One Version of the Electric Slide (a line dance)

The Star Ferry transports us from Kowloon, where the Amsterdam is docked, across the harbor to Hong Kong Island. We follow the crowd through the elevated walkway to the bus station and board the #6 bus to Stanley. The double decker navigates through the city center traffic then begins its ascent. Tooling around narrow, curving, two lane roads, we rise way up above the stalagmite skyscrapers to look down on a forest of concrete and glass. Rounding the bends, we gasp, sometimes at the breathtaking scenery, but mostly at the near misses as the bus drivers play chicken on their routine trips. At the Stanley Market an overabundance of merchandise spills from the stands onto the narrow walkways of one of the great shopping capitals of the world. I negotiate a ridiculously low price for a pair of travel size binoculars that zooms from 5 to 15 feet magnification. Deciding we'd rather see the sites than shop, we're off to Victoria Peak. The walkway around the peak is  a voyeurs delight. With my new binoculars, I can peer into the top floors of the skyscraper apartment buildings. Too bad no one's home on this afternoon work day. I check out the penthouse rooftop gardens then we take the 105 year old tram back down to sea level. And I do mean backdown. The seats face up the mountain as we slide backwards down the steep incline. Talk about a trust exercise. 

Skyscraper Ballet

My husband, Richard, has been offered a job teaching Tai Chi on a 60 day around-the-world cruise. The 14 hour San Francisco to Hong Kong flight takes us over the Bering Strait, across the Siberian wilderness, and on toward the South China Sea. Growing up, I poured over maps of these remote, exotic places while wishing to escape to anywhere. A man, holding a sign with our names, welcomes us like VIPs and whisks us along to the ship, Holland America's Amsterdam. We're docked directly across the harbor from the famous Hong Kong skyline. Richard naps.  I walk along the waterfront Avenue of the Stars, the Hong Kong version of Los Angeles' Grauman's Chinese Theater. Tourists stop and try to fit their hands into the concrete imprints of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and other local movie stars.

It's 8pm, and it's show time. The skyscrapers across the way don their costumes for the nightly laser light show. Individual designs of neon colored lights adorn their facades. The patterns begin to move. Some run up and down, some zig-zag back and forth while others flash on and off; colors bleed one into another. Each building dances with its squiggling partner reflected in the moving current of the water below. They glitter, glisten, sparkle, and shimmer. This architectural ballet sweeps all along the harbor.  Each building, involved in its own improvisation, adds to the overall drama. Just when you think the choreography can't get any more complex, laser lights shoot from the peaks of the buildings in varying rhythms.  Green lasers beam unbroken to the far side of the Universe. Fuchsia lights burst forth in staccato spurts. In Hong Kong the buildings dance.