Last stop, a week in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a special part of China. It is made up of islands and parts of the mainland bordering The South China Sea and The Pearl River delta. It has a total area smaller than the Isle of Wight but has a population of nearly 8 million people. China as a whole has a population of 1.6 billion people, the most populated country in the world. About 1 person in every 5 in the world is Chinese. Hong Kong is an important trading centre as it has a huge harbour. The British fought wars with China over the right to trade and gained Hong Kong and parts of the mainland for 100 years. It was given back to China in 1997 but still has a special status in China with some different laws to the rest of the country. Hong Kong itself is an island, it faces Kowloon and The New territories on the mainland. There are other smaller islands like Landau where the airport is linked to Kowloon by a huge bridge. A road and rail tunnel links Kowloon to Hong Hong Island. The whole region is quite hilly so building space is scarce, Most people live and work in huge skyscrapers linked by pedestrian walkways. Ferries link different parts of Hong Kong and there are services to other parts of China, it is a cheap, easy way to get around the city with wonderful views of the harbour. There is a funicular railway up to the highest point of the island, the peak, with wonderful views of the city and harbour. There are special markets in different parts of the city. Bird, flower and goldfish markets are very busy with people buying small things to brighten their tiny flats. There are plenty of lovely parks where people  meet  and walk as few have gardens.
At noon everyday a gun is fired so people can check their watches! This was very important when sailing ships depended on correct time recording to find out where they were when at sea.

The harbour and Kowloon from the peak.

Yum yum, duck!

Not quite so yum yum, snakes,  and eels.

The bird market - pets not food.

The goldfish market, good pets in a small flat.

My cousin - Panda.

Sunday lunch special - roast croc head!

Receiving a gift from a primary school in Hong Kong.

Photos with the bear at the zoo.

Lots of fuss at the kindergarten.

A pagoda in a buddhist temple.

The noonday gun in Hong Kong - very loud!

A traditional junk in the harbour

We went on a day tour of mainland China, having to go through immigration as if we were visiting a different country. We visited 2 large cities, both nearly as big as Hong Kong, Sechou and Guanzhou. In Sechou the children in a local Kindergarten school mobbed the bear jumping up and down with excitement. They all learn English and at the end of the visit could all say bear! We visited the zoo in Guanzhou and saw Scoler's cousin, a Panda. There were 2 pandas in the zoo. They are only found  in the wild in China and face extinction as they are not very sociable and their natural habitat is disappearing. Scoler was mobbed again by school children visiting the zoo and they all wanted a photo with him! In a traditional street market we saw live eels, snakes, turtles, tortoises, frogs and toads. All of these are delicacies, special treat meals, together with crocodile heads!  We visited a buddhist temple with a pagoda in the grounds. There are many religions in china and lots of churches and temples.

Bali to Lombok

Playing with boys on swan rocking horses.

Transport Lombok style.

Monkey in the forest.

A rice paddy - spot the eels and frogs.

Full grown rice.

Terraced rice paddy fields.

Calling the holy eel.

We finished our circuit of Bali, back in the main city, Denpasar. On the way from Lovina, on the north coast we visited a centre for disabled people. People who are handicapped at birth are given a home in the centre. They get education and training in a range of skills. All speak English well and many make handicrafts or paint. They cooked lunch for all our party then showed us round the centre after giving us a presentation of their daily lives and activities – including scuba diving!. The whole atmosphere of the centre is happy and welcoming and we all felt we had made some new friends. The last stop was a beautiful  temple on a small island just off the coast.

Our new friends at the centre.

The bear made a friend too!

Off to Lombok.

Temple on an island

Our next stop was Lombok, another Indonesian island, about 30 miles to the east of Bali. Most people in Lombok are muslims and wherever we went we heard the call for people to pray sung from the tall minarettes found all over the island. Muslims have to pray 5 times a day and the first call is at 4.30 am, the people get up very early in Lombok!

Our boat arrived on a beach as there was no quay for it to moor to. The luggage had to be passed forwards and we had to jump off the front of the boat.

Our first stop on the way up the mountain, where we were staying, was another Hindu temple built for the royal family of Lombok hundreds of years ago. There was a temple for people of all religions to worship in within the main temple area and we asked the priest to make the eel appear in one of the ponds to bring us all good luck. The priest broke some duck eggs in the water and, after a lot of calling, a huge eel appeared, we were all lucky! On up the mountain, another dormant volcano, we saw our first wild monkeys. The trees are full of fruit and as few people live in the national park at the top of the mountain there are lots of monkeys. The rice paddies are on steep slopes and have to be terraced, with fast streams flowing between the fields. There are fish, frogs and eels in the wet paddies and as the crops ripen and the fields dry out people collect them to eat. We saw families threshing the rice after it had been harvested to get the grains from the stalks. The grain is then winnowed to get the husks from the grains and make it ready for cooking. There is no bread in countries like this where it is too hot to grow wheat. This means no toast for breakfast – just rice! It is too hot for potatoes to grow as well, so no chips for tea – just rice. There are plenty of spices like chillies, peppers, nutmeg, and mace, these are cooked with the rice and chicken to make interesting meals.

Bali Bear

Goodbye Auckland!

A pavilion in a temple.

A temple guardian with a lotus filled moat behind.

