Wings Cruising Log

When we step outside our air-conditioning in Hong Kong,

The warm air envelopes us, it wraps its arms around us, and gently, like being wrapped in a blanket, we feel the heat.

It is summer in Hong Kong. And it is humid, hot…and still…unless the Typhoon hits, then it is windy.

Well, no Typhoons right now, but the humidity is ever-present.

Today there was a fog, or maybe smog, over the city in the morning. It was just a soft haze, with gentle blue skies overhead; no clouds. By afternoon the atmosphere had closed in and we lived in a permanent dusk; you couldn't see clearly across the harbor,

Kowloon was just some shapes.

I thought the haze was just a fog, it smelled moist, but walking to the ferry after work, enjoying the warmth, I started to cough. The air was thick. It is pollution.

We love Hong Kong. Each day in the city is excitement, the eroticism of the pulse of Asia.

But Hong Kong is polluted;

Both air and water.

There are fish in the marina who wish to commit suicide; they jump out of the water to die.

Maybe the fish do not like the water quality.

Here in Hong Kong, downriver from China, in the Pearl River delta, the water is no longer clear. It smells bad. Ammonia.

The fish jump out of it.

Each day we walk along the dock and there are dead fish lying on the dock where they landed.

One jumped into our dingy and died. Then he rotted. Finally we found him, what was left of him, and the dingy smelled bad. We gagged.

So in Asia there are a lot of people, and a lot of pollution.

Yet still, it is not the pollution that keeps us here, but that pulse of Asia.

It is Hong Kong.

There is no other place like it.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Hong Kong