We’re staying at the beautiful Four Seasons in Hong Kong. It’s a very busy place that seems to not be the least bit disrupted by the financial crisis.

Last night, after we arrived, we joined our group for dinner at the Pacific Club, on the Kowloon side, looking back at the Hong Kong skyline. It is an incredible sight, the masses of sky-high buildings lit up against the backdrop of steep mountains.

Today, a small subgroup of about ten took a tour of Hong Kong city. We started the day by taking the tram up to the top of Victoria mountain. There were times when the tram seemed to go at a 45 degree angle to the hillside. It uses a cable mechanism similar to San Francisco’s cable cars (of course, Lenny took plenty of photos of the older mechanisms, which fortunately have been modernized).

At the top, we could see over a very smoggy Hong Kong. The folks here blame the mainland Chinese for their pollution woes. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure does seem like they have a problem.

From Victoria, we went to the other side of the island to visit Aberdeen – the fishing village. It seems that most fisherman have given up fishing and instead take tourists around in sampan boats. There were dozens of sampans, lined with old rubber tires for a bumper effect, circling the few remaining fisherman in the harbor. By the way, half the names seem to be holdovers from the British Empire, like Aberdeen, whereas the rest all see to come off a Chinese menu, i.e. Kung Foo Young, or something like that.

Our third stop was at Stanley market, a combination of Chinese souvenirs with the Berryessa Flea Market. We bought Marina a small gift, but I won’t say what it is in case she is reading the blog!

Our last stop was back to the center for a superb dim sum lunch at one of Danny Lui’s (our host) favorite haunts. The food just came and came, and we did our best to keep up with it.

For dinner, our group headed out on an impressive 150’ yacht for an island that has a series of restaurants specializing in seafood. We were served all sorts of seafood, including abalone, but also some we couldn’t identify. This was definitely a local kind of place, with lots of families, and various groups playing cards and mah jongg.

We’re now exhausted and heading to bed, to hopefully sleep through the night, unlike last night, when we got up, wide awake, around 4:30am!

-- Donna