Aug 1st: Our (very humid) evening in HK was spent listening to Sharie extol the wonders of Bruce Lee, while taking a very dismissive stance on Jackie Chan. The boardwalk on the harbor provided many opportunities for tourists to take photos of an impossibly muscled Bruce Lee statue and buy souvenirs from the harbor shops. Sharie had watched the documentary 'How Bruce Lee Changed the World' on the flight from London, and now it seems he'd influenced everything, from mixed marshal arts to protein shakes. I knew she'd always been Bruce Lee obssessed - even I had two posters of him as a teenager, bookending my Donna Summer poster that came with the 'Bad Girls' LP. But, she would not let up about him! Jeez!
The evening ended with iced drinks at Starbucks, while listening to a trio warble 'You Light Up My Life' in Chinese, then a dim sum feast in an undground mall.
The next morning, we visited the Jade Market. On my last visit to HK, I had found some wonderful old Jade, sold by a charming elderly man, claiming they'd been buried for years in the Himalayas. He was still there (!), claiming he remembered me, and promptly sold me a birthday present for my friend, Loyelle.
Then, on to the Women's Market to find a faux Louis Vuitton bag for Goran's niece. I was getting a little antsy because I wanted to get to the southern island to visit the giant Buddha before our flight to Syndey at 11PM. On my previous visit to the city, I'd taken an hour long bus ride on a winding road only to get there at the moment the park closed. Even a fog had rolled in to obscure the view from the bottom of the steps. That was NOT going to happen again.
Finally, we hopped into a cab and raced to the airport to store our luggage. From there, we wasted about an hour trying to get the right bus to the Ngong Ping pier. Once there, after a relatively short wait to the ticket booth, we discovered the ride up and back would take so long we'd have no time to actually climb the stairs to explore the Buddha.
When Goran tried to console me with, "We'll just do it next time," I wanted to scream, "NEXT TIME?! How many times am I supposed to come to Hong Kong just to walk inside a giant Buddha?!"
In the cab back to the airport, I pouted childishly, irritated that we'd gotten to do so little of what I'd planned for our short stay. I did feel slightly better when Sharie later realized she's left her jacket and scarf in the taxi. Amazing how a little schadenfreude can get you through those dark moments.
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