First Full Day

Mario Andretti Li - The cabby from the Hong Kong airport and I hit it off instantly.  We both knew enough of the others tongue to say that we did not speak in that language.  Our cabby seemed to enjoy screaming down the mostly desolate 2:00 am streets.  This guy had a penchant for 40kph over whatever the posted limit was.  When the sign said 50, he did 90 when it said 80, he was doing 120.  Our apeed was 120kph as We approached the lone toll booth for which I assumed he had some sort of auto pass.  The limit dropped to 50 and he barely dropped below 100.  He threaded the toll booth needle faster then anyone would be comfortable with.

My airplane food fasting program was successful.  A little hungry this morning but no worse for the wear and had some Chinese stir Friday noodles for lunch.

We are staying just a block from Kowloon City Park and we took a walk around this morning.  This was once a den of scum and villainy among some decent folks, and the most densely populated area in the world.  For comparison Manhattan has a density of 27,000 people per square mile and Kowloon City had a density of 3.25 million people per square mile.  Check out this recent article in Popular Science, interesting stuff.  The park is used for a number of things these days and we sat and watched these folks for a while.  The Chinese have a very beautiful way of exercising and I think it serves their bodies well.  This usually has an integrated spiritual component and wonder if there has been any Christian equivalent.

We visited the Chi Lin Nunnary and the adjacent Nan Lian Gardens.  This was an interesting little sanctuary in the middle of the city.  There was lots of Chinese Bonzai in the garden and some interesting structures around the park as well as an exhibit on the traditional assembly of roofs, no nails just many interlocking pieces of wood.  

In the Nunnary were a number of statues of various Buddhas and there guardian Gods.  These accompanying Gods were actually presented as the God itself.  This reminded me of  Duet 4:28 - And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

You Started When? - We met the guide who would work with us for the first few days of our tour this evening on the Avenue of Stars, We chatted for a while and it really sounded like she enjoyed her job.  It is always good to work with someone that loves what the are doing.  Then Patti asked the money question, so...how long have you been doing this?  Her response was 30 days.  Yikes we thought!

Along the Avenue of Stars, a tribute to Hong Kongs contributions to entertainment, I posed with a statue that had more worshippers then the Gods of the Nunnery.  It was none other than a statue of Bruce Lee himself.  I did get an unadulterated picture of the man, the myth himself without the bald mushroom.

As the evening was drawing to a close we gave our passports to the guide so she could get our visas processed.  In the passports were arrival cards that we were given when we went through customs.  She said we no longer needed them.  I stuck mine and Riley's into my money belt out of habit and Patti discarded her's in a trash bin along the way home.  Patti and I remarked to one another on the walk home - we just gave our passports and a good deal of money to someone who is brand new at this.

Our uneasiness did not disappoint.  Later that night we received an email that we in fact did need our arrival cards.  That is when some work set in.  I will not go into details, but it was into the morning hours until we straightened things out.

Today it is Hong Kong's Victoria Peak then an overnight bus to Yangshuo.