Day 49 - Hong Kong

09.09.09

It's free museum Wednesday today and so I make a beeline for the Hong Kong History Museam, the Art Museam and the Space Museum. I'm too early for them so I go and kill some time in the local library and find out that I can apply for a library card as a visitor and borrow books, as long as I pay a deposit for each one. I use the opportunity to take out some travel books for Cambodia, Thailand and South East Asia as I have only one for the whole area and so want to do a bit more research.

The museams are very interesting, especially the history museam. Finding out the history behind Hong Kong and how it became a British territorry basically because Britian was selling huge shipments of Opium to China which China tried to stop, resulting in the Opium Wars. Britian decided to hit back and so took Hong Kong and held it until 1997 (An extremely brief account of the history and politics involved). The Space museam is my favourite though and I spend a large amount of time looking at the spaceship models and reading all the exhibits. The astronomy section is fantastic coming complete with pictures of stars and models of the planets, I feel like I'm back home in the London Science Museam. The night yields another ja unt over to Hong Kong Island to get some books out of the main Central

Library. It's actually cheaper and far nicer, to take the ferry from the Kowloon peninsula over to Hong Kong Island. The other option being the metro, which is nearly double the price and missing the sea views.