Arrived at 5 a.m., Patti and Al were at airport to meet me.  I was feeling pretty spry, glad to be at my destination.  We had breakfast at the hotel buffet at Panorama Hotel in Kowloon which overlooks Victoria Harbor and the city of Hong Kong just across a narrow waterway.  Patti went off to her daily yoga and Jeff, Al, Jimbo (another old buddy from SF softball days) and I took off for parts unknown which included a stop at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum,  Dr.Sun  (1866-1925) being a learned man who helped bring down the two thousand year old Qing Dynasty and establish the Republic of China before he died at age 59 of liver cancer.  It was interesting but the history was so overwhelmingly confusing and the names so foreign throughout the exhibits that I admit I needed the video at the end to have it make any sense.  Gorgeous building built in 1914 as the home of businessman Ho Kom Tong, Edwardian style.  Lovely and exceptionally well preserved.

In order to arrive at this place we took public transportation over to Hong Kong and then walked and walked and walked.  I had my hiking boots on for our later hike which turned out to be a good thing, even with my comfortable new sandals it might have been a challenge. Except for all the plane stuff I traveled light – not even a pair of tennis shoes!   Hong Kong was surprisingly hilly – a la San Francisco and we walked up stairs and hills   – which was a bit of a foreshadowing to the Dragon’s Tail hike.

We also stopped at the Man Mo Temple on our way back to our meeting spot for the hike.  The Man Mo Temple is a small temple, filled with copious amounts of incense, where people come to offer prayers.  Built in 1847 and offers homage to the god of literature Man) and the god of war (Mo).

The curly things hanging from the ceiling are incense and take forever and a day to burn.

The side streets are generally narrow and more like alley ways, just as you might imagine a British/Chinese city to be: decidedly western shops interspersed with shops that appear to have been there since the time of the great wall. Organized chaos.  Unlike our super regulated USA, construction workers are emptying out buildings of lumber and drywall and insulation right in front of you as you walk down the street.  Large laundry-looking baskets are piled up – I don’t know the purpose of them as yet.  Neon signs and LED signs and hanging paper signs compete side by side.

I love it.  I love not knowing what anyone is saying -I find it strangely relaxing, almost like being alone.  I love not knowing what a shop is about until I peek inside.  I love being here, instead of in Chinatown in the US. I love the strange smells.  I love how people are shielding themselves with umbrellas and their babies with newspapers over their heads and it is merely spitting outside.  I love that people are wearing masks when they are sick and going about their business instead of coughing in your face.  I love that I don’t know what any of the food is on the menus and have to just dive in and check it out. And of course I love the children.

I’m not much of a shopper in general, but if I were this is the place to do it.  Our hotel in Kowloon is in the district of Tsim Sha Tsui and although our area is much like the areas described above with numerous tiny shops, like Hong Kong central it has crazy high end flagship store such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel.

In the afternoon we met Jeff and Patti’s friend, another Jim who is a power dude here in Hong Kong.  He and his driver met us and we drove for about an hour past miles and miles and miles and I’m not kidding, miles of high rise apartment buildings that looked like not much more than dorm buildings.  Apparently no one has a washer and drier because every apartment was festooned with clothes hanging out to dry either inside or out.  As Patti noted they all look they are jammed full of stuff – which if you’re living in a dorm room is probably the case.  What impressed me the most however was the sheer number of buildings for so many miles, and they were all skyscrapers.

Then, suddenly, we were in green space.  Lush mountains of green space.  We arrived at the starting point for our hike.  I was hesitant.  I had pretty much been up since the night before with two hours of sleep.  The hike was 7.5 kilometers (about 4.5 miles) and 2.5 hours long and as previously mentioned, mountainous.  Dragon’s Tail and all that.  Fantastic view at the top.  Still and all, I was nervous, but not one to be left behind, I started trekking.

Visions of the Grand Canyon, truly the hike from hell (never did write about it – what happens in the G.C. stays in the G.C. – but suffice to say Jan was deathly ill and shouldn’t have done it at all and I could have lived my life without hiking nine miles up and nine miles back on mostly stairs cut out of the canyon.  We are 1%-ers though and maybe now 5 years later I may be able to jot something down.  On the other hand, what happens in G.C…)

This hike started with stairs going up.  The two locals who were guiding us – Jim and another who joined us, Rob, took off like the locals they are.  I had my trekking poles and just decided to plod along at my own pace.  The trail felt like the rain forest but very rocky.  You got a sense that in the rainy season that the trail would be a great place to sled down the mud.  Every so often there would be some attempt at water control under or across the trail – a sewer pipe here, a grate there, a rubber hose her, a PVC pipe there.  There were bird serenading me all along the way – foreign birds that I could rarely see in the foliage but whose songs enchanted me and kept me sane while my body worried.

