Foreward: We have successfully posted a few of our many photo albums on this website. The photos don't have capitions yet and some are turned sideways. But we're getting better at it and soon will hopefully have all 2000 photos (or as many as you can take at one sitting) just right.

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HONG KONG

This entry is being written at 35,000 feet somewhere over the Arctic Circle (northeast of Vladivostok, Russia, according to the in-flight route map on the screen in front of me) on Cathay Pacific Flight CX836 from Hong Kong non-stop to Toronto. The flight is 14 hours and 26 minutes long, which is a long time to sit in a relatively cramped middle seat where it's difficult to sleep at 11:22 pm local time. Some day, if I ever have the money, I'd love to fly first class, where the seats convert into beds.

However, I must say there are enough distractions to please: free meals, drinks, snacks, and a choice of 100 movies (I have already watched two: Incendie, a Quebec film, and The Adjustment Bureau, a new sci-fi American film), 350 television shows, 888 CD'S, 22 radio channels, and 70 video games. In addition, if you're like me, you can plug in your laptop and type a blog entry.

Most of the passengers on board are of Chinese origin. I suppose they are Canadians going home or else Chinese on vacation or going to school in Canada.

One can't fail to be impressed by the sheer majesty of this flying machine, a product of a little over 100 years of aviation technology that can lift 350 people off the ground and fly them and their luggage and the crew one third of the way around the world in less than 15 hours, while providing food, drinks, duty free shopping, sanitation, air pressurization and conditioning, as well as entertainment, in safety. Athough air travel is hardly an environmentally-sustainable industry, (and despite the voluntary carbon offset that Cathay Pacific wants passengers to contribute to), one can't fail to appreciate the technological progress human beings have made since the Wright Flyer 1 and the Silver Dart.

Today, Siobhan and I spent the afternoon near the world headquarters of Cathay Pacific on Lentau Island, one of the Outlying Islands of Hong Kong, where Hong Kong Airport and Disneyland also happen to be located. No, we did not go to the local Disneyland!

We visited the local fishing village of Taio which is mostly a collection of houses built on stilts along a little river leading to the South Chinese Sea. In the market there, you can buy live and dried fish and seafood of every description and of every pungent aroma. There is a magnificent specie of trees which is currently in bloom with masses of red flowers. Millions of cicadas are scratching out a constant thrum. And there is a school of pink dolphins which, unfortunately, we did not have enough time to cruise out to see.

It was Vonnie's idea and seemed a good one because we were frankly getting really tired of the polluted air, noise, dirt, and hustle and bustle of huge Chinese cities. Strangely enough, while downtown Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are intensely populated, the former crown colony is mostly green. On our first day, we took the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak where you can admire spectacular views of the harbour and skyline. Unknown to us, there was also a walk around the summit. We chose to walk down the mountain through the tropical rainforest, dotted with the mansions, swimming pools, and tennis courts of the super-rich who passed us by in their Jaquars, Rolls Royces, and Mercedes Benzes. We could not even hear the traffic noise from below until we were more than halfway down.

Our second day, again at Vonnie's suggestion, we spent at a swimming beach on Cheung Chau, another of Hong Kong's Outlying Islands. Because I am a senior I ride the ferries in Hong Kong free and the subways for half price. So, we rode the one hour ferry to Cheung Chau island for a fare of about two Canadian dollars. The beach is free but unless you want to become burned to toast, you need to rent a big umbrella for seven bucks. It's about 33 C here and sunny. But the downtown skyline of Hong Kong is enveloped in smog.

The ferry and subway systems in Hong Kong are first rate. Service is fast and cheap and seamless. An Octopus card lets you travel everywhere. On top of this, unlike mainland China, Hong Kong is set up for tourism. Of course, it helps that most people speak English with various degrees of fluency. But it is a lot more than that: tourist bureaus that are actually open and staffed by very friendly and knowledgeable people who take the job very seriously, lots of appropriate signage, lots of free maps and literature, and lots of people in the biz, on the transit system, and just on the street who want to make sure that tourists are experiencing no difficulties. Hong Kong also puts on a free show every day at nightfall called the "Symphony of Lights" down at the harbour on the Kowloon side when all the buildings on both sides of the harbour light up and flash in time to the music. A commentary in English and Chinese also describes all the principal buildings of the city. It's a pretty cool show!

I only regret not having had the time to visit the Canadian military cemetery where the victims of the 1941 Japanese attack on Hong Kong are interred. (Japan, at the time, was a member of the fascist Axis states, including Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, who precipitated WWll.) Also buried there, I believe, are some of Canadian POW's who were starved and worked to death by their Japanese captors. The attack on Hong Kong took place eight hours after the one on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, (which brought the USA into that war) and also caught the Hong Kong defenders by surprise. Although British military planners had felt that Hong Kong was indefensible and removed all but a token garrison, Winston Churchill pulled all the necessary levers of power to station two green Canadian infantry regiments there late in 1941 in a move to reassure Chiang Kai Shek that Britain was standing in solidarity with the Chinese government. The Canadians put up a spirited defence but were soon overwhelmed by much more numerous, better-trained, and better-equipped Japanese forces. The Japanese forces massacred some Allied soldiers who surrendered, imprisoned others, and even invaded the British military field hospital and either tortured or killed the patients. This was a pretty bitter chapter in Canadian history, for which the Japanese government (unlike the German government) have made no amends to this day.

For your information, Hong Kong today has a semi-independent form of local government, according to the agreement that repatriated the former British crown colony back into its rightful place in China (amidst much hoopla at the beautiful seaside HK Convention Centre, with the wavy roof in our photos, in 1997). Chinese backpackers we met were pissed off that they had to get a visa to visit the place, even though it is now once more part of their country, whereas just about everyone else in the world (including Canadians) do not need a visa to enter. You can't spend remnimbi (the Chinese currency) in Hong Kong. You have to acquire Hong Kong dollars (which are worth 7.84 to the US dollar.) That fact necessitated at least three more visits to banks and currency exchanges for us and a mental shift in the calculation of prices. And right now, my pockets are full of little HK coins of little cumulative value that the currency exchangers wouldn't touch. So this is when the stewardesses come around with little envelopes for you to donate to their carbon offset scheme...

XO*@@(!) The passenger is the seat directly in front of me is having another sneezing fit! And, according to my Canadian neighbour on the right, he is not sneezing into his sleeve or even covering his mouth. I can't believe my eyes. My neighbour is putting on a surgical mask! He must be a seasoned traveller.

Uh-oh! Now the stewardess is coming round with a midnight snack of sandwiches and glasses of water. I am on strict orders to wake up Vonnie, who is hungry. Must sign off now. Bye!