On Friday we took an 8 hour tour of Hong Kong as a part of the exchange student orientation activities. Our first stop was Repulse Bay (Cheen Soy Wan), named after a British warship, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, where we got off to explore the statues and interesting touristy areas. This sign kind of explains the area better:
The first statue our tour guide told, or "warned" rather, us about was the white Buddha statue on the left of this picture. If you touch the male baby that means you will have a boy, and if you touch the female baby, then you will have a girl. If you want twins you can put both your hands on at once. We steered clear. The other two to the left of that one were for good luck and money. As we were looking at them, some guy came up and got all up on the statue on the right.. It was a little intense. And then we learned that you were supposed to rub it from the head to the toes for good luck and then touch the gold one in the middle for money. Okay..
Here you can see our tour guide who led us around by waving a big red flag. Embarrassing. Ahead on the trail is the archway that increases your life by 1000 years if you walk under it. A little much?
Here are some more statues and the entrance of a temple.
"He's throwing the shock!" Yelled one student in our group about this statue. Way to go.
The beach was very nice, although it was too cold to think about swimming or tanning or anything. They have a big sign posted on the beach with the water temperature. I think it was about 66 degrees that day. There is also a famous apartment building on the bay that was built with a large hole cut out from the center. The hole was cut so the dragon could fly down from the top of the mountain to get a drink of water from the bay and then fly back up to its home on the mountainside.
As soon as we saw a local family throwing coins to attempt to land them in the fish's mouth, of course we ALL had to try. So of course 30 students swarm around this giant fish statue launching their coins in the air and pelting innocents as they bounced off of its face. It didn't get old until about 15 minutes later. Then our tour guide told us that the statue didn't mean anything, that it was just decoration, but tourists wanted to believe otherwise. We looked around for a door at the base where the daily earnings could be collected each day from all the suckers like us.
We don't know what the rams meant or if it was unlucky to stand on them. I suppose we would have tumbled into the water below us if we did something wrong..
This red bridge adds 3 years to your life when you cross it. But if you walk back the opposite way then it takes 3 years off. So you cancel out unless you go back a different way. The sign posted on the bridge stated 3 days, so you may have to do a lot more laps then..
I clearly added 3 years.
Next we went to the Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant in Wong Chuk Hang.
This is the ferry that carted people across to the restaurant.
The outside view of the restaurant from the ferry.
There was a seat for the dragon, or the king.
No one could translate "Lazy Susan" for me. I don't know what else to call it, but that's what our food was served on so you could grab whatever was in front of you until someone turned it.
The dinner was really good (soup, shrimp, main courses of pork, chicken, and fish, and oranges for dessert) and it was a lot of fun! They served us all courses and took our chopsticks out of the sleeves and folded our napkins onto our laps for us. It was pretty neat.
After dinner we went to Wan Chai to watch the nightly 8:00 Symphony of Lights, where the entire skyline lights up in time with music. There are 33 skyscrapers that participate, and many of them are additionally decorated for the new year. I didn't get the best night pictures but it was still neat to see! And this is only one side of Victoria's Harbour. The skyline arced around to the right twice as far as this picture shows.
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