inspiring

The weather forecast wasn’t inspiring yesterday. The chance of rain, according to the Hong Kong Observatory website, was ‘medium’, which pretty much guarantees rain at some point. Paula said that she didn’t want to do any walks in our neighbourhood—we’ve exhausted all the possibilities here—and she suggested that we travel into town and climb Victoria Peak (‘the Peak’) from Central, which is effectively from sea level. Accordingly, we walked into Luen Wo Hui to have breakfast at the Fairwood branch there, after which we could take a minibus to Fanling station and thence a train to Central.

However, just as we were finishing our breakfast, it started to rain. Heavily.

“Change of plan,” said Paula. “Let’s take a bus to Tsing Yi.”

Tsing Yi is an island northwest of Kowloon. It used to be an industrial centre, but nowadays it’s an important residential area with a forest of low-end, high-rise apartment blocks. And we wouldn’t even get wet going to the bus station, which is located directly underneath the Regentville housing estate (Fairwood is located in the shopping mall that forms the bottom two storeys of this estate).

Naturally, I concurred, especially as we would have a grandstand view of everywhere we passed through en route, unlike travelling by train, from which you can see almost nothing. I was actually wondering about the route the bus would take, and to my delight it took a round-the-houses route through the eastern part of Fanling and Sheung Shui before hitting the expressway. I was delighted because although I’m completely familiar with all of Fanling east of the main railway (the East Rail line), I’ve rarely ventured west of the railway, mainly because there doesn’t appear to be much to see, apart from Fung Ying Seen Koon, a Taoist monastery that I have visited; Kun Chung Temple, which I’ve also visited; and North District Hospital, where I’ve been a patient on more than one occasion.

I’d been wondering which route the bus would take, but I was taken aback when the bus hit the expressway, heading north! I shouldn’t have been surprised though, because shortly after passing through Sheung Shui, the expressway bends westwards and is thus the most direct route to Tsing Yi.

Another surprise as the bus cruised westwards along the expressway: the skies were slowly clearing, and it began to look as though we’d seen the last of the rain. So we eventually arrived at Tsing Yi station, but there didn’t appear to be much of interest in the immediate vicinity.

“Let’s take the train to Disneyland,” suggested Paula.

“I’m not going to Disneyland!” was my peremptory reply.

However, Paula didn’t have an actual visit to Disneyland in mind either. Apparently, there is a scenic park close to Disneyland that we could walk around (Paula had been before). So that’s what we did. Unfortunately, Paula couldn’t remember the exact location of the park, and we ended up walking all the way around the outside of Disneyland. This unplanned diversion, along roads named Magic Road and Fantasy Road, took us past the entrances to several hotels, and I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to stay here. Yes, the location is convenient for visiting Disneyland, but it’s far from ideal if you want to go to almost anywhere else in Hong Kong. Anyway, we eventually reached the park, and almost immediately I noticed that it contained quite a large lake:

I was amused to discover that this is named Inspiration Lake!

The plan was to walk around the lake in a clockwise direction, and as we did so we encountered very few people. I took photos of the lake at various points along our walk.

I couldn’t help but notice the large number of loose boulders along the shoreline, which led me to conjecture that this is an artificial lake.

This photo was taken looking back the way we’d just come. It shows just how well the path that we followed is paved:

The next photo provides more evidence of the artificiality of the lake:

What is shown here is not a natural feature.

We stopped briefly at some convenient benches to enjoy the view:

The lake contains an island, which you can see in the previous two photos, although it was not until we reached this point that I realized that there was an island here:

Continuing on:

What appears to be some kind of jetty in the next picture is actually the second such structure on the edge of the lake:

Although we didn’t actually stop here, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this rather quaint gazebo:

And this is the last photo I took in the park:

I just liked the tree.

Almost immediately after we left the park, we needed to cross a road, but there was a convenient pedestrian underpass:

…and this is a view of the exit from that underpass:

We still had some distance to walk, but we eventually reached Disneyland station. While we were waiting for the next train, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the platform:

I just liked the ironwork, which makes this station unlike any other on the MTR network.

When we boarded the train to Disneyland, which is on a branch line with no other stations, I couldn’t help but notice the Mickey Mouse windows and the upholstered seating, which is not like the hard stainless steel seats on other MTR trains. There were too many people in the train on the outward journey, but I took this photo as we waited to depart on our way back to the real world:

I suspect that Disney had a say in the design of the trains here. They may even have paid for them outright.

We did consider taking an alternative route back to Fanling, but in the end we opted to take the same bus. So did we find the day inspiring? Not really, but we did enjoy it.