Hong Kong Day 3

We woke up this morning to an email saying that our visas were being processed and we should be on our way by 6:00 pm.

We took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong island and made a point to ride the worlds longest (.5 miles) outdoor escalator system. It was interesting how all of the businesses popped up along the route and you saw store fronts that were a few stories off the ground.  In the morning it runs downhill for all the folks heading into work and then at 10:00 it reverses for the day.

We always enjoy collecting interesting looking money whenever we see it, providing it is not worth too much.  Here is an HK$10 bill with a clear window though it and strangely enough Riley's teeth.  It is a little surprising that they would make this denomination so unique given its low (USD$1.25) value.

This was a day that I once again awoke to a funky stomache so that meant a Pepto tab and some fasting.  The fasting bit is key to the solution as that starves the little monsters while the Pepto wages its assault.  That was a little trick that I picked up while working London from a Chemist (Pharmacist).  One might ask how do you get sick in a country with the blandest food in the world?  That I do not know.

We encountered some monsoon rains during our outing today.  The sky went from overcast very dark in minutes.  We had planned to visit this interesting looking cemetery terraced into Victoria Peak which we spotted on our way down the previous day.  The plots date back to the colonial times and I believe up to the 1940's.  Thankfully we made the bail out decision just in time and saved ourselves a thorough drenching.  The image I captured does not do the site justice, so here is one of the girls on the tram with the downpour outside.

Free Internet access abounds in HK, but at times you have to try a number of them find the one that is free.  We never log on without using a VPN.  We have a few set up and sometimes we have to give it multiple tries, also Google and Hotmail are sometimes not willing to play with the VPNs.  Here is a wifi access point we picked up in the park today.

While we were waiting to pick up our Visas we struck up a chat with Justin, an Aussie Expat who has been in China for 10 years.  He is an artist and a Christian missionary.  It was interesting to get his perspective.  He said that Christianity is exploding in China the estimates are anywhere from 250 to 500 million people are followers of Christ.  These counts are not the equivalent of a number that you would get from a survey in the States.  Christianity in America, for a great number who claim it, is merely an echo of something that had been lost long ago as the mainline churches threw off their Biblical moorings and let the culture define their truth.  The Christians in China suffer greatly for their profession.  This suffering weeds out anyone who would casually name Christ as Lord.  Here is a sideways image of the tract that he gave to us.

Off to the mainland border now, we will see how that goes with our newly minted visas.

Images in the 2013 Hong Kong file.