Week 17 - Japan - Mt Fuji to Hong Kong - Kowloon

On Monday morning we walked from the hostel to the railway station and dropped our backpacks in the left luggage office. Then we caught a bus from the railway station to the the fifth station of Mount Fuji. From the fifth station, we climbed almost to the seventh station before we decided to return. We got some good views of the summit, slopes and the surrounding countryside. We ate lunch at a restaurant with views of Mount Fuji and finished just in time to catch the bus back to Kawaguchiko where we collected our backpacks and caught the bus to Shinjuku Station in Tokyo. From there we caught a train to Narita (near the airport) and checked into the Mercure Hotel.

The next morning we had a fantastic final buffet breakfast at the Mercure and then caught the free hotel shuttle to Narita Airport and caught our flight to Hong Kong. We arrived at Hong Kong at a little after 2.30 pm and checked into the Ramada Kowloon for 5 nights. We had a lovely first evening in Hong Kong. We walked around Nathan Road, Suzie had a haircut to repair the damage from the Indian haircut and had some Chinese food.

We spent the next few days walking around Hong Kong eating, shopping and catching up with our Hong Kong friends Willy and Anita and their family.

On Saturday morning we walked to the China Ferry Terminal and on the way we saw a little schnauzer wearing shoes being taken for a walk. We got there just in time to buy a ticket, go through customs and rush onto the 10.00 am ferry to Macau. The journey to Macau took 90 minutes. We sailed out of the Hong Kong Port past container loading cranes, container ships, fishing vessels and small islands. Unfortunately the visibility was poor because of the high humidity producing mist. It was very atmospheric though, cruising past islands and ships in the mist. We arrived and caught a bus to the centre of Macau where we saw the Praca de Senado. It could have been straight out of Lisbon with the small Portuguese paving cobbles except for the pond in the centre filled with flowering lotuses. We walked around admiring the restored buildings dwarfed by the new casino monsters. We picked up some Pasteis de Natas (Portugese egg tarts) on the way to St Paul's Ruins which was all that remained of the Mater Dei church. The church had burnt down but a striking facade of stone remained. We headed up to the adjacent fortress mount and wandered around admiring the excellent views down onto Macau. We took some photos of giant cicadas and kept walking to Parca de Camoes. We walked back into the centre and saw the old library which reminded us of Coimbra University in Portugal. We walked past a renovated pawnbroker's shop front – which had been set up as a museum with a secure storage tower behind the shop for storing all of the pawned items. Above the pawnshop was a gift shop containing exquisite teapots, teacups and bamboo tea scoops. We walked out of the old centre and checked out one of the giant casinos, the Grand Lisboa, with its many levels of gambling, entertainment, bars, restaurants and priceless art (bronze Qing dynasty horse head) and jewels (diamond and emerald) in the foyer. We walked past more old Portuguese walls and towers and caught the ferry back to Hong Kong.

On Sunday morning, we packed up and checked out of the hotel. We walked along Nathan Road and walked around Chungking Mansions which are five high rise buildings with filled with cheap guest houses, dodgy Indian tailors, Indian restaurants, foreign exchange shops and electronics shops with spruikers on every corner. After that we walked along the Promenade at Tsim Sha Tsui East where we had a panoramic view of the Hong Kong Island skyline shrouded in mist. The Promenade was also home to the Avenue of Stars which is a tribute to the Hong Kong film and TV industry with Hollywood style handprints, plaques and sculptures. It started raining at this point so we decided to take a lunch break. We went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art after lunch and spent quite a bit of time in the museum shop. We looked at the special exhibition of Chinese gold jewellery and accessories on the first floor and then we went to the Fine Art collection which consisted mainly of porcelain and pottery. We went back to the hotel to meet Willy in the hotel lobby at 6.00 pm. Willy took us in a taxi to the Goldfish Market at Mong Kok where we saw lots of shops selling goldfish and other exotic fishes, reptiles, aquarium supplies, pet food and rabbits. From there it was a short taxi ride to the location of the old airport where we walked past some florists before heading to a restaurant in the basement of a shopping centre. There we met Anita, her parents and the children and started off by choosing a fish for dinner. To our surprise, Willy chose the most lacklustre "doongy" fish in the tank – it turned out later that he got a special deal on it because it was on its way out. The meal was wonderful – roasted corn-fed chicken with a red fermented soy sauce, green vegetables, silken tofu in soy sauce, lobster mornay with egg noodles, pork spare ribs in a light black bean sauce, the doongy fish (which tasted delicious) with ginger and shallots and large braised Pacific oyster with roast pork. This was all washed down with chrysanthemum tea. After dinner Willy rushed us back to Tsim Sha Tsui in a taxi to collect our bags and catch the Airbus to the airport for our flight to Johannesburg. The flight was full of English football fans!