China Entry The Fifth: Hong Kong Day One
Never has a country, or city disguised as a country, had easier customs. But I should count my luck, given that Canada hates me.
The bus ride from the airport into the city is amazing. Ho and I rush to the top level of the bus for the best views.
Our first view? The exit sign to Disneyland Hong Kong. Awesome! What you need to know about Disneyland Hong Kong is that the piece of bay on which it is located is actually called, in Catonese, "Cloudy Bay." However, the Disney folk were having none of that translation, so the English version of the name on all exit signs and MTR signs is "Sunny Bay." I kid you not. Look.
Hong Kong is a physically beautiful city, with is amazingly high skyscrapers and looping sections on the curves of bays and islands. If you ever have a lay over in the Hong Kong airport, even if you're not staying in the city, take the bus ride in and then come back. It's beautiful.
Ho and I head to Causeway Bay, which is where Lisa and I are staying (Ho is crashing with friends). As we haul our stuff around, looking for the right street in the middle of busy Hong Kong afternoon, suddenly, walking up to us on the street are Bo and Janette -- out getting photos taken for the wedding. Bo and Janette immediately insist on taking us for breakfast/noodles and satay, and I get my first indication that all I'm going to do on this entire trip is eat. I probably would have ordered a second breakfast if we'd had time. The 7-11's in this place all serve pork buns. Before the trip, I'd intentionally added five or seven pounds since I usually shed 1o or so pounds when I travel. I'm immediately concerned that this may not have been my best move.
We finish up and head to the hostel Lisa and I are staying at. We can't check in for another hour, so we head out for a walk. My first impressions of Hong Kong are that it's dense to the point of being overwhelming. People and stores are stacked on top of each other. I can feel some kind of panic attack wanting to happen. I decide maybe I just need to get some sleep before I absorb it all. Victoria Park is beautiful. The air here is thick with bay water. When you open the windows in mine and Lisa's room, the bay breezes cut through and somehow the noise of all the people and businesses sound lovely.
Speaking of the hostel Lisa and I are staying at, let's discuss bathrooms. Bathrooms will be a recurring theme in the China journal entries because they were almost always an issue. So, common, apparently, is that your shower and your toilet share a stall. Yes, you can go to the bathroom, shower and never feel clean with ease here! Take a look.
You know what though? By the end of the trip that bathroom looked like pure luxury to me.
Because Ho Lin does not ever need to sleep, he's headed out to lunch with Jolie. I look at him blankly, because one thing I know is that I cannot do the Ho and Lisa WE CAN SLEEP WHEN WE'RE DEAD version of traveling. I take a shower and journal instead.
When Ho gets back, STILL NOT HAVING SLEPT AND SEEMINGLY IN NO NEED OF SLEEP, we head out for various errands. We visit Sam the Tailor so Ho can get some threads done. We take a beautiful walk along the ferry pier. Walking along the pier, I say to Ho, "It looks like perming your hair is back in fashion here." Ho says, "I'm pretty sure perms never went OUT of fashion here." Here's my favorite shot of Ho from the trip.
Then, ahem, we head to meet up with Lisa. Try not to laugh one sentence in when I tell you this story. Lisa and I were originally supposed to be staying at a hostel called something like the Spider House Hotel. Right before the trip, Lisa is having a conversation with Ho and says that she wishes she'd read the itinerary more closely because she would have preferred the other hostel he suggested (the Hong Kong Hotel) since it was closer to where he was staying. Ho, being awesome and wanting folks to have a good time, switches the hostel reservations. Except before we left, he couldn't get a hold of Lisa to tell her that we'd switched the reservations, so she thought she was still supposed to go from the airport to the Spider House Hotel and meet us there. Ho and I decide that it will TOTALLY WORK to just show up at the Spider House about 15 minutes before Lisa's expected, intercept her on her way there and take her back to Causeway Bay with us.
Right. I think that you can already probably tell that this plan was doomed to fail.
Sam the Tailor's is awesome as advertised. The shopping and walk to the ferry are awesome as advertised. We arrive at the Spider House Hotel at 5:45pm and there is no Lisa. At 6:30pm there is still no Lisa. Ho talks to the hostel owner who informs us that Lisa was there at 5:30pm but left with her baggage when she realized that I'd never checked in.
