Having decided to spend a day in Hong Kong’s New Territories, the Heritage Museum was first on our list. Getting out at Sha Tin MTR station, we found ourselves in a huge, upmarket shopping mall. The information desk produced a map, but we still struggled to find an exit, until a ladder-carrying workman parked his ladder and physically escorted us to the exit and pointed out the directions.
Arriving at the free-entry museum, we headed for Alchemist Café Bistro and over a lemon and ginger tea watched an elderly lady through the window do her tai chi.
Feeling revived, we found the extensive Bruce Lee temporary exhibition and learned about his short life through excellent information boards and displays.
In the T T Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art I found one of the most interesting items of china were exquisitely painted ‘month cups’. We also looked around the Hong Kong International Poster Triennial 2017 exhibition, decided not to go into a Pixar exhibition and tried to find what we’d actually gone to see, the culture and heritage galleries. Here we learned the value of having an up to date guide book and so consoled ourselves with taking photos of a huge bronze Bruce Lee statue outside. I tried to get my husband to recreate the one-legged pose, which he failed to do but as he pointed out, so did many younger people.
We discounted visiting the 10,000 Buddhas’ monastery because it involved climbing 400 steps, plumping instead for the Che Kung Taoist temple, which like the museum, was also difficult to find. In the courtyard were 8 statues of Taoist immortals, fortune tellers and incense burning cauldrons. The strong incense smells and smoke inside, soon drove us out again.
A few MTR stops away was Tai Po market where on arrival, the covered modern market, wasn’t quite what we’d anticipated. To make up for the disappointment, we headed on foot to the Hong Kong Railway Museum. Once again, signs were scarce, but this time we were rescued by a young girl who escorted us to within sight of the museum which was the on the site of the original Tai Po Market Station. In the old ticket office, snippets of famous train-related films were being shown, but sadly there was no Railway Children or Brief Encounter. There were a couple of trains outside which you could climb into and once again, the museum was free (and had good loos).
We then found the street long Tai Wo market with fruit, vegetables, dried and fresh fish, meat, household goods and other interesting looking items. Half way down the street, tucked amongst the high rise, was the 100-year-old Man Mo Temple, with its huge cone shaped burning coils on the ceiling.
At the end of what was a disappointing day, we managed to find the MTR unaided and headed back to the hotel where we found we’d walked nearly 20,000 steps, although with a better map we could probably have done it in ten.
