Performance art in Hong Kong. It appears that in the second pic, the guy is going to carve a sculpture of the young lady...in butter?

We drove by a soccer stadium, which had a fairly small crowd. But they were very loud and boisterous and excited.....I figure because no one was actually playing soccer.

We went back and forth across the harbor, between Kowloon & Hong Kong island, several times on the ferry. One way ticket is 2.70 in Hong Kong dollars, which is about........37 cents.

Not wild about the sculpture in the hotel lobby

The Mongkok area of Kowloon is mostly wonderful chaos.

Wagyu beef is everywhere. Even in small portions in a buffet.

No comment.

We found a buffet dinner our first night, and for a few seconds I couldn’t quite fathom why there was a pair of scissors on our table. Moments later, I got it.

We’re off the ship (grrrrrrrrrrr) but now in crazy, wonderful Hong Kong. I opted to stay on the Kowloon side rather than the Hong Kong island side, just because I’ve read that it’s more ethnic and exotic, whereas the Island side is more glitzy & Vegas-y. Remains to be seen whether that’s true. The flower market and environs are fun.

Today (Fri the 4th) is our last cruise day, and thus I am in my usual funk because of it. This one was wonderful but much too short! No adventures to report today, it was a sea day, and a still-yucky one at that, through the Hainan Straight, on our way to arrival in Hong Kong at dawn tomorrow morning. But as this part comes to a close, the next part begins; we’ll prowl around Hong Kong for a couple of days, then begin our 8-day land visit to Japan. Stay tuned!

On one of the islands, we explored a wonderful cave (up several hundred steep, treacherous steps) from sea level.

more Halong Bay

Mother Nature continues to be a little unkind to us - we had a wonderful tour of Halong Bay off the coast of Vietnam, but it was cold and foggy. Extraordinary limestone islands, all 1,089 of them, jutting out into the South China Sea.

But we also got a nice, hastily arranged dinner out of it, with an interesting musical performance. A little strident & difficult for Western ears to fully appreciate, but good to try, I suppose. Hue was quite a ways from Da Nang though - nearly 6 hours on a bus in one aft/eve is a tough ask. I’d post video of this so y’all can hear it, but it takes ages just to post photos, video would be nearly impossible, without stronger WiFi, more bandwidth.

Because of the strong headwind and rough seas, we arrived in Da Nang around 2:00p, rather than the scheduled 7:00a. And thus our tour of the ancient city of Hue, rather than being an all-day affair, turned into a late-afternoon to late-evening trip. Which made picture-taking rather pointless, in some of the areas which are not intended to be nighttime visit places. But here’s a few.