing a gun - but a british officer, new to Hong Kong, was none to happy about this when a shot was fired across the bow of his ship, so he ordered that Jardine fire a shot once every day, at noon, as a way of keeping time in the then tiny colony of Hong Kong. Anyway, I made my way across to Causeway Bay, had quite some trouble finding the gun (you've gotta go into a hotel car park, then through an underground tunnel and back up again in order to cross the massive road that separates the gun from, well, basically the rest of the world.) and arrived with about 10 minutes to spare. Anyway, the guy went up and fired the gun (a smalled area is gated off until after the firing, when it's opened for half an hour each day), and I took a very cool series of photos, including one just at the moment of firing (By the way, I've decided that I'm gonna post a 'best of' of the photos I've taken once I get back home, so keep an eye on the blog after I return for all the photo-ey goodness), then went and took a look at the gun (which isn't the original - they replaced the 6 pound gun with a 3 pounder after noise complaints in the 60s), then continued on.
Taking a very nice walk through the back streets of Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, I worked my through to the Hopewell Centre - a huge, 66 story cylindrical building with a revolving restaurant at the top. Now, I found that the Hopwell was interesting for a couple of reasons - first of all, it's set pretty far back towards the hills, relative to the other tall buildings in the area. This means that the Hopwell centre has 2 entrances on 2 different levels - not a huge thing, heck we have something similar (albeit at a much smaller scale :p) at my place. But here's the thing. Hopewell's front entrance is on the Ground floor. It's rear entrance? The 17th floor. Yes, the 17th floor. The slope is so steep that there's 17 floors worth of hill between the back and the front entrance of the building. Pretty impressive if you ask me. The other exciting thing about Hopwell is an observation elevator, which ferries people up and down along the outside of the building between the 17th and 55th floors. Which makes for some -very- spectacular views.
Returning to Kowloon, I dropped by the massive Union Square project - a construction site more than anything at the moment, in a couple of years, it'll be home to HK's tallest building (at almost 500m).
Anyway, that's all I got for tonight, hope all is well over there, look forward to hearing from y'all.
posted by Jono Russell at 2:19 AM
3 Comments:
looking forward to the photoey goodness upon your return! mixing quiet with hustle and bustle... i like it.. perhaps i should try it.. busyness vs. relaxation... nah! :P things are pretty good down here.. we've been keeping ourselves busy with stuff, of course to disguise your notable absence... more soccer, more injuries, a trip to the museum, state library and imax... we'll really miss you for the horror night, you know we're trying to make up for the fact we're not in another country having a ball, but we're all missing you! till next time!
Cass :)
Hi Sweetie, Sorry I missed your call last night, hope we get a chance to speak soon. Blogs are interesting as usual, how are you finding the people? Friendly, helpful? Sullen and uncommunicative? Is there much English, how is your Cantonese phrase-book working out? You see mothers can continue to nag from a very very long way away!! We are all well here. Hayley has a job interview tomorrow and I am hopefully off to Sydney on Sat morning to see Meg and Emma.
Love you
Mum
hi Jono,
just read an epic six days of adventure. I really am looking forward to all these photos. The Hopewell Centre sounds quite remarkable, as does, in a slightly less pleasant way, 5 soapies constantly available. Kowloon also sounded fascinating. Look forward to hearing more.
Eric
Post a Comment
<< Home