Hong Kong: Our Fourth Stop

During the second week of our January travels we had a BYU-sponsored professional development seminar in Church area conference presided by the Area presidency that is officed in Hong Kong.  In addition to the Hong Kong Temple and a few church buildings the church owns an office / apartment building that is used for church meetings and to house people like the local mission president and as previously mentioned the Area presidency when they are traveling or meeting in Hong Kong.

We were also able to attend the temple and spend at least half the time sight-seeing in Hong Kong.  Hong Kong is an amazing city that is spread over a couple of small islands and a very densely populated peninsula that is connected to mainland China.  The actual island of Hong Kong is very mountainous and everyplace that is reasonably level…or rather areas that were not too steep.. is built on.

The city is cleaner and more European-like than cities in mainland China.   And there are lot’s of Europeans and Americans that live in and visit Hong Kong.

Here is a picture of me taken with the temple in the background. There is a stake center across the street from the temple

The picture on the right is an Asian variation of a popular painting.  Notice the Asian children!  This picture was in the foyer of the church office building (across Victoria Harbor from the area with the temple).

There are some impressive bridges that connect the small islands with the larger island of Hong Kong and the Kowloon peninsula.   

Shipping is big business in HK and lining many of the waterfronts were rows of portal cranes to service the many ships coming in and out of Hong Kong

There are even some beaches on the less populated south side of the island of Hong Kong.

On the other side of the island there are massive buildings everywhere.  

In the next two pictures taken from our ride to the top of Victoria peak you can see the many buildings on the island of Hong Kong in the foreground and the buildings on the far side of Victoria harbor which is the Kowloon peninsula.  The city of Hong Kong covers much more than the buildings on the island of Hong Kong.

From these two pictures above it looks like Victoria harbor is fairly narrow.  So I’ll include the next two pictures to give you more of a perspective of the size of the harbor.

Every evening there is a music and light show over the harbor.  Here are two short videos to give a view of that event.

There were many other sights and sounds I wish I could share.  There were some very interesting buildings such as this one.  

Looking north across the harbor to the tallest building on the Kowloon side, we were treated an interesting display of clouds in the wind breaking around the building…leave trails of vapors on the down-wind side of the building and the reflections from the glass illuminated the building in interesting fashions.  The changes weren’t quite fast enough to be appreciated with my skills with the video camera.

There were many skyscrapers mainly on the Hong Kong island side of the harbor.  Here are more pictures of them.

In one area there is the longest escalator. (a series of escalators and covered walkways).  This goes up from the waterfront to shopping and business district part way the side of the mountain.

We saw this apple store where people were queued up out the door and through the glass wall you could see the mass of humanity lined up on the first and second floors of the mall.  I believe it was the introduction of iPhone 5 in Hong Kong.  There were lines both days that we passed by this mall store.

There were some nice parks to including the Kowloon park right next to the most densely populated city area in the world in Kowloon.  I love the crazy trees that don’t look real!  

This is of a common tree that drops vines that then take root and grow into new trunks and branches that can make it hard to tell where the tree started or even how many trees you really have.

e prize for tenacity goes to this tree taking root on the side of this building in downtown Hong Kong near where the worlds longest escalator moves you up the hill to the upper shopping district.

Hong Kong is expensive.  

Notice the double cheeseburger on sale for $8, down from $14.

And the half-million dollar earrings on display in the window of one of the jewelers along the street.

And $15 McFlurrys!

Okay, I have a confession.  Yes they use the $ sign but $7 HK dollars equals $1 USD!  So things weren’t quite as expensive as they appear.  The meal at the Outback Steakhouse in Kowloon tasted like, and was priced about the same, as our frequently visited OB steakhouse in Orem….however, I don’t think they had any bundled up napkins that were used to swab out the inside of a certain family member’s mouth.

And when we left HK we saw many ships awaiting their turn for docking at HK!  It was hard to believe how many ships there were.