March 31st

Hong Kong

I love it when we have an overnight stay in a port. This morning when I turned on the bridge cam channel on the TV, there was good old QM2 still right in front of us.

When I went down to the Pursers office this morning I noticed that the lobby had taken on a very strange Easter themed appearance. I would not go as far as saying it was tasteful, and I had never associated the Easter Bunny with Bugs Bunny, but I suppose at least they had made an effort to celebrate Easter.

We had another Hop on Hop off bus ticket for today, and decided to return to Hong Kong Island. This time we thought we would explore farther afield, and stayed on the bus until Stanley. On the drive to Stanley the views from the top of the bus were spectacular, and it was a lovely ride. We wandered around Stanley market and the sea front, and ended up having lunch at a waterfront café. Not cheap, but the view and the food were great, so I called it a great success.

Seeing as this is the Chinese year of the dog, the Stanley Plaza had a large exhibit on dog friendly travel and camping, including a special doggy tent, and a VW Kombi all fitted out for Fido to have a great camping experience. They even had the cutest little doggy carriers to put on the back of your scooter. I enjoyed walking around the exhibit, and then it was time to get back on the bus and head to Aberdeen.

When I was in Aberdeen several years ago it was a cute little fishing harbor, with loads of people living on san pans. Things have certainly changed. There were a few fishing boats and houseboats, but the majority of the boats moored there were large private pleasure boats.

We took a san pan ride around the harbor. It was not a cute little san pan like the ones I remember, but a larger very commercial one, rather lacking in charm. Still I think it was worthwhile, especially as it didn’t cost us anything because the ticket came free with the bus ticket.

There used to be 3 floating restaurants in the harbor, but now there is just one very large one. Having already had lunch we decided to give it a miss, and head back to Kowloon.

This time when we went looking for the tea shop it was open, so we stocked up with tea, and Cokes from the 7 Eleven across the road, and walked down to the water front to drink a Coke and watch the view of the water and skyline. It really is a very spectacular city.

We then hurried back to the ship so we could watch QM2 sail. It sounded like they were having a great sail away party, and passengers from both ships waved at each other. We had hoped that she would sail past us on her way into the open waters, but she just headed straight out, so all we really got was an excellent view of her stern. With a few blows of her whistle, and a response from our whistle off she headed out of sight.

We didn’t sail until much later in the evening. Synergy were playing by the Lido pool, so after dinner we went there to dance, but as soon as we arrived on deck, they said good night, and disappeared. It was a lovely warm evening, so we stayed out on deck watching the lights of Hong Kong slowly go by us, until they vanished altogether, so we headed back to the cabin.

We planned to download the photos from the past few days on to my computer, but alas, the card was nowhere to be found. After a long search we regretfully had to conclude that when Brian changed cards while we were on the san pan, somehow the old card didn’t make it into his backpack, and the card was left behind on the boat. Luckily we had both taken a few photos with our phones over the past few days, so all is not lost.