Patti and I stuck close together – Patti is not a hiker in general and we got into a nice repartee of bitching about the hike.  At one point I was pretty much by myself – I knew they had stopped ahead and I was climbing yet another set of 30 steps when four dogs appeared at the top of the steps.  Freaked me out.  I called to my party and got no answer.  More freaking out, planning how I would defend myself with my trekking poles.   The dogs looked at me and kept going and not long after a man came behind them.  When I caught up with the group I read them the riot act about sticking closer to me, that I was doing the best I could.  The dogs somehow got corralled into a fenced in area by what appeared to be a dog trainer.  I don’t know.  I thought I was in wilderness.

The hike went on  – and on – and on.  We got to the point where we could choose between going up to the summit or heading back down.  Need I tell you what the group consensus was?  On we went.  More up and then down and then up – the dragon’s tail doncha know.  It’s the down that kills the knees.  The view was outstanding from the top, but as a once again spoiled California girl all I could think was “this looks a lot like the SF Bay.”  But it wasn’t, it was Hong Kong, as was evidenced by looking in the other direction and seeing those miles and miles of apartment buildings in the city below.

Heading downhill, I began to laugh hysterically.  It was the last two miles of the descent into the Grand Canyon all over again.  Step by painful step, planting the trekking poles carefully so as to lessen the impact on my knees.  I could not believe I was reliving the last two excruciating miles of the GC descent.  All I could do was laugh. Maniacally.

one twentieth of the endless apartment buildings.

nice part of the hike – after the first set of steps.  Thought I was home free…

the Summit – the Dragon has been slayed…

OK, well maybe it is a little sweeter than SF Bay…by the way it is not smoggy – it is a bit misty and overcast, very SF-ish as it were.

Descend we did.  We hopped on the bus to Shek-O near the beginning of the hike. Shek-O is the home of several beaches where surfers go.  The town is tiny mish-mash of huts and cafes and bars, most indistinguishable from each other and in a maze that even got our local friend lost.

.  adorable…

this was where Rob realized he had taken us in the wrong direction to the pub and we were at a dead end…

Not to be deterred Rob takes off again. Wish I had taken more photos – we must have walked for five minutes through a maze of buildings like this, past little abodes with pretty flowers pots and the biggest Crown of Thorns plant I ever saw, cooking smells emanating from them that made my mouth water.

Copacabana at Shek-O beach…

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The pub we were looking for was closed and we ended up stumbling upon a beachside pub/restaurant that started out with a libation and ended up with what was arguably a 5-star dinner.  A whole sea bass stuffed with rosemary and capers was my choice. Unfortunately I didn’t realize mine would arrive flaming and I was in the bathroom at that exact moment!  Oh well, everyone else enjoyed it… The owner/waitress had clearly been formally trained at some point in her life – the service and presentation was impeccable from start to finish – but I think she found her paradise in Shek-O, m’self.

By this time I had been up about 24 hours except for that two hours on the Tokyo to Hong Kong jaunt.  The original group of Patti, Jeff,  Al and I caught a jitney bus from the beach back to a metro station somewhere in Hong Kong.  The ride was about 45 minutes and harrowing – first of all, that whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing is VERY disconcerting the first time – and our driver, although not taking chances, knew the dark curving road better than we did so she drove a little faster than we would have.

I honestly don’t remember much about getting home on the metro.  It was a long ride and I stood against the rail with my eyes closed.  When we got off and I realized we were just transferring to another train I started to think I was in the twilight zone.  That part of the trip involved me leaning on the rail, holding on to the hand strap with both hands and dropping my head onto my arms to sleep – it was all I could do.  Keeping my eyes open was no longer an option.

Getting off the train was a few blocks from the hotel and the crisp air and bright lights gave me enough energy to make it in the front door of the hotel, but wait – there were “treats” on the thirty ninth floor, and Jeff and Al said isn’t that why we had skipped desert?

So of course, I took one more detour to the treat lounge and had ten of the most delicious mini cream puffs I have ever tasted.

My pillow from home never ever ever felt so good.