Intrepid Travelers In China (1 of 6)

Going to China was never on our travel wish-list. Yet, while riding the elevator in the YHA hostel in Sydney last Spring, we read of a travel slide presentation about China and we found our interest piqued. The slides were fascinating and presented a country that was so
diverse and different from anywhere we had visited.

The company giving the presentation seemed to have trips that would be of interest to people like us – independent travelers who have always shunned the rigidity of organized tours. We are people who enjoy “roughing it” a bit in order to see the real essence of the people and their culture. The company was Intrepid Travel and their trips are for people with a “yearning for adventure, a sense of fun and a wish to escape the humdrum of mainstream tourism.” We learned that their trips are limited to just 12 people, and the average number is 9, yet they guarantee that every trip will go even if only one person has booked it.

Additionally, we became convinced of the need to see China soon, before the headlong rush of this culture toward the 21st century has changed it forever, and before the San Xia Ba Dam being built on the Yangtze River inundates the Three Gorges starting in the year 2003.

Keeping these things in mind, we started investigating other tour possibilities. Why take a tour at all, you might ask, since we have been so many places in the world on our own? Since the Chinese language doesn’t even use the same alphabet as ours, and there are over 50,000 characters to decipher in theirs, as well as the tonal quality of their spoken word, we were fearful that we would have huge problems making our own arrangements.

In the end, we were sold on the off-the beaten track itineraries in their brochure, and the fact that their tours were the closest to independent travel we could get, yet still be on a tour. We booked their “China In Depth” tour, a 29-day trip which started in Hong Kong on May 6, 2000. On April 12, we put our RV and car in storage and flew to Bali for 17 days and then on to Hong Kong.

Because Hong Kong is in southeastern China, it is hot and humid most of the time. During our time there, we had cooler weather and even some rain. Because we had arrived early, we had several days to explore. Hong Kong is really just one of 235 islands, with Kowloon just across the harbor from central Hong Kong, and an area called the New Territories between mainland China and Hong Kong, but everyone calls the entire area Hong Kong. The excellent transportation system, including a modern subway system, hundreds of double decker buses, a few electric trams, and ferries plying the harbor, made it easy and inexpensive to get around.

Of course, anyone who has ever seen a picture of Hong Kong realizes that it is a city of sky-scrapers. Unlike our cities, where the tall buildings are mostly for business and the workers live in homes in the suburbs, in Hong Kong almost everyone lives in sky-scrapers, as well. They are densely packed, with small streets and alleyways in between. Street markets are commonplace, where fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, indeed almost anything that is required for daily living can be purchased. Near our hotel, in Kowloon, the Temple Street night market sold clothing, shoes, belts, silk scarves, handicrafts and items from all over China focusing on tourists and offering very good prices (for Hong Kong).

Overall, Hong Kong is a fairly expensive place to visit, with hardly any hotels under $50 per night and food costing more than it does in the USA. The exchange rate was 7.79 HK dollars per US dollar, and it took a while to get used to seeing prices like $30 HK for the Victoria Peak Tram, and then realizing that this was less than $4 US!

In addition to visiting the Peak, the area where real estate is probably the most expensive in the world, and where there is a great view of Hong Kong harbor, Kowloon, and the outlying islands, we took a ferry to Lantau Island. Here we explored by bus and also visited the world’s largest seated outdoor bronze Buddha. While on the island, a uniformed officer stopped the bus, and immediately everyone around us started pulling out their ID cards. This is how we learned that even though Hong Kong has been returned to China, Chinese people are not free to move there to live. They have to have special permission and there are periodic checks of people’s papers to make sure they are not there illegally. There are already 6 or 7 million people living in Hong Kong and there just isn’t room for many more.

One evening was spent on the boat of a friend, sailing to Lamma island, admiring the incredible light display of the waterfront buildings, some of which are computerized so that the colors and displays change, and having dinner in an Indian restaurant on that island. Another day we took trams, buses and boats on a circuit around the island. We saw the small upscale communities of Stanley and Repulse Bay on the back side of the island, and the harbor at Aberdeen where over 20,000 people live and work on boats.

On the famous Jumbo floating restaurant we saw a large area where there are tanks full of diverse kinds of sea creatures kept there so that patrons can select what they want for dinner and it will be killed and served fresh. This is common at many seafood restaurants in China. We enjoyed taking the free boat the restaurant provides through Aberdeen harbor to the restaurant and back, and poking around the premises. But the meals on the Jumbo cost an average of over $100 US, so we ate elsewhere!