Just added photos of our last day in Hong Kong and Durban. Head on back in time to see them.
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Just added photos of our last day in Hong Kong and Durban. Head on back in time to see them. Over the last few days we’ve continued to help my parents out with there move. We’re not rushing and doing things bit by bit. But we’re slowly getting through things. Over the weekend, my sister, Jay and Sarah headed off to their home in Port Alfred while Max remained in Grahamstown with his friends and staying over at my parents old home (which is now theirs). Helen and I went to see him play basketball on Saturday morning. On Sunday he popped round to us for most of the day. I took him out to play Ingress. Using the car was a lot easier than walking but it was still a struggle. Torrential storms made visibility difficult and the internet was down for a while. I still think I may be having phone data problems (which can be fixed by tethering one phone through another – bizarre). We were out for quite some time and I think Max very much enjoyed it. Perhaps even more than I did. I still have a few photos to post but haven’t got around to it. Today we have a fair bit to do including visiting the local dentist who we’ve used before. Mainly for checkup but I do have a chip on one tooth that needs to be resolved. PICS TO FOLLOW We had an excellent few days with the Whiskers up in Durban. Nothing strenuous. Just hanging out together, watching cricket, watching the local monkeys, recovering from hangovers, the usual sort of thing. All too soon it was time to leave as Helen and I had to get down to Grahamstown to meet my side of the family there. We had opted to go via bus – a scheduled 12 hour journey. Diane and Gerald took us to the bus station and saw us off. It was nice to have them there as the bus departed half an hour late resulting in our having a little extra time together. The bus arrived in Grahamstown two and a half hours late. You can imagine how much of a chore it was. My sister, Sue, picked us up and we made a brief stop off at my parents to say hello. They were facing their final evening in temporary accommodation before moving into their new home the following day. It was a nice surprise for them as they hadn’t expected us to show for another couple of days. We ended up back with Sue and quite uncharacteristically drank too much wine before going to bed. On Tuesday it was nice to be able to help my parents with their move and settling in. Sue has done most of the work organising their move but every little helps. Since then it’s been a matter of spending time with my parents in their new home. They’re both more active than we’d expected which was great to learn. For now we’ll spend the next few days helping to sort things out resulting from the move and gradually ramp up dealing with our future (and past – taxes !!!!) which all needs to be done. Joy. Very almost a full day as our flight out is at 23:45. So we’ve had a day to fill. This time we really did take it easy in the morning. Well I did. I caught up on the blog while Helen packed. It does work best that way. Around midday we left our bags with hotel and headed out. We had lunch at the Lie Heung Tea House in Central Hong Kong. The food didn’t impress us but it was a real experience eating with the press of Chinese that frequented this popular spot. After lunch we decided to watch a movie, Django Unchained, at the movie theatre in the very posh IFC Mall in the area. We really enjoyed it and at 2½ hours long it certainly killed some time. It had to be one of the most comfortable theatres we’ve ever sat in, complete with polished leather chairs to sit in. After the movie we headed to the roof of the mall which we’d read had great views. It did, as long as we ignored the building work going on in front of us. We did have a small surprise when we recognised, nearby, the building from the TV adaptation of Nobel House by James Clavell. We had thought it might have been torn down since the TV 3 parter. It did look a little dwarfed by the very tall buildings nearby which had gone up since the series but it was there. Feeling as if we hadn’t quite had enough of the crushing press of Chinese locals in the street market we headed off to Chunking Manions and Mong Kok to pic up some last minute pressies. We decided to go to the airport early which was good as the taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal. We then waited at the wrong gate and nearly missed the plane but were found by the airport staff in time. D’Oh. After many interminable hours of flying we had a fast change over at Joberg before flying on to Durban where we were met by Dianne and Gerald from Whiskers. The conversation, beer and wine carried on from where it left off back in French Polynesia in 2010. We’ll be here in Durban for a few days before heading down to Grahamstown to visit my family there. Our last absolutely full day in Hong Kong. There were two places we had to visit. The first was the Big Buddha on Lantau Island to our west. It’s a very popular tourist attraction and despite it feeling a bit cheesy we thought we should go. We took the train out to the town where cable cars take visitors up the mountain. Unfortunately, it turned out they were having their annual maintenance that day so they weren’t running. We could still get to the Buddha by bus which took us up the steep mountain road, down again and back up to the Buddha. The good news was that just about everybody else knew about the maintenance so the place was relatively quiet compared to what we’ve heard from others. The Big Buddha itself was pretty impressive. We had a bit of a climb to reach it but it was worth the effort. After that we visited the nearby monastery which was a smaller version of the nunnery we saw on our first day. Nestled in it was a food joint selling vegetarian food. We ate here but it was a bit yucky. The whole area, unfortunately, was overlaid with tourist tack. This was trebly so in the “Village” which was all shops and very Disney like. We’d have had to walk through the “Village” from the cable car had it been running. Would have been awful. The only saving grace was how few people there were there. The bus ride back was much quicker as there were two descents and only one ascent. We headed back to the hotel for some rest and then went out for our second must do – the Happy Valley races which are held every Wednesday evening. We’d timed our visit to Hong Kong to ensure we’d catch this and are now so glad we did. We arrived early around twilight, paid to go into the members enclosure (US$12 each) and paid for seats overlooking the winning post. We read our form guides for the eight races and picked our winners. Splashing out about US$20 each for all the races we were set for a fine evening, particularly with Helen’s horse picking form (she picked the winner for the Melbourne Cup). As night settled the races ran. The atmosphere was great. Our horses not so. Despite each race being very close that was about as far as our picks ever got. Still, we had a great time and learned next time to pick horses with four legs. Best leave it to the pics to give a real sense of the evening. Incidentally, yesterdays pics didn’t all upload at once so avid readers may wish to go back and check them out again. |
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