August 26 2007 - Out and About in Hong Kong

I’ve gone on a couple of interesting outings in Hong Kong this past week. On Tuesday I went to “research” The Museum of Coastal Defense. I’m going to lead a tour of this museum in December, so I needed to be able to do a write-up for the AWA magazine. In order to do THAT I had to know how to get there and back, how much time it takes to tour the museum, and how you get there in the first place! I had actually tried to go to the museum about a month ago, but I tried to take the bus, got lost, and by the time I finally found it realized that it was closed on that day anyway! This time things went more smoothly.

It’s a very interesting museum. The museum is built on top of a hill overlooking the entrance to Victoria Harbor, where at one time there was a fort. It consists of two sections. On top of the hill is something called the Redoubt, which apparently is a British-ism for a large scale fortification. The second part is a historical trail leading down the hill. The Redoubt was reconstructed and then covered with a tent-like roof. There are indoor exhibits at the Redoubt, showing the history of the defense of Hong Kong from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the current defense by the PLA.

The indoor exhibits were very well done. I spent a lot of time looking at the displays and reading the English explanations. The Chinese twist on things was illuminating. The PLA was displayed patriotically, as you would expect. And the British Period was described as “the occupation”, which also makes sense, but I just never thought of it that way…

I really liked the historical trail as well. It shows other sorts of military structures, including the ditch, Torpedo Station, caponiers, artillery barracks, batteries and underground magazines. I didn’t take any pictures of the indoor section, but I had fun taking pictures on the historical trail. The pictures are a combination of the views from various vantage points and actual items on the trail.

Then on Thursday I went on a hike in the Northeast New Territories. This was a Michael Hansen Hike, and I signed up for it and another one next week partially in preparation for going on Judi Lewis hikes when I get back from the US. It was definitely a wakeup call. I don’t have trouble walking for long periods of time, but I did definitely get out of breath on the one big hill we climbed. Michael said it was around 200 meters, which isn’t that much compared to some of the ones I did last year. Part of it was that it was warm and rainy and I was sweating like crazy. I had enough water, fortunately, but the next day I had lost 2 pounds, and that was ALL water! Today I’m back to normal. You have to be careful hiking in Hong Kong because of the heat and humidity. That’s why most of the hiking is done in the winter months.

It was a beautiful hike. It wound through an area filled with old abandoned villages. The villages were mostly abandoned back in the 1980’s when farming started to become unprofitable in Hong Kong. Most of the villages aren’t really that old, although they may have roots in ancient fishing villages that are really old. The villages really started to grow when the communists took over the mainland in the 1940’s and there was a huge refugee problem in Hong Kong. Their populations grew dramatically during the 1950’s and 1960’s and then slowly shrunk until the present day.

Some of the villages are actually being renovated now. They are so pretty and remote and the buildings are very picturesque. But most of them are not accessible by road, and few have running water, although most have electricity (and cell phone service!). But they make great weekend retreats and someone with some entrepreneurial instincts could make a go of hiking b&b’s I think.

I had fun playing with my camera, although because of the rain I didn’t take it out as much as I would have if it had been sunny; I didn’t want it to get wet. I started thinking of more camera accessories to buy – a waterproof case, a little case to put on my backpack…etc!