Ching Ming Festival Weekend

We just went through a three day weekend in Hong Kong in observance of the Ching Ming Festival, a holiday also known locally as "Grave Sweeping Day." Locals pay reverence to departed family and friends by cleaning up their grave markers. As Lizzie and I know very few people in HK at this point, and even fewer who are deceased, we used the spare time to putter around the city and do some exploring.

The weather was mild so we decided to get out of the concrete jungle of Central and enjoy some of Hong Kong's natural splendor, which really is quite beautiful. We strolled along the Bowen Road trail, Hong Kong's answer to the Sawyer Camp Trail in the Bay Area, and stopped for a little family picnic. As super fit joggers whizzed by, we ate cheese and crackers on a bench beside a little waterfall. But this trail is a gem of a find because there are not many places in the immediate vicinity of our apartment tower to go jogging without having to slalom through crowds of people or dodge speeding taxis. Too bad though that in another month an outdoor jog or stroll will be an afterthought as I can already feel the temperatures spiking.....the beastly humidity is just around the corner and the outdoors must be avoided at all costs....

Along the path we stopped to view ongoing construction of a 30-ish story building. As is the case with all/most buildings that go up in HK, they use bamboo and plastic zip-ties to build their scaffolding systems. Even the tallest of the tall skyscrapers use it! Tough to see in the picture, but we watched this guy (we'll call him Spiderman) climb all around this bamboo with complete confidence and no safety harness! Crazy stuff.


On Sunday we headed out to the other side of Hong Kong Island to the small community of Stanley where there is a cluster of outdoor restaurants, a popular hawker market and a pleasant boardwalk area to stroll the sea front.


We took in some history by checking out the Stanley Maritime Museum, a really impressive exhibit tracing the history of Hong Kong as a seaworthy trading city. They've got a really cool whiz bang hi-tech shipping simulator that allows you to sit in a modified bridge of a cargo container ship and navigate your way thru Victoria harbor to the offload docks, dodging all sorts of obstacles along the way. Easier said than done, and even the professionals get it wrong as there have been several tragic accidents in the harbour in the past couple months with deadly consequences.

The rest of our time in Stanley was spent sitting in a restaurant, dining and drinking al fresco.
Ingrid made a friend, a cute little girl named Grace (see Doppelganger post) and we chatted with her parents. The father was one of the few remaining British police officers on the HK force who stuck around after the handover. Interesting chat.

We also went shopping for a bathtub for Ingrid. She approved of our purchase.