Picture of the Day: Hong Kong Sakura

People were excitedly photographing the blossoms on the tree

 

Today my friend and I did a marathon walk from Sha Tin, well actually Shek Mun to Sai Kung, which was over 18 kilometres and took us three hours and 20 minutes.

It was a beautiful day for a walk, not too hot. I really enjoyed walking along the Shing Mun River in Sha Tin with the water very calm.

However at one point we saw a bunch of people standing around a young tree with pink blossoms and taking pictures of it!

With people unable to travel for the most part of this year, they were missing the chance to go to Japan to see the sakura, and so when they spotted the cherry blossoms on a tree locally, they took the opportunity to snap pictures of the transient blossoms.

Personally I found it amusing -- when they can travel they should visit Vancouver where there are entire streets lined with cherry blossom trees and in the spring they are all covered in pink.

Author Douglas Young called it "pinked out" many years ago.

In any event we finally made it to Sai Kung and were shocked to see the weekend tourists crawling all over the pier area. Restaurants, cha chaan tengs and cafes were doing a brisk business with lots of people willing to line up to get a seat.

We eventually settled on a western restaurant and I had a delicious lamb burger with a yogurt cucumber and red onion garnish. 

Then we boarded a bus back to where we came from -- and it took about 20 minutes.

Photo of the Day: Bike Sharing

A Gobee bike along Victoria Road, west of Kennedy Town of all places!

Gobee Bike is a Hong Kong initiative in the bike-sharing business. It launched in April to lacklustre fanfare when it turned out the app was only available on Android and not iPhones on the first day.

Then a few days later it was back in the headlines because it was discovered that several of its green bikes were in the Shing Mun River in Sha Tin, while others were found damaged.

But somehow earlier this month, Gobee Bike got HK$9 billion -- yes billion -- from internet-of-things fund led by Mail.Ru co-founder Dmitry Grishin, with Alibaba's Hong Kong entrepreneurship fund kicking in some of the dough too.

To start up the service, Gobee previously got pre-launch seed money led by Swiss Founders Fund.

Hong Kong people are naturally skeptical about bike sharing -- not many people even ride bikes to start with since a good part of the area is too hilly, and also bike lanes are relegated to the New Territories, where leisure bike riders clog up the paths for more serious ones.

A stunning view further up from where the bike was...

So it was to my great surprise when I was walking up Victoria Road towards Pokfulam to see a Gobee Bike parked on the sidewalk. How the heck did it get all the way from the New Territories to here?

I walked and ran a bit further along Victoria Road and then turned back to go home to see the green bicycle still there!

In any event one does wonder if Gobee is making any money and who are using the bikes anyway?

Just seems like the wrong service to launch in the city when drivers don't care to share the road, nor pay much attention to pedestrians either!

Trying to Emulate China's Bike Culture

Recreational cyclists out pedaling in the New Territories

A non-local entrepreneur has taken the idea of bike sharing from China to Hong Kong, but it's had a rough start.

Gobee.bike feature lime green bikes with a logo of a bee on two wheels. It's the brainchild of Raphael Cohen, who launched the service this past Wednesday.

People basically download the app -- but currently it's only available on Android phones -- and then they can sign up with their credit card. They scan the bike to unlock it, and then ride it for HK$5 per half hour. Other offline bike rental shops will lease bikes for HK$40 a day.

Bike sharing is now available in Hong Kong...

The other hitch is that while the bikes are available in Sha Tin, though you can leave the bikes afterwards in any public place, where else are you going to ride the bike except along the bike paths in the New Territories where it's flat?

One would have to be crazy to ride a bike on the main streets of Hong Kong as there are no bike lanes. Only when you have bike lanes, like they do in China will you have more people feeling safe enough to ride two wheelers.

Now a few days after the service was launched, there are reports that three goobee.bike bicycles were found in the Shing Mun River in Sha Tin, while six others were damaged or had parts like handles, brakes and lights stolen.

...But some bikes have been damaged since its launch

"They are trying to make [the bikes] unsafe to use," Cohen said. "It feels pretty sad. I thought Hong Kong was a very safe city."

A safe city doesn't mean its residents don't steal things.

My cyclist friends tell me they can barely leave their own bikes alone for a minute -- locked -- without some part of the bike or the whole thing being stolen.

Maybe Cohen should have studied Hong Kong a bit more before deciding to launch the service, but it's admirable of him to try to get people out exercising more...