Today is the day of our final show in Hong Kong. It’s an evening performance at Mongkok community Hall at 8pm so we have almost a whole day of free time.

Over our familiar breakfast table at the Gathering Cafe we finalise our plans for the day, which essentially consist of an MTR trip to Hong Kong island where we will visit Hong Kong Park, have lunch at Lock Cha tea house, take a trip up The Peak by tram to see the views of HK and then do some shopping.

We walk the 5 minutes to Prince Edward MTR and then head for Admiralty. I try to remember the best exit to choose for the park. All the different MTR exits are labelled, eg. A1, A2, B, C, D1, D2, E, F – so if you know your exit number you can make sure you emerge on the right street facing the right way. Unfortunately I get the wrong one at the opposite end and we have to walk the long way round to get to the park!

Hong Kong park is beautiful. An oasis of plants, birds and butterflies in the midst of the high-rises. It’s a place people come to relax, do their morning Tai Chi, visit the Tea Museum and even to get married! There is a registry office here. We see two separate brides and grooms posing for photographs in front of the fountains and palm trees, and as we walk past Soo takes a couple of cheeky snaps of them. We have a relaxed stroll in the shade taking photos of the trees, birds, fish, butterflies, fountains and terrapins with the shinty towers of the city surrounding us as the backdrop. We head to the aviary where there is a large covered space with free flying birds, only to discover that it is closed – perhaps due to storm damage from the recent typhoon as there is evidence of fallen trees elsewhere in the park. Well I guess it gives us something to look forward to on our next trip! We then headed for the Peak tram where we found an enormous queue, so we decided to leave it till another time.

To cheer ourselves up after the disappointments I led us to the Lock Cha tea house, which is part of the Tea Museum complex in the park. They serve a variety of high quality teas going up in price to $HK 15,000 (approx £1500) for a cake of matured Pu-er tea, and really good vegetarian dim sum in a beautiful and traditional setting. On Saturdays and Sundays they also have performances of traditional Chinese music which I was able to see last time I was in HK about 5 years ago. Sadly our performance schedule did not give us the opportunity this time. Another item on the itinerary for the next trip! Both the tea and the dim sum at Lock Cha were excellent and it was a great experience.

Next we decided to split up, Sue and Kim went and looked at the shops in the Admiralty mall, whilst James, Phil and I took a very short ride on the MTR to Wan Chai to visit the computer and technology centre as Phil wanted to investigate their camera equipment. Whilst he had no luck on the camera front we bought a few things including a combined tripod / selfie stick so that I could video the next performance. We then head back on the MTR to our hotel to get ready for the show.
We meet Edric at Point A at 7pm and walk about 15 minutes to Mongkok community hall, which is within a large retail complex connected to a huge and shiny skyscraper. The show is the same format as the Friday and Saturday shows except there would be no Jacky or Pete. The Only Ones band was just Mike on guitar, Shawn on bass and Harold on drums. This meant that I was essentially in charge of the musical direction on stage, with Sally running the show and also being the MC.
We had time before the show to rehearse Molihua as a bossanova properly and choose a good tempo, and to practice Under Lion Rock with me doing the introduction and Mike doing the instrumental solos instead of Pete and Jacky.

The show went really well – there was a good audience and Sally did a great job getting the children involved, asking them questions about the instruments, and getting them to give us tourist advice for thing to visit! A few children came onto stage and sang in English for us. Musically it was possibly the best of Long Walk performances of the tour and the new selfie tripod worked well and enabled me to capture it on video.

At the end of the show we made sure we got some good group photos and said our goodbyes to the Music for Children team, including all the tech staff who had done a fantastic job getting our instruments transported, miked up and amplified through the PA systems. Edric then led us back to our Hotel Guan Zhou for the final time and we said our sad goodbyes to him at meeting point A.

We dropped off few bits at hotel and planned to eat at the Gathering Cafe, but when we arrived it was closed but we found local nice place still open just round corner. Ryan joined us for the meal and we ate an odd mix of dim sum, noodles, beef and broccoli, chips, bread and condensed milk and some of us could just not resist more Hong Kong style spam!