Police Museum, and Back to the Peak

Shelly's in China this weekend, leaving me to do things that might not be as high on her must-see list as they are on mine.

I took the No. 15 bus today towards Victoria Peak, getting off about halfway up the mountain to see the Hong Kong Police Museum. It's definitely an out of the way destination for most tourists, but it was well worth the visit. Photography is prohibited in the museum and since the museum is run by the, you know, police, I don't actually have a photograph of the cool 1960s Triumph cop motorcyle for Jerry, or of the cool bomb removal machine for Sam or of the big collection of narcotics for, well, I don't know who. In fact, the only thing I could get a picture of was this 1960s traffic pagoda, mounted about halfway up the stairs to the museum itself.

The museum features a great history of Hong Kong (the first members of the Hong Kong police department were recruited from London in 1844), a display of summer and winter uniforms through the years, a firearms collection, the aforementioned collection of drugs (lots of opium) and a gallery about the Triads, who are apparently big into the bootleg DVD business these days.

From the museum, I headed back up towards the Peak which, as it turns out, is much further away than it appears to be on my map. I wanted to go back to the Peak for two reasons. First, further up the mountain from where Peak Tram ends, at the actual peak, are the historic Victoria Peak Gardens, where the English governors of Hong Kong kept their summer lodge. While the Japanese burned the buildings themselves during World War II, the gardens remain. It's February, so I didn't shouldn't expect much out of the gardens, and I wasn't surprised. But, as I texted Shelly from the top, the gardens will probably be much, much more impressive in the summer, but the hike up will be much, much less pleasant.

My second reason for visiting? Victoria Peak -- actually the shopping mall near the top -- is home to one of only two Burger Kings in all of Hong Kong, and I needed a burger for dinner.