DAY2 HONG KONG

 Refreshed, refragranced in the fragrant harbour. Ships tour Highlights of Hong Kong. Really nice weather, warm but not too humid.

First stop on Hong Kong Island at Aberdeen for a sampan tour round the harbour. Lovely old lady captain with single cylinder engines sampan. Floating restaurants, house boats, plenty to see. Next off to Stanley to visit the craft market.

Nice little town surrounded by beautiful sandy beaches where millionaires live in mansions overlooking the sea. On to the peak.

Nice outlook over the harbour, nice place to visit with breezes when it's really hot & humid. Drove up in the tour bus, but went down by tram. Very steep track, all the seats face up the hill as you fall out of you seat facing downward. Got to the bottom and discovered we had left a couple of Muppets behind at the top.

Still like their bamboo scaffolding here.

HONG KONG

 Left the dismal day that was Taipei in Taiwan bound for Hong Kong. We had a day on our own on day 1 & a ships tour on day 2. It's generally pandemonium getting on & off the boat what with extra border security, taxi queues and the rest. Day 1 was no exception. You needed your hiking self in full gear. Went out mid morning on to the terminal gangway, uphill for about quarter of a mile, into nice modern terminal, thankfully it had travelators. Then up hill down dale security people and then out on the concourse where cabs & buses stop. Directed to shuttle bus, walked to join queue, got to shuttle to be told it's the wrong one, it was the free one & the paid one is at the other end of the terminal. The terminal is about half mile long. By the time we got to the proper shuttle, a woman who was walking with us told us we had already walked a mile. Knackered!

So we did our usual wandering, on & off with rain, but not bad. Found our way to Tsim Sha Tsui, strolled around the harbour and the Star Ferries and chanced upon the Hong Kong Discovery Centre in Kowloon Park. The discovery centre was the former British army Whitfield Barracks built in 1890. They had a special exhibition running on the Tang Dynasty. Very impressive, up to British Museum standards. The capital city, Chang An now Xian had a population of 1 million in 800ad and was designed in a functional grid system. They were so pleased to see us, making us really welcome and gave us souvenir gifts when we left.

Nice light & music show using the buildings & lasers put on in the evening. At least the terminal connector to the ship was downhill on the way back.

TAIWAN

 In the olden days used to be called Formosa, now probably the best integrated chip manufacturers in the world. Arrived early, plans were to wait to late afternoon, take a cab up the steep hill to Zhongzheng Park, visit the giant Buddha, climb the inside, visit the Dutch fort then wander down the hill to the night market.

This is what greeted us. Tug had to give us a nudge to dock in the wind.

Pouring with rain, cloud right down, blowing a houlie. You can barely see the Buddha at the top of the hill. It can only get better, we thought - not. So we stayed home with cocktails & a movie. We saw people coming back on board soaked to the skin. Umbrella's were useless.

KAGOSHIMA

 Another day, very little in the way of a plan, weather now not too good, forecast for rain, Donner & blitzen, & I don't mean Rudolf's mates. Decided on a cab to town followed by public transport trip to a Japanese Garden & then a ferry to a volcano.

That is Sakurajima, gently boiling just off the coast.

Decided to directly to Sengan-en, a Japanese Shogun's family home built in the mid 1600's. The Shimazu family lived there throughout in in the 1850's were responsible for modernising Japan. They built a modern armaments factory using western technology. The remains of the blast furnaces can still be seen.

The home a gardens are beautiful, lots of western movers & shakers had visited, including Prince of Wales (Edward VIII)

Poor Linda had a wobbly on that bridge, I had to go and rescue her.

We had some sweet potato ice cream, yum.

You can hire dressing up kit here, and cat lovers will be at home. There's a cat shrine??

Anyway, we decided to set off to our next location, but the weather arrived & we grabbed a cab that we shared with 2 Singapore for an early return to ship.

KOCHI

 Small port, not very nice as ports go, only commercial & when we arrived they were bulldozing some smelly stuff that generated flies on board! You could go to town 30mins away for shops & shrines. We had enough of both of those so opted for a Wally ship tour.

Which comprised, pools hot tubs & cocktail bars. Went well, except I got a little burnt. A little what, I'm not saying.

KYOTO

  I had got together with a bunch of Australians on line before we boarded to join them on a private tour of Kyoto. We never got to meet them on board until the day of the tour. Anyway I sent them our photos and they found us in the queue to leave the boat. Our guide was a young guy called Lee, we had a Bruce in our group so we had the full Kung Foo pair. It's a long ride from Osaka, where we docked to Kyoto, 1.5hours plus. The bus was good, 12 seater for 8 of us.

Some of the bamboos were carved to play notes in the wind, and the bamboos rattled at the same time. However, no wind & big crowds, so who knows what it would have been like. Next stop was the Golden Temple.

Picturesque, nice walks, 1000 year old tree, golden temple with phoenix on top, lovely ice cream, matcha & vanilla, but you know what - you can get templed out.

Off to Nishiki, Kyoto's famous market area. Indoors & out, from street food to high end shops. We went for grilled eel, so fresh it was almost alive. Liked it there.

Gion, the geisha girls working area next up.

And finally, another shrine, the Fushima Inari Shrine, but by now it was dark.

Protected by foxes with golden fish in their mouths & wearing bibs- who knew. It's open 24/7 and has the famous tunnel of Torii gates that feature in so many marketing shots for Kyoto. They were installed all the way from the shrine to the top of the mountain and were paid for by sponsors who got their name & company on their Torii gate. Lin was exhausted by now and I had to leave her at the bottom of the hill & collect her on the way back. Arrived back at the ship at 19:30, she was so tired, I couldn't even persuade her to go on the big harbour wheel. At 404ft it's slightly smaller than London Eye but we've still got a chance with the Singapore Flyer at 540ft, 100ft bigger than the eye. Let's wait & see.