Day 151 – Stanley Beach

The Star Ferry ride to Hong Kong Island.

The LDS Church building in Hong Kong.  Three stories are Chapels!  It is beautiful.

Hong Kong city street.

After breakfast, we left with the first group going over to the Church building on the island of Hong Kong.  We rode the Star Ferry.  It was a nice little run to get there.  Then we walked to the Church.  It is an impressive building not far from the harbor.  It has seven stories that house three chapels complete with cultural halls and offices for the leaders.  This area has a lot of Indonesian and Philippine domestic workers that only have one day per week off, and it is rarely on Sunday.  To accommodate those members of the Church, they have a Sacrament Meeting every day of the week and then because most are women workers, they will have Relief Society or Sunday School lessons.  They also try to have a meal for them and let them stay and have either institute of a Family Home Evening.

We were at this building so that we could present our teaching successes to all the other China teachers.  We were each given a strict two minutes to talk about what we felt had worked for us.  We took notes and plan to use some of the ideas in next semester’s classes.  I was surprised that our of the 75 teachers ideas, there were only two that were similar!  When we finished we had a 10-minute choir practice and then we had the rest of the afternoon and evening free.

We aligned ourselves with a group of 18 people and decided to try and find our way to the Stanley Beach area.  First, we had to find the correct bus to take us there and the right place to catch that bus.  After a few times of backtracking, we did find the right bus and away we went.  At first we were standing because there was no room, but eventually we were able to get seats on the top of the double decker bus.  Boy, was that a ride!  They drive on the “British” side of the road here and then with the narrow winding road that we were on, we almost got sick.

 

The beginning of Stanley Street Market.  It goes down rather steeply at first.

Stanley Beach.

Stanley Beach and some of the most expensive real estate in the world!

We liked the rocks on Stanley Beach.

Us at Stanley Beach.

A sailing vessel at Stanley Beach.

After we arrived at Stanley Beach, the first order of business for some of us was to find something to eat.  Eight of us found a good Chinese restaurant right away and had a good meal.  Then we wandered down through the shops and found our way to the beach.  It was a pretty beach and we had a good view of the ocean. 

David and I walked along the boardwalk that runs along the beach.  Then it was time to slowly make our way back up to the bus stop where we all planned to meet and go on to a place called Aberdeen.

At Aberdeen, we hired two sampan boats.  One took half of our group and the other one too, the other half and we had a nice cruise around the harbor for an hour.  It was getting late and we found the right bus that we needed so that we could get back to the harbor to take the Star Ferry back to Kowloon, where we were staying.

 

A sampan boat.

The view from inside the sampan.  They like to decorate them and they also put pictures of their families in them.

This is a floating restaurant that you can only get to by boat.

This was our group on our sampan.

David dangling his feet over the front of the boat.  He was happy there.

We found a group that wanted to go to dinner at “The Spaghetti House” and we had a nice meal there.  On the way back to the hotel, David and I stopped at a pharmacy to get some alcohol wipes and some cold sore medicine.  All the stress of the last few days has brought out my second cold sore in two weeks… not happy!