My journey continued. Five more days to go before reaching our final destination Hong Kong by way of the South China Sea. My mind is quite blank when it comes to this segment of my voyage. I could not even remember going for the 3 o’clock afternoon tea which I had enjoyed so much in the earlier part of the voyage.
The only thing I remember is that there were two young ladies joining our ship in Singapore. The two young girls were of our age and lived in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. They had traveled by land from Kuala Lumpur a day before to catch the M V “Ruys” in Singapore. They were going to Hong Kong to enrol in a hair dresser course to become a hair stylist. Hong Kong then was that important, far ahead of Singapore, Malaysia and the other South East Asian Countries in many aspects, be it business, commerce, manufacturing, banking, fashion, culinary. But behind Japan. Sometimes I would ponder what path fate had pre-arranged for the two ladies, had they successfully completed their hair dresser course, had they gone back to Kuala Lumpur and opened a hair salon as had been their aspiration or had they somehow ended up living in Hong Kong. I will never have an answer.
With the limited knowledge that I possess, every time I hear of the South China Sea, I can only picture the great many Chinese pirates that infested these waters centuries ago. The most famous or infamous of the pirates was Zheng Yi in late 1700’s/early 1800’s, with a fleet of some 400 ships or more and 50,000 plus pirates. When he died in 1807 his wife, a former prostitute in Canton, took over. She was so ruthless, powerful and feared that the Qing Government could no longer fight her and decided to give her and most of her men an amnesty in 1810. She accepted, retired wealthy and died at the long age of 69.
Our ship entered Hong Kong water early morning February 9, 1966. The sun had already risen unlike when we arrived in Singapore. Obviously contraband activities if ever they were contemplated were out of the question under the bright day light. So there were no more James Bond clips to watch. Our ship reduced speed as it navigated through the many smaller islands that surrounded the main Island of Hong Kong. I had never seen so many islands before, some were bare, some had small houses clustered together close to the beach, all were covered with lush green vegetations. The feeling we experienced here was very different from the one we had when entering Singapore harbour. Here the atmosphere was dynamic and electrifying, the port was busy and vibrant with boats of all shapes and sizes. all hurriedly jockeying their way through the channels, mainly to deliver goods and merchandises to the many cargo ships anchored in the harbour. The most spectacular vessel was the Chinese Junk Boat with their distinctive sails.
The Junk boat is an ancient Chinese sailing ship design that is still in use today
A sampan, a relatively flat bottomed Chinese wooden boat, with The Aberdeen Floating Restaurant in Hong Kong behind
We entered the Harbour proper from the East entrance through the narrow channel at Lei Yue Mun. At that instance our ship was like a towering giant overlooking land on both sides. The left side was Hong Kong Main Island and the right side was the Kowloon Peninsula. Standing high and tall on deck I felt that I could have touched the land with my bare hand. It was an exhilarating moment for me, it was a moment of great joy in its purest form, I was on top of the world. That feeling had stayed with me for all these years and would never be lost.
My ship MV “Ruys” passed through this narrow channel at Lei Yue Mun
Our ship continued through the channel guided by two tugboats to the specific spot assigned for our ship to drop anchor. As we glided in the harbour we could see numerous numbers of buildings lining the shores on both sides of the ship. Many small vessels “Sampan” and “Junk” boats were streaming around us like water beetles in a pond busy attending to their business. We saw the world famous Star Ferry boats that plied incessantly between Hong Kong and Kowloon transporting large number of passengers. We also saw the eye catching Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building sitting majestically facing the Kowloon Peninsula. It did not come to mind that one day I would be working in this famous building.
This is HSBC (The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited) as I first saw it in 1966. Today it has been replaced by a modern building.
Our approach was a non-event, nobody seemed to pay any attention to us. The people had seen so many liners so many times coming and going that they would rather use the extra minutes making some money than wasting time looking at us.
The M V “Ruys” dropped anchor just a little bit after noon.
The Hong Kong Harbour, commonly known as Victoria Harbour is one of the most spectacular harbours in the world.