Today I decided to explore destinations closer to where I'm staying, a cheap (for Causeway Bay) hostel which has... free wireless Internet! Imagine that!
I started out at the Jewish Cemetery, in Happy Valley.
It's a serene place, hidden behind a group of highrise apartments.
The entrance is literally (yes, literally) straddled by a Chinese Buddhist high school, and you can easily pass it by without knowing there's a Jewish cemetery back there.There are probably several hundred graves there, all records of the history of the Jewish community in Hong Kong. Apparently it's still being used for burials, as there are some very recent dates on some stones.
After this, I went down the road to the Hindu Temple, behind which is a Hindu cemetery. Very small, and accessible only by a step flight of stairs behind the temple complex.
Then I visited the Parsee Cemetery, followed by the historic Hong Kong Cemetery. I spent a couple hours there photographing. Then, bypassing the Catholic and Muslim Cemeteries for today (all the above-mentioned cemeteries are close to each other, forming a line from south to north in Happy Valley), I went for some Ben & Jerry's ice cream!
This was followed by a somewhat convoluted trip to what is perhaps the most beautiful, atmospheric and otherworldly cemetery in Hong Kong: the Pok Fu Lam Cemetery. Almost all the graves are Chinese. They are on terraces, which hug the steep curving contours of the hillside, and the place is crisscrossed with a complex network of stairs.
