Fri, 25 Sep 2009

hongkong, day 03
day 03 of my trip to an exceptional city of china. on my plan:
"kwoloon park" (which i didn't visit yesterday although it's
just around the corner of my hotel), "yau ma tei" and "mong
kok", and "wong tai sin". good thing: i found a MacDonald's in
kowloon park. bad thing:
they don't have croissants. just "choco-pies". oh well... one
day i will find my perfect breakfast here in hongkong. i hope.
kowloon park was full of life. it was full of old people doing
all kind of activities, such as "qi gong", "tai ji quan", or...
honestly, i have no idea what they actually did. but it's the
cliche of china: old people doing exercises in parks. that's
exactly what i got. and it was fun watching them. some where
really elegant, smooth, and such[019], others where... quite the
opposite. but, everybody was physically active, and that's what
counts i guess. some in groups[022-023], some alone[044], but
everyone with total devotion. some even had swords[024-026],
some had fans[028-029,032-033]. others played instruments[005-
006] and/or sang[009] (both can be weapons too).

 
 


besides old and/or active people there are loads of birds and
turtles (and other animals such as dragonflies and parrots and
pidgeons in cages) in and around the ponds. 

 


quite close to the park was "tin hau" temple[056-065], a very
small temple, where taking pictures was prohibited (as usual
inside the temples). the way back[066-067] to the closest un-
derground station brought me through the skyscraper valleys back
to the main street of "tsim sha tsui", namely "nathan road". i
will from now on try to reduce skyscraper photography as you
might, by now, have already found out that they are...  huge.
and everywhere. and ugly. most of them. some are nice[049] and
modern[050] though.

 


the metro brought me straight to "wong tai sin" station, where
one can find the "sik sik yuen wong tai sin" temple[072-140] - a
huge temple complex. since japan has taught me i dig temples
(and shrines), this was my little heaven in hongkong (and a
rather time consuming one). but before i went to the temple i
cooled down a little in a the closeby mall called "wong tai sin
mall"[068-071,141-147].
i started my temple tour in front of the main temple(s) where
there are two floors full of soothsayers's booths[073]. loads of
them were occupied, most of them with couples. quite interesting
actually. next stop was a huge garden called the "good wish gar-
den"[074-127]. again turtles, dragonflies, and huge fish were
all over the place. very peaceful, very quiet, almost no people
there - absolutey wonderful and impressive.

 
 


now it was finally time to enter the main temple. inside the
temple buddhisms, taoisms, and confucianisms is practiced. thus
there were quite a lot of people, having tons of incense sticks
lit. inside the temple buildings there's always so much smoke of
them, i always get a little dizzy when being in there for a lon-
ger time. i guess the people working there are on those incense
stick drugs all day long. must be the reason they all were so
very friendly to me all the time.

 


to get some water and onigiris (didn't know they have them here
too) i went back to the mall. in there i found a small market,
where they sold things like fish-slices, chicken-something and
salted raw, fried and deep-fried fish. same with beef, where
they had dark-red slices of meat. looked strange and unknown to
me. also they had beef tripe on a stick. very... not declicious.

 


i think i will get a tshirt saying "want no suit, got appart-
ment". whenever i'm on "nathan road" (on which my hotel is) all
kind of guys ask me whether i want a suit (tailormade of course)
or if i need an appartment. honestly, do i look like a guy that
needs or even wants a suit? and if i would need an appartment,
shouldn't i somehow have some luggage with me? unfortunately
this is really annoying. but i guess that's the price for the
low budget hotel. worth to pay actually.