Thursday 29-July-2010 The Land Between Tour

Well we fly out tomorrow.

Tday we did The New territories The land between tour
http://www.viator.com/tours/Hong-Kong/New-Territories-of-Hong-Kong-The-Land-Between-Tour/d14-3675TLB
This necessitated an early start.  Something that we are not so good at but for which I was glad of.  The tour was apparantly originally put together by the government tourist board but is now run by Grayline.  Our guide was an expat Pom and was both knowledgable and freindly. 

One stop involved looking at a temple complex.  This had temples for Buddists, Confusionists and ???.  As part of the funeral process, people would buy paper replicas of things that they want tin the after life.  These are amazing detailed and much larger than I expected.  Huses about 1.2m tall, apparantly paper cars are about a meter long although we did not see any cars.  Even a model maid.   An interesting concept made even more interesting when one thinks about the other end.  Person A dies one year and goes to the after life with a 486 whereas someone else dies more recently and takes a netbook with them.  Nw Person A is stuck for eternity with Windows 3.11.

 The tour included an undocumented stop off in a almst deserted fishing village.  Apparantly the younger set do not care much for a lack of running water and toilets and opt for a city life.  Mind you it seems to apply also to enough of the parents too as she pointed out several houses, and commented that the owners lived in the UK.

The tour also included lunch and that was great.  It was fun to sit round the table with the other members of the the ourist group and chat about what we had seen.

After the tour, Megan took Marcus, Dan and Jemma back to the hotel for a swim.  Chris and I took the MTR (train) to Sham Shui Po station in search of deals on electronic goods.  When we arrived, we discovered the "market" that we had been told about covered many streets.  Some of which cars had all but given up trying to navigate because the stall holders and people had taken over then street.  We saw lots of half dismantled computers and airconditioners.  In the end we were a bit scared to buy anything as I think one would need to get the vibe of the place to know whether you were buying new or used masquerading as new or just plain used.  There were also streets of clothes so we may be directed to return tomorrow on our way to the airport.