HANGIN’ OUT IN HONG KONG, or …
(Innocents Abroad, Part 17)
… AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS 1980
{This week we’ll explore Hong Kong, picking up the multi-part retrospective I’ve been sharing recounting my worldwide adventures as a Semester At Sea participant.}
THE TRANSIT FROM Keelung, Taiwan to Hong Kong aboard the SS Universe was 469 nautical miles, a distance the ship covered in 29 & ½ hours.
Since we only held classes at sea, that meant having a single day of college sandwiched between the three days we’d just had to explore Taiwan and the four days we were about to enjoy in Hong Kong—which is probably why, instead of holding regular classes, we had what was called Seminar Day.
In our last installment you may recall I had another name for that day: Run Around Day—for how incredibly busy it turned out to be. Still, whatever one may call it, on that day, March 5, 1980, my thoughts were already turning away from Taiwan.
They were turning toward a new country and a new set of awaiting adventures.
A few of those thoughts were recorded for posterity in an Appointment Diary our chief steward, Chen Huai, gifted me on the 5th:
In the notes section at the beginning of the March pages I wrote:
The days seem to scatter out before me like dandelion seeds in the wind. I try to reach out and catch them, but they always seem to be swept away before me, taunting me on after their alluring beauty. So here I am. Twenty years old and what do I have to show for it? An age I thought I’d never be. But I am. And still the search continues. The chase is on. And I am destined, I know, to lose.
Not exactly the words of someone you’d have guessed won their county’s Optimist International Award three years earlier.
Despite using that Appointment Diary to wax poetically though, I still used my blank notebook as my primary journal. It was that notebook’s pages I was filling four days later on Sunday the 9th as I sat relaxing on the beach at Hong Kong’s Repulse Bay.
We’d arrived on the 6th but my journal doesn’t pick again till the 9th, testifying to a set of busy days. The entry is marked 12:44 PM.
In those days, The attractive Repulse Bay Hotel (1920-1982) had not yet been torn down to make way for the ugly modern upgrade simply known today as The Repulse Bay, so the photo below gives you an idea of the backdrop as I lounged on white sands and jotted in my journal:
Ernest Hemingway and Marlon Brando both stayed at the Repulse Bay Hotel, as did William Holden and Jennifer Jones when filming Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing in 1955.
During WWII, the hotel was used by the Japanese as a military hospital. They attacked Hong Kong the same morning they bombed Pearl Harbor, occupying it till 1945.
But I knew none of that at the time.
All I knew was that at last I had a chance to sit and recount the previous few days while lounging on a beautiful bayside beach. The days I recounted were ones filled with a lot of walking, a bit of shopping, and with twice adventuring where I didn’t belong—each with a very different outcome.
One of those times I passed myself off as a Brit to persuade a guard to let me board the elegant ocean liner, SS Canberra—berthed near our far more modest ship—and was treated to some wonderful sights; the other time I tried to sneak into China on foot only to wind up at the wrong end of a Kalashnikov.
But let’s back up, shall we?
The Universe was due to arrive in Hong Kong at 8:00 AM on Thursday, March 6, but wound up delayed by four hours. Those hours were ones I described in my journal as restless. Most students read, milled about, or wrote letters home, occupying their time as best they could on that rain-soaked morning.
Me? Naturally, I ventured above decks.
I must’ve been feeling the need for space as I often did, and being peltered by a heavy downpour beneath an onslaught of lightning while floating in the middle of the ocean offered little in the way of deterrence.
When I was small and hesitant to go outside on a rainy day without an umbrella, my dad would say in his good-natured way, “You aren’t made of sugar; you won’t melt.” I imagine his voice was in my head that waterlogged day as I stared out across the sea from my lone perch on the (ironically named) Sun Deck.
Just as we reached Hong Kong, though, the skies began to clear.
Soon, tugboats were maneuvering us into place against the the dock beneath welcomed sunshine.
The first order of the day for me and my roomie, Lucy, was to make good on a promise.
We’d invited our much-admired geology professor, Dr. Novotny, to dine with us at an upscale (revolving!) restaurant atop Victoria Peak—our treat—and so we headed off to find the place and make reservations.
I mention in my journal that we found the restaurant with “intuitive ease,” each of us paying two Honk Kong dollars (.40 USD) to ride the tram up Victoria Peak.
After making the reservations we spent several hours hiking about the Peak and taking in the panoramic views till it was time to head back to the ship to get dressed for dinner.