Another guardian with a sari.

A dragon guardian with an offering.

More offerings in the market.

There are large spiders here!

Goodbye to New Zealand and on to Bali with a transit stop in Sydney, Australia. Bali is an island in Indonesia. It has 3 million people (New Zealand has 4 million) on the island which is about the size of Norfolk. The island is volcanic and has 2 very large craters both with lakes inside. The soil is very rich as it is volcanic and together with a heavy rainfall from a monsoon climate the land is very fertile. The main crop is rice, grown in paddy fields, and the farmers get 2 crops a year. Rice growing involves a whole community as the individual fields are dammed then flooded but each dam has to have a sluice onto the next paddy so all the village can share the water. Keeping the water flowing is very important and is the responsibility of the whole community as is keeping the dams and sluices in good repair. Harvesting involves everybody as it is all cut and threshed by hand. The fields are all tiny so mechanisation is not possible. As Bali is quite mountainous many of the fields are on terraces which are even more difficult to maintain.
The main religion is Hindu but there are some Muslim and Christian communities as well. Every village has at least 1 temple and every house has a shrine. Offerings of food flowers and incense are made daily at home and family shrines as well as at temples. Even businesses make offerings so the whole of Bali smells of incense! Stone guardians in the form of dragons, warriors, and animals protect the entrances to the temples to keep the bad spirits out. The 3 main gods are Brahma, fire, red, Shiva, wind, yellow, and Vishnu, water, black. Different temples are dedicated to different gods and are decorated in the colour of the god. The really large temples have more than one god and are very richly decorated.

Chickens for the pot on sale in the market.

Which god is this temple dedicated to?

This is made from flower petals picked every day

Carrying goods to Market.

Russell School, Bay of Islands

This bear went fly fishing!

The Queen Elizabeth outside Russell

Russell School sign 

Scoler meets the class

Russell school

Russell was called Kororareka by the Maoris before the British settlers renamed it and made it the first capital of New Zealand before Auckland.  It now has a population of about 1,000 people and is well known as a tourist destination because of it's history and many old buildings. The town is located in The Bay of Islands which is a very beautiful area of Northland. It is on a deep estuary opposite the town of Pahia and near Waitangi where the treaty was signed.

 Many large cruise ships visit, some, like the Queen Elizabeth, on a cruise round the world.  Russell Primary School also has bears which it sends round the world! There are lots of bears which are given messages about themselves and where they would like to go. These bears are left around the town for tourists to find and, if they are taken, the tourists send messages about where the bear is and what he is doing. Some of the bears have been round the world and are now back in Russell. When the pupils get a message from a bear they look up where in the world it is and find out about the country and place it is in. 

The headmaster, Mr Fuller, invited Scoler to meet his class. The class showed us how they found out where their bears were and looked up Scole in Norfolk. We told them about Norwich and some of the history of Norfolk, they might like some postcards of Norwich Castle and other famous sights near Scole. They sang songs for us and the boys showed us how to do a haka, a maori dance and song used to frighten rivals. The New Zealand rugby team always do a haka in front of the team they are playing to try and frighten them! This year the rugby world cup is being played in New Zealand, The All Blacks, The New Zealand team will be doing lots of hakas.

Water everywhere!

Just an ordinary water tank in the garden. Rainwater only - no rain no water.

The Northernmost point of New Zealand - Cape Reinga where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea.

Most coastal towns have wharfs with fish weinghing in hooks. This marlin was  over 100 kg.

On the way to Cape Reinga along 90 mile beach by coach!

A small offshore island with a hole in the rock.

Dolphins playing in the bow wave of the ferry.

Most of the small towns and villages in New Zealand have no main water supply as they are so isolated. People get their own water by having huge tanks in their gardens fed by pipes from rainwater off the roof. This makes you much more careful about how much water you use because if the tank runs dry there is no more water until the next rain. How often do you really need to do the washing? How long should your shower be? Do you need to run the tap all the time whilst you brush your teeth?
With 2 long narrow islands making up most of New Zealand nowhere is very far from the coast. Fishing and boating are major sports and tourist trips to islands and marine reserves are very popular. There is usually a dolphin or two to be seen when out in a boat and they play around the boats and just offshore. There are many more fish in the seas around New Zealand as they have not been overfished in the way the seas around Britain have. If you catch a fish here it has to be beyond a certain size before you can keep it. If you are caught with fish too small you could loose your boat and all your fishing gear as a punishment.

Swimming, diving, snorkelling, surfing and body boarding are all popular around the coast and the local school has sports day on the beach with most of the races in the water!

Waitangi day

The war canoe.

Chief Tamati Waaka Nene, one of the maori chiefs who signed the treaty.

A carving inside the treaty house.

The entrance to the treaty house.

A treaty was signed between the British settlers and the Maori chiefs on 6th February 1840. It was signed at Waitangi in the bay of islands and made New Zealand a British dependency giving the Maoris rights as British subjects. It is a public holiday and there are celebrations at Waitangi. The giant war canoe which brought the Maori chiefs to the signing of the treaty in 1840 is launched and paddled in front of Maori leaders. This canoe holds 100 warriors and is followed by many smaller canoes. There is a 21 gun salute from a New Zealand navy warship and it is an important day for New Zealand.