Day 11: Monsoon, Dim Sum and Museums

Trip Start Apr 16, 2009
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Trip End May 31, 2009


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Monday, April 27, 2009

Yesterday, on Saturday, Christiane - a former colleague and friend of Emily (my dear Taiwanese friend and Mandarin teacher back home) - and me wanted to spend the day on Lantau Island with its hilly walking trails, enjoying the day by hiking a bit and paying a visit to the Tian Tan Buddha statue, the world's largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue. However, the weather turned to our disadvantage. During Saturday in the early morning, the Hong Kong Observatory released a thunderstorm warning for Hong Kong. Upon our arrival at Mui Wo, main settlement and arrival point for the ferries, Christiane and me soon had to take shelter from the rain that increased heavily. Waiting for maybe half an hour to an hour, we decided to head back for Central Hong Kong as the outlook was anything else than promising. Rain increased, on HK Island thunder and lightning added, and we really had to change our initial plan. Instead, I spent some time in the near IFC shopping mall before visiting the HK Museum of Art, located in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. The museums features Chinese antiquities, paintings and contemporary art on six floors, is a nice alternative on a rainy day, but other than that, not overwhelmingly unique. What I particularly liked was the entrance fee ($10, which is 1 Euro) and the possibility to write stories to up to 20 selected paintings on one floor. I did so and was rewarded by a small souvenir. I'd call this "Social interaction with paintings", in a Web 2.0 hyped time. In the evening, my host Pun prepared a nice dinner for both of us, which we enjoyed with two bottles of Chinese wine. Made me tired, a bit :)
Today on Sunday, the weather has improved which essentially means there were no thunderstorms anymore, still it was and is raining the whole day. In fact, a monsoon is affecting the south China coastal areas, with changes expected for mid of next week earliest. I thus joined Pun and we went to church in the morning, before we went to Din Tai Fung restaurant for tasty dim sum. This place has been recommended by Emily - I guess because it is Taiwanese :) - is surely between two and almost ten times more expensive than other dim sum places in HK, but definitely worth the experience. The dim sum (dumplings, literally meaning "from the heart") are a speciality from the south of China, eaten in the morning until lunch time. See the pictures for some impressions! Then, again, I decided to go for another museum visit and chose HK's Museum of History, which was a good one. The permanent exhibition "The Hong Kong Story" teaches you everything from pre-historic times to the present. What I liked in particular was the huge spaces within the building dedicated for this exhibition, which enables a wonderful experience as historic rooms and even parts of buildings have been reconstructed and can be accessed. An amount of theatres within the museum round out the experience by showing 8-10 minutes movies about specific topics like the origins of HK, The Trade and Opium Wars or HK Cinemas and TV in the 60s and 70s. In total, it's a wonderful museum where you can easily spend three to four hours, forget about time, and feel yourself travelled to earlier times.
Plans for the upcoming two days: Tomorrow on Monday, I will visit Macau, and on Tuesday, I hope the weather improves so that I can go up Victoria Peak for a nice view over HK. On Tuesday evening then, I will finally start my mainland China adventure by taking the train to Guangzhou, province capital of Guangdong.
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