Kowloon Side

Sunday was Granny's 73rd birthday.  To mark the occasion I took my parents on a forced march across Kowloon in the baking heat.  Or that's how it seemed to turn out.

The plan was to start off early with the Nan Lian Gardens, #1 on the Rough Guide's list of sights not to miss.  "Elegant reconstruction of a Tang dynasty garden provides an oasis of calm in the city".

The Nan Lian Gardens and the Chi Lin nunnery next door looked really lovely.   However by the time we got there it was over 30 degrees.   Hannah already wanted to go home and was in no mood to admire 'scholar's rocks'.   So we ended up racing round trying to find shade and oases of air-conditioning.

Video:  Nan Lian Gardens

Next stop was the Kowloon Walled City Park, another lovely garden, this one built on the site of the notorious Kowloon Walled City.   The walled city was a Chinese fort which, due to a dispute over jurisdiction, became an essentially lawless enclave between Britain's leasing of the New Territories in 1898 and its demolition in 1991 (link).

Kowloon Walled City in 1989

Kowloon Walled City Park - Yamen

Unfortunately it was simply too hot to enjoy this lovely garden, and the highlight for us became the air-conditioned display in the old yamen (government quarters) building.   So we moved on.  We tried and failed to find somewhere cool nearby to eat lunch, and moved on to the next planned stop - the bird market.    (Hannah also spotted a good children's cycle track in Carpenter Rd which we promised her we'd come back to).

The bird-market is both a market and also a place where bird fanciers can bring their birds to show them off and enjoy listening them singing to each other (perhaps 'blues' numbers complaining about the size of their cages).

Video:  Bird Market

One lady kindly offered to let us to hold her bird.

Hannah taking a video of the birds...

...and the result.

The bird-market, and the flower market next door were very picturesque.  But very hot and sadly devoid of restaurants, tea-rooms or ice-cream parlors.   So with blood-sugar drooping we yomped quickly through the flower-market to find an emergency cafe and a taxi home.   Planned visits to the goldfish market and ladies market were cancelled in favor of taking Hannah to the Deepwater Bay beach.

Hannah and I enjoyed a swim in the sea.  And then we all had dinner at Coco Thai.

On Monday, Hannah was at school so Granny,  Granddad and I went back to Kowloon to visit the Museums of Art and History.    We rode the tram from Happy Valley to Central and took the Star Ferry across Victoria harbor.    One of the worlds great boat rides.

Video:  Star Ferry

At the Museum of Art we saw an exhibition of artifacts from the Qianlong Garden in the Forbidden City in Beijing, dating to the late 1700s.   The Qianlong garden was built in the 1780s by the Emperor Quianlong.  The exhibition and artifacts were very impressive and tasteful but inevitably I got brain-strain after about 40 min.   And the gallery shop also looked really interesting.   So Im keen to go back and check it out in smaller doses.

We had a nice lunch across the road at the lobby cafe in the Peninsular Hotel.   We sipped tea and watched very rich people emerging from the Hotel's fleet of Rolls-Royces.   The tea and food were excellent although I noted that cheeseburgers had replaced cucumber sandwiches on the menu.

Then onward to the Museum of History where we saw the first half of the permanent exhibition the Hong Kong Story.   We plan to return to see the other half and also the blockbuster exhibition of artifacts from China's first emperor (of terra-cotta army fame) which we were just too late to see.