Saturday, November 4, 2017; Hong Kong Day 2

Saturday, November 4, 2017; Hong Kong Day 2

After an early breakfast in the buffet, we took one of the complimentary shuttle buses from the Kai Tak cruise ship terminal to one of the shopping malls in Kowloon, called Plaza Hollywood at Diamond Hill. The mall is just across the street from the Nan Lian garden and Chi Lin Nunnery.  We arrived at the mall long before any of the stores were scheduled to open, so we walked across the street and found the Nan Lian Garden quite easily.  It is a compact but beautiful and peaceful garden with a central Koi pond, and a man-made waterfall partially concealing a restaurant in one corner.  There are many beautiful boulders of karsk limestone, petrified wood, jasper and other nice stones.  There was also a nice collection of bonsai trees, and many unusual trees and bushes.  Some were in need of a little touch up pruning, but there were lots of people busily sweeping up the sidewalks, raking leaves, and even someone testing the salinity and pH of the ponds.  

There was a nice overpass from the Nan Lian garden into the Chi Lin Nunnery.  The grounds were spotless, and the Chinese architecture was noticeably different from the Japanese architecture we had seen in Yokohama.  There was a beautiful courtyard with water lilly gardens leading up to a large temple complex with gold Buddhas and their sidekicks.  There were stones on pedestals around the courtyard, each with a Buddhist proverb written on a plaque.  The furniture in the side prayer rooms was beautiful and in showroom condition.  It was hard not to be impressed by the golden Buddhas and other statues inside the temples.

We then walked back over to the Plaza Hollywood mall and found a place to sit down and log in to WiFi to upload pictures and download emails.  We were the last two people boarded on the second to last free shuttle back to the ship, so we made good use of our bonus morning in Hong Kong.  

We had a late morning trivia with our usual partners, but we pretty much bombed that one.  Judy, Rick, Joanna, Paul and Joseph did win the music trivia last night that we passed on to watch the virtuoso pianist program.  They won the aluminum water bottles.  Apparently, there was some tension and head butting between Rick and Joseph during that game, so there was no sixth chair at our table this afternoon. 

After dinner, we skipped the music trivia to watch the Variety showtime, featuring El Mago Serpico- Magical Shadows World.  This turned out to be a shadow puppetry show with a little bit of slight of hand magic thrown in.  It’s hard to believe someone could actually make a living doing that, but they did keep us entertained for 30 minutes and packed the theatre.  

We reconvened with our trivia team plus Simon from Palo Alto for the Gameshow “Are you smarter than a Cruise Staff?”, which was basically just another general knowledge trivia, but the audience got to pick one of 3 cruise director staff to answer each of 5 questions in 3 subjects, which turned out to be animals, geography, and famous people.  We ended up beating the cruise staff, and also ended up winning.  There were two teams tied for the highest score, but they had two bottles of champagne, so there was no need for a tie breaker.  The team that tied us was Daniel’s family plus Joseph, who had wandered in a bit late after Simon had already joined us.  We had also brought down and opened a bottle of champagne from last night to drink during the game.  We also poured two extra glasses for Paul and his wife because Paul had helped us win last night.  

The captain had warned us as we headed out of Hong Kong that we were going to be having rough seas again, and he wasn’t kidding.  A couple of times, the ship hit waves big enough to make the entire ship shudder.  You could hear the elevators rattling in their shafts, and in the theaters, the light bars shook so violently that people took cover in case something shook loose, but fortunately, nothing shook loose.  The covered pool splashed out so much water that the deck was soaked and the crew drained the pool.  

Janet got her fix of Jason Bourne before turning in for the night.  We should arrive in Taiwan mid-morning.