Our New Zealand Adventure: Day 63 church, mid level escalators, temple, zoological gardens, harbour light show

Sun 4 March
We could see Christ the King church from our hotel room and thanks to our reccie the other day we also knew how to get to the entrance as it was surrounded by other buildings, one of which was St Paul's School. The first two masses were in Chinese, the 11:30 was in English and the 13:30 in Indonesian.
I couldn't see anyone entering or leaving the church by the only entrance we'd found all morning. I was wondering if mass was even on! There was however, an awful lot of people going in and out of the school and when I got outside the hotel I decided to follow them. The school was on pillars so it was possible to walk straight underneath it and through the gate to the church. From the numbers pouring out, the last mass had been very full and this was a big church,just one of several dotted around the area. It quickly filled up for this mass too.

School playground wall with inspirational message painted on

this school was well connected internationally

There was a sizeable and well trained choir that sang beautifully, the priest was from Ireland, and the congregation was young. Most people looked to be in their 20s or 30s with a lot of teenagers present. At the sign of peace, people bowed to each other rather than touch even in a handshake. There is a lot of emphasis on hygiene in HK with signs in public places reassuring that handrails and escalators are regularly disinfected and telling people to cover their mouth and nose if they have a cold.
Jono meanwhile went and drew out more money and worked out how to top up our octopus cards ( theres a machine at every station but it will only accept $50 or $100 bills, no other denominations. ) He then had a prowl around and discovered a whole shopping centre and restaurants in the building above the MTR at Causeway Bay.
Outside our hotel was a massive queue of Indonesian women stretching 3 and 4 deep right along the road. The police had cordoned off one lane. Jono asked and we found out this was their one day off a week, they were queuing to send money home and to organise visas. There was a lot of food being served out of plastic bags and eaten on the pavement as they chatted to each other.
After mass, we met up and had sushi before catching a train to Central to explore the midlevel escalators.

These move people efficiently up and down the steep hillside in Central, running downwards until 10 am for people to get to work and then upwards the rest of the day. There are steps next to them if you need to go a different way.
When we left central station we were surrounded by hundreds of women. Some sat in groups on cardboard eating home brought food, others playing cards or packing up large cardboard boxes. These are the Filipino women and it's their day off, they were sending things home to their families. It felt like all the men had disappeared off the planet and it made moving around slow to a snails pace. Eventually we moved enough streets away to be just moving at the normal slow crawl
found around anywhere in central hongkong!

We saw more of the banyan trees with their amazing root systems growing down from their branches.

We stopped off at this temple. Lots of people were burning incense and worshipping. Its one of the oldest in Hong Kong

bamboo scaffolding is everywhere

There were lots of antique shops along the road, I'd have loved to have brought this home!

It was just interesting seing our surroundings.

wall art

A quick coffee break
We made it to the top of the escalators and headed for the zoological park.

mid level escalators stretching down towards central area

the catholic cathedral

This is also free and has lots of different monkeys and birds as well as giant tortoise. At the bottom of the park is a large fountain and flowerbeds. Lots of families were out for the day - there were even some men here!

display showed what the area had been like at different times in the past

We just stopped and sat here for a while then as the sun began to set we worked our way north to Duddells steps where 4 gas lamps are still working.

entrance gate to the park

we passed St Josephs church

Duddells steps with gas lights

Another MTR jouney over to kowloon with a quick meal at the Mall cafe in the YMCA then wewere running to catch the harbour light show. Every evening at 8pm crowds gather on the Kowloon harbour side and listen to the music and coordinated light show formed by the buildings on the other side of the harbour. Very different. The boats sailing in the harbour also had their lights on to add to the ambience.
A beautiful display of Koi lanterns for chinese new year was still lit nearby, then we took the ferry across to Wan Chai (still looking at the lights) and the MTR home.