Our New Zealand Adventure: Day 65 kowloon walled city park

Tues 6 March

We just about made it for breakfast,caught up a bit with the blogging, checked the prices of gear fits and grabbed a sandwich at pacific coffee before heading over to Kowloon.

We stopped off at Mong Kok and visited Sim city where one of the shops had gear fit 2 pros. My gear fit 2 had conked out in Sydney and I was mising it. Purchase made it was back on the MTR and around to Lok Fu, we walked down through parks to reach the Kowloon walled city park.

Hospital with interesting architecture

Pedestrianised pathway to park

This was infamous in the 1970s when it was full of highrise buildings packed cheek to jowl and a no go area for police and government. The mafia and triad gangs ruled here.

In 1993 the buildings were torn down, excavation works carried out to restore the archaeology and it was transformed into a large park.

lovely covered seating areas and walkways

ponds and waterfalls

a particular form of bonsai which didn't involve wiring but gave a more natural form

In the old buildings which survived throught the 70s and still exist today there are interactive exhibits. Some tell stories of how the park was at its worst with scenes displayed on the walls. It's strange to see people wearing the styles of clothes that we did as kids in the photos and realise how recent a history this was. The commentary is all in a chinese language so unfortunately we had limited understanding of what was being shown. Other rooms have interactive scenes that reacted to our movements so we were interacting with street traders or skipping with children in scenes.

Interactive exhibits

outside the interactive rooms

3d model of how the walled city was in the 1970s

Slice through the city showing how close all the buildings were and the secret passageways that ran between buildings since they were so close

remains of southgate

Old southgate signs discovered in archaeological dig

We spent the afternoon exploring the different areas and even bumped into Uncle Man. He appeared on Richard Ayoades BBC travelman show about Hong Kong which we’d watched last year.

He produced scrap paper and tore kissing swans for us using his nails, and then our profiles, including creasing the paper to give the effect of hair. He is a volunteer at the park and says he is there everyday. His english is a little difficult to understand but he is very engaging!

As it started to get dark we retraced our steps to Tshim Sha Tsui and had dinner at a different branch of Tsui Wah. I ordered the handmade fish spring rolls as a side dish since we hadn't had any spring rolls in Hong Kong at all. The dish they brought was a soup, I pointed again to the menu explaining I wanted the spring rolls, the waiter nodded, disappeared and reappeared with a slightly different bowl of soup. Frustrated with our inability to communicate he went and fetched another staff member who explained that the homemade fish spring rolls only came in soup and didn't taste nice if they weren't served like this. So still no spring rolls in Hong Kong! I'm going to miss the lime juice I've got used to drinking here.

We had lovely sizzling platters instead!