Trip 2 - Southeast Asia

Tsim Sha Tsui is a labyrinthine assortment of streets with buildings and people all jammed together, garbage everywhere, and neon signs jutting out into the street. All I wanted at first was dim sum, so after a bit of wandering I decided on the Jade Garden restaurant. It had just what I was hoping for - all those tasty little dumpling treats brought around on trays - , though it was a bit pricy at HKD 88.

Chungking Mansions gets such a colorful description in the Lonely Planet guide that I had to go inside, even though I didn't want to stay there. It's an ugly building with stores, restaurants, and currency-exchange counters on the first two floors, streams of cockroaches in the stairways, and tiny, precarious, overcrowded elevators that take you to the guest houses on the remaining 15 floors.

I stayed nearby, in an only slightly more attractive building called Mirador Arcade. My guest house, the Won Tat Guesthouse, was on the fifth floor, and my small room (HKD 250) had a wonderful view of a garbage chute. The guesthouse itself was clean, though, and the owner was friendly.

In the afternoon I went to the splendid Hong Kong Museum of Art, which traces the development of painting in Hong Kong extensively and has an enormous collection of jade and celadon Chinese wares. The museum is in the Hong Kong Cultural Center, at the end of the Promenade, the walkway that runs along Victoria Harbour. I walked along the Promenade for a while, gazing across the harbor at the tall, modern buildings that make up Hong Kong's industrial center.

A week-long series of concerts was just beginning at the Cultural Center, and that night I saw a piano concerto performed with the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra. Then I looked at the program and read that the pianist was from Cherry Hill, New Jersey! After the concert, I walked through Tsim Sha Tsui to a large outdoor market area on Temple Street, where hawkers cook up seafood on the spot. The fish looked suspect, as it had been sitting outside in the heat, so I had some snails that I'd seen cooking for a while. They were tasty, but there were many of them and they got dull.

I walked through Kowloon Park the next morning. It was a peaceful respite from the bustle along the street, but the Museum of History, which was supposed to be there, had moved. So I took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to the industrial side of the city, aptly called Central. I wanted to take the tram up to Victoria Peak, but a large tour group had just gotten there and the wait would have been too long, so I found a dim sum place for lunch (at this one I ordered from a menu as there were no carts) and went to the Central Market. This indoor market featured rows of people cleaning fish and offering them for sale, but there were few customers. I got on the travelator (a wonderful device that moves people up and down a hill for almost a kilometer) and window-browsed a street lined with stores selling funeral accessories, and I stopped for chestnut dome cake at American Pie.

Then I got on the tram to Victoria Peak, an affluent neighborhood with amazing views of the harbor. There's a good observation deck, and it was cool and windy outside. Indeed, typhoon signal number 1 had been hoisted - sort of like a hurricane watch.

At night I saw a concert of Chinese folk song and dance in the Cultural Center. For my last dinner in Hong Kong (I didn't get to have many!), I went back to Jade Garden and had a terrific meal of snake soup, abalone, and roast pigeon.

Macau, a Portuguese colony (at least it still was when I visited it), was hard to walk around because of the narrow, hilly cobblestone streets, and the sudden cramp I felt in my leg didn't help. It also took a long time to get my bearings - the map in the guidebook wasn't very detailed, and I walked the length of the same street a couple of times before I figured out where I was.

I started touring at the Grand Prix Museum, which has a good selection of racing cars and videos of races - Macau is known for its spectator sport. I lunched at Solmar (seafood soup, African chicken, and fruit punch with tonic) and then found the center of the city, Largo do Senado (Senate Square). It's where the main government buildings are, and it's a lively pedestrian area with narrow lanes that branch off in all directions. A journalist about my age started asking me questions about what I knew about Macau, and I had to confess that I didn't know much about the country - I rarely heard it mentioned.

Near the center of Macau are the ruins of the 17th-century St. Paul's Cathedral; all that remains are the stairs to the entrance, the facade, and parts of the floor. Next to the cathedral site is Monte Fort, a fort on a hill with panoramic views of Macau. On the hill, the Museum of Macau had recently opened. It tells the story of Portugal and China as they relate to Macau, and there are lots of interactive exhibits: One room has samples of spices that you can smell, and in one room you can listen to your choice of Macanese songs. It was quite windy on top of the hill, and by now typhoon signal number 3 had been hoisted - the typhoon was getting closer.

I continued north through the country - how many countries can you cover on foot in a day? I visited the Lou Lim Ioc Gardens (which contain a beautifully diverse assortment of shrubs, plants, and trees and pathways leading over small streams) and then St. Michael's cemetery (which contains some elaborate tombs - though nothing like the Chinese cemetery in Manila! - and is filled with angel statues. Then I walked all the way to the Chinese border post.

I took a bus back south, and I walked down to the A Lorcha restaurant on Barra Hill for dinner; I had a samosa-like appetizer, squid stuffed with sausage, and Portuguese wine. By the time I finished dinner, it was very windy out, it was raining, and typhoon signal number 8 had been hoisted - would my flight back to the United States leave the next day? Would I even be able to get back to Hong Kong? It was a lengthy, wet, dark walk back to the jetfoil terminal, and I was never really sure I was going the right way. But eventually I made it.

Back in the city proper, I had one more dim sum meal (fish head, pork leg, etc. - HKD 101), and then it was time to set off for the airport.