Day-22: Cruise #2 Hong Kong to Beijing

Day-22: Sunday, February 23, 2014

Beginning Location: Hong Kong
Final Location: South China Sea En-Route to Taiwan

Today is our last day in Hong Kong and we’ll take a tour of the “New Territoires”.

We had a rather leisurely morning with our now traditional fruit plate and pastry breakfast arriving at 0730.

By nine AM we were ready for our “Nine Dragons Tour” and walking toward our bus where we met tour guide, Stan and driver Sing. “Nine Dragons” refers to the hills in and around Kowloon and the “New Territories”.

We departed the ocean terminal and drove from the port area north to the “New Territories” an area that for many decades past had been the agrarian section of Hong Kong but now was being filled acre by acre with high-rise condo style buildings. Seems there are both privately owned and government owned and subsidized housing for everyone in Hong Kong. The living standards are far different than those most Americans would ever tolerate. Our tour guide, a typical blue-collar job I suspect, lives in an 80 sqft condo (yes eight zero) in downtown Hong Kong, a space that includes his bedroom, bath and a sitting area, no kitchen or parking space as he doesn’t cook and doesn’t own a car.  A condo of 400 sqft includes two bedrooms, bath, kitchen and sitting area all for about US$4,000/month located within a reasonable proximity to the city center.

We soon arrived at our first stop in Tai Po where we visited the smoke and incense filled Man Mo Temple, a 100+ year old temple actively engaged in local culture and religion today.


Adjacent to the temple was the Tai Po open-air market. The market had everything one could need from clothing to electronics but most importantly the raw, dried and cooked foods of Hong Kong. There were some meat cuts that I photographed that will not make the blog pages; just let it be said that no part of the pig, steer or chicken is left to waste. As usual the fruits and vegetables were colorful, in some cases strange but always interesting to see.

From Tai Po we diverted from the plan for a second temple visit, a guide after my own heart. We proceeded to a garden area, a small plot of serenity amongst the hustle bustle of Kowloon.  In the garden gift shop we picked up some cookies and trinkets as we have HK$ to burn before our departure later today.

We then proceeded to a flower market area. Turns out the flower market is adjacent to a bird park but we were warned away from the birds due to avian flu fears. Not sure how they keep the infected birds from flying in and through the flower market area, perhaps some sort of invisible shield I suppose. Sheila stopped and picked up an orchid for our room back on the boat.

Our last stop for the day was another market, a “jade market”, no doubt the finest quality jade on our blue planet.

After searching throughout the market, Sheila did find the one vendor that had “real” jade, a reputable licensed gemologist no doubt. Sheila told me that this jade was worth the full asking price! I could plainly see that this vendor was special, capable of meeting your every need; you want yellow jade, no problem, you want red jade, no problem, you want special rare blue jade, that’s no problem either…; you get the idea I’m sure. Fortunately for us we do have a safe in our room to secure our purchase. Actually in the end Sheila drove the hard bargain, 20% discount no less. Smiles on both sides led me to think that all were satisfied; Sheila had the goods and the vendor was last heard calling her investment counselor.

By 1345 we had returned to the ship and were ready for lunch but not before being notified by ship’s security that our passports were missing; they weren’t really missing as they were with us. The ship’s documentation system has been great, they manage passports, visas, embarkation and debarkation documents very effectively.

For lunch we returned to the Grand Dining Room where Sheila had a turkey croissant and I had a great serving of “meat” lasagna.

The scheduled “face-to-face” check by Hong Kong immigration planned for 1600 was canceled at the last minute so we had an extra hour to hangout while waiting for the day’s general drill. About 450 people joined the cruise in Hong Kong so with the approximately 150 holdovers such as us the 600 are ready to sail. We were also advised that our departure would be delayed until the harbor pilot could come aboard around 1930, 2+ hours after our scheduled departure.

Just after five the emergency drill began and as we had done two weeks earlier with life jackets in hand we proceeded to our muster station. With our new room assignment, our emergency station had changed so we moved forward to the Nautica Lounge to await further instruction. While there we met some of our new neighbors and also a passenger who was concerned that we weren't paying proper attention; he was an authority of sorts since he had a scheduled trip planned but obviously canceled on the Costa Concordia (grounding off Italian coast), ergo he was an authority on ship's emergency drills. Something about that didn't set well with me, don't think I'll be spending much time with the "authority", enough said. We proceeded to our abandon ship boat stations and once everyone was accounted for the drill was concluded and were headed back to our rooms.

Observed sunset over Hong Kong.











The next event for the day, now that departure had been delayed was the GoNext get-acquainted reception. There we met two of the reported other USNA couples, one from USNA-1963 and the other from USNA-1964. With the sailing delay things worked out well; as we backed into the harbor and began the cruise the 8 PM Hong Kong light show began, almost as if planned for our departure.

We had dinner in the Grand Dining Room with the other USNA couples before retiring for the night.