On the way back we encountered an Australian couple who were traveling aboard the SS Canberra. Two years in the future, in April 1982, the Canberra would be abruptly re-commissioned as a war ship at Gibraltar before steaming across the Atlantic and into the fray of the Falkland War, but in 1980 she was an elegant behemoth nicknamed the Great White Whale, a cruise ship second in size only to the QEII.
Meeting them whetted our appetites for getting an up-close gander at a luxury liner. Sure, we too were sailing around the world, but they were doing it in style. The SS Universe was like so-much raw hamburger compared to the Almas caviar that was the Canberra.
(Sidebar: Interestingly, the QEII’s larger predecessor, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, after being retired as a transatlantic cruise ship in 1968, was purchased by a Hong Kong businessman, Tung-Chao-yung, who intended it to become a floating university—Seawise University—the first incarnation of the Semester At Sea Program, however in 1972, while moored in Hong Kong harbor being refitted for that purpose, a fire broke out onboard, and the ship ended up being capsized by the water used to extinguish it. Here’s a little animated film depicting it).
After an amiable chat and parting ways with the couple, Lucy and I were soon on the ferry headed back across the bay to the Ocean Terminal on Kowloon so we could reboard our own ship.
I was off in one of my daydreams when Lucy’s voice reached me, her tone very soft but clearly troubled as she spoke my name.
I looked up, finding the most stunned expression on her face.
“The ship …” she said, her voice trailing off before returning with effort, “… is leaving.”
And sure enough, not far beyond her I spied the Universe sailing in the opposite direction.
Fortunately, after reaching Kowloon, we learned our main ride had merely moved into the harbor to let another ship—one docked at an inner berth—set sail. UNfortunately, she wasn’t scheduled to return until six.
No longer worried we’d somehow been abandoned in Hong Kong, our conversation quickly shifted to the dinner reservation we’d just made. You know, the one we were only then returning from after an all-day excursion to secure it?
Such were common woes before cellphones, kids.
We did a little window shopping at the terminal to pass the time and made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the restaurant so we could move our reservation to a later slot. Then, at the appointed hour, we returned to the pier only to find mobs and gobs of people waiting to get on the ship, all of them ahead of us.
As she was maneuvered closer, it quickly became apparent there were also gobs and mobs of people waiting to get off.
Oh boy. It looked like a fustercluck in the making.
On the upside, we ran into Dr. N., who was also waiting to board, and were able to alert him to the situation. By 6:15 we’d embarked—the flow of humanity went surprisingly well—and had gone directly to the Duty Desk to try to reach the restaurant once more, and … Bingo!
Whew. Finally.
Then it was off in a rush to our cabin to hurriedly dress, smear a little make-up on our faces—not something either of us did all that much—and reconvene above decks. I donned the new low-cut wrap-around dress of purple gauze I’d gotten in Hawaii, feeling all kinds of the sophisticated sophomore that I wasn’t.
And then—
My journal leaves off there, saying the story was “to be continued.”
Paging ahead, it seems to never have been. Alas, life was coming at me too fast to mark it all down on paper.
My Appointment Diary does at least mention going to the restaurant, though, so apparently we got there—not that I have any first-hand memory of the occasion from this distant vantage point of years. But I’ll assume a good time was had by all.
The entry also mentions I’d once again volunteered for overnight Desk Duty—maybe I was trying to impress the dean—and makes clear I was happy knowing the majority of the student body would be headed off the next day to Canton on an optional (read: added expense) in-port excursion that was too rich for my blood.
It was too rich for Lucy’s blood, as well, so we concocted our own scheme to see mainland China.
Find out how that went by tuning in next week for the next installment of Innocents Abroad or … AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS 1980!
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Thanks for swinging by and reading another installment of Monday Morning Literary Bric-a-Brac. I love having you here!
Before I go, I’d like to thank Deb Herlocker for the latest lovely review of my kidlit adventure, Shay The Brave. You can find her review here—just scroll down to the bottom of the page. And while you’re at it, be sure to check out her own delightful series of children’s books!
I also hope you’ll listen to the newly released (and wonderfully narrated) audiobook version of Shay The Brave. Voice artist Emma Heap will hold you spellbound on every page!
Finally, let me recommend two charities to support—ones doing good work in the storm-ravaged areas hit by hurricane Helene. One is Mennonite Disaster Relief, an organization I volunteered with way back in 1977 to help clean up after the fifth Johnstown, PA flood. The other terrific charity is World Central Kitchens.
Thank you most kindly for any gifts of support you can send their way
Reading your adventures sure beats reading the news as a way to start the day! Thank you. 😊