Sunday

Lazy morning. Slowly got ourselves up and made our way to the History Museum. Stopped at Starbucks on the way to get coffee. When we got to the museum, I realized I had left my unipod back at the Starbucks and had to double back to get it. We had been told this is a safe city with little crime, and it was confirmed by my unipod still being there.


The Hong Kong History Museum traced the evolution of Hong Kong back to 1 million years ago. After they got past the first almost million years, they got to the past 10,000 years which were more interesting. They had some of the development of pottery from the first inhabitants, and how it became more detailed and glazed. The earliest peoples fought wars, and moved back and forth from the mainland. The various dynasties of China (Han, Qin, Ming, etc.) came and went. The British came in the 1850s for trade. They first mostly bought things from the Chinese, but soon realized they were losing out in the balance of payments. So they introduced opium to provide something for the population to buy back from them. Hmmmm. The museum itself was very well put together, with large rooms of multiple artifacts from all periods of history. It was so big, however, that Ann and I became separated, so I did the last half by myself. We finally met at the end.

Lunch at an outdoor café. The food itself was nondescript (Sorry, Adrienne). But the conversation with our neighbors was very weird. These were 2 Americans who were working for the “Chinese Royal Family”. It seems that the Royal family is still fabulously wealthy and controlling things. Back in 1758, George Washington borrowed over $1 billion in gold from the family, and every 10 years every president and leader has signed a pledge to pay it back. Now it is over $10 trillion. About 1/3 of the continental US is pledged to this royal family. Huh? They are more powerful than the Jewish banker, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and Lehman Brothers. Huh? The reason Lehman Brothers collapsed is because the royal family decided not to lend them any more money. Huh? We quickly ate our food and left.

We met Kathy for a trip to the top of Victoria Peak, overlooking Hong Kong Island. We took the 15 bus up the mountain, sitting in the first row of the upper deck of the bus. Interesting, going around the tight curves. We got to the top for the spectacular view. Hong Kong is a very vertical city, and you could see down on top of all the buildings. These are easily 40-50 stories, and there were hundreds of buildings that high, as far as the eye could see in either direction. Most of these buildings have been built since the 80’s.

We took the tram down, and went to the JCC to see the synagogue. It was in the Sephardic tradition, with the bima in the center. Very reminiscent of the synagogue in London.

We met back up with Stuart, her husband, and we drove to the south side of the island for dinner at a little hole in the wall restaurant in Stanley. Traditional Chinese/Thai food. Fried noodles with chicken, tofu, eggplant, curried noodles, and the garlic green similar to what we had in Taipei. Yum.

Early plane tomorrow to Beijing.