Aberdeen?

January, 2, 2011. Written in Hong Kong

Aberdeen?

At the end of my first week in Hong Kong, two old (old?) friends of mine arrived from Seoul. They missed their first plane, because Michael (France) thought that it would be enough to leave his home 2 hours before the departure, while it takes 2 hours to get to the airport. This relaxed (to put it in a good way) attitude towards things, is very defining to what kind of guy the French romanticist is. Luckily, they were able to get the next plane, and to represent "Youth Hostel Nicolas" I was there to give them a free pickup from the airport.
 In Seoul, I spent my last week at Lars's place, and was happy to see him arrive together with Michael. It was already after midnight when they arrived, and we went back with the last train. In the area of Nicolas's home, we had some Chinese food while catching up with eachother.

The next day was a saturday, which means Nicolas and his girlfriend Kat could join us on an excursion. After having lunch at a local dumpling restaurant, without any good reasons, we decided to go to Aberdeen which is the harbor of Hong Kong, famous for having many people living on wooden boats until the 80's.

It took us quite some time to take the bus, because no one had ever been to Aberdeen before, even Kat (whom is native to Hong Kong).
Finally, we found a bus that was supposed to take us there, but it didn't really say so on the bus itself. After about 30 minutes, we did find something similar, and decided to get off at the next stop. The stop we got off, turned out to be an area where tourists usually don't have any reason to come. We asked the way to Aberdeen to some road workers. It seemed it was on the other side of the mountain in front of us. We tried to walk around it, but on our way we found a ladder to climb up to a mountain path.

From the top of the mountain, we could now look out at something that definitely looked like a harbor. But was it really Aberdeen?

We took the path down and ended up at a big bus stop.
"For Aberdeen" said one of the boards at the stop. Which means that we supposedly were not at Aberdeen yet.
I mentioned this to my friends, but everyone seemed to have no disbelief in the harbor we had seen being Aberdeen.
"What does it matter. We all want to see a  harbor, and there is obviously a harbor here." Lars answered.
That was indeed true, but to be honest, I wanted to be sure it was Aberdeen. Why, you ask? Because Aberdeen makes an appearance in my beloved video-game Shenmue. Yes, I know, I am predictable.
But this time, I decided it would be better to just keep my mouth shut and follow the group.

It was a short walk to the harbor from the bus stop. We asked a lady that seemed to be from mainland China to take a picture of us.

Me and Lars tried to have a conversation with her using our Mandarin skills, but it didn't really work well. It must have been a funny sight to see a Norwegian and a Dutch trying to speak Mandarin in Hong Kong.

We walked around some, and found ourselves something that looked like a ferry pier. At the pier, there was a fishing couple. They had caught a strange fish I have never seen before in my life.

A ferry to take us somewhere never arrived. After a while, a boat came to pick up some oil, but when we asked them to take us with them, we were totally ignored.

We gave up on catching a boat and decided on going back by bus. On the way to the bus stop, Michael told me his impression on the harbor.
"There are many boats here" he said with that beautiful French accent of him. Another phrase that perfectly defines his great character.

Back in the vibrant city at night.