But she has to come back, right?
I head to the bus stop to try to intercept her. Ho stays at the hostel to try to intercept her. We wait. And wait. And wait. No Lisa. Finally, at what is now, you know, much later, Ho remembers that Lisa has Jolie's number. And so he calls Jolie...who told Lisa to head to Causeway Bay and wait for us in a restaurant in a (what else?) shopping center! She's been there for an hour. But now, Ho and I have to go back to Sam the Tailor's for a fitting before we can head over. I ponder the good omen of Frank on the plane and decide that a trip that begins with wacky hijinx will probably be a good trip. Wacky!
Finally, we all meet up for dinner at Times Square and my fears of gaining weight on this trip are confirmed. Why hold back? Dinner is drunken chicken, two types of dumplings, fish with pine nuts, string beans, pickled something or other, huge bowls of soup ... food upon food. And, of course, the wonderful company of Jolie to make it even better!
When the food is put down in the center of the table, everybody dives right in with their individual chop sticks, but Jolie immediately insists upon a pair of "serving chopsticks" being brought to the table so that we can all move the food from the platters to our individual plates and THEN use our individual chopsticks. She says the following:
"We used to do it that way in China -- we would all just dive in with our chopsticks, and it was gross and we all knew it was gross, but that's how we ate. Then SARS came along and it totally changed the way we ate."
Can you even imagine? Somebody something like that will really hit the US, but for now, I can't even imagine.
There are several times during the day when I am simply overwhelmed at the huge numbers of people. Ho and Jolie laugh at me, saying "It's not even that busy right now!" But at the end of the evening, I am ready for some space, even if that space is exactly the size of a twin bed in a room shared with Lisa.
And so Lisa and I go to sleep with the windows open and the breeze and non-stop noise coming in. Then, we wake up in the morning, wondering what time it is. When we do the math, we realize that it's 6:30am. Ho and Jolie aren't due to meet us until 10:30am. We promptly go back to bed to try to defeat the jet lag. Which is good, when you hear about how slammin the next day is.
The bus ride from the airport into the city is amazing. Ho and I rush to the top level of the bus for the best views.
Our first view? The exit sign to Disneyland Hong Kong. Awesome! What you need to know about Disneyland Hong Kong is that the piece of bay on which it is located is actually called, in Catonese, "Cloudy Bay." However, the Disney folk were having none of that translation, so the English version of the name on all exit signs and MTR signs is "Sunny Bay." I kid you not. Look.
Hong Kong is a physically beautiful city, with is amazingly high skyscrapers and looping sections on the curves of bays and islands. If you ever have a lay over in the Hong Kong airport, even if you're not staying in the city, take the bus ride in and then come back. It's beautiful.
Ho and I head to Causeway Bay, which is where Lisa and I are staying (Ho is crashing with friends). As we haul our stuff around, looking for the right street in the middle of busy Hong Kong afternoon, suddenly, walking up to us on the street are Bo and Janette -- out getting photos taken for the wedding. Bo and Janette immediately insist on taking us for breakfast/noodles and satay, and I get my first indication that all I'm going to do on this entire trip is eat. I probably would have ordered a second breakfast if we'd had time. The 7-11's in this place all serve pork buns. Before the trip, I'd intentionally added five or seven pounds since I usually shed 1o or so pounds when I travel. I'm immediately concerned that this may not have been my best move.
We finish up and head to the hostel Lisa and I are staying at. We can't check in for another hour, so we head out for a walk. My first impressions of Hong Kong are that it's dense to the point of being overwhelming. People and stores are stacked on top of each other. I can feel some kind of panic attack wanting to happen. I decide maybe I just need to get some sleep before I absorb it all. Victoria Park is beautiful. The air here is thick with bay water. When you open the windows in mine and Lisa's room, the bay breezes cut through and somehow the noise of all the people and businesses sound lovely.
Speaking of the hostel Lisa and I are staying at, let's discuss bathrooms. Bathrooms will be a recurring theme in the China journal entries because they were almost always an issue. So, common, apparently, is that your shower and your toilet share a stall. Yes, you can go to the bathroom, shower and never feel clean with ease here! Take a look.
You know what though? By the end of the trip that bathroom looked like pure luxury to me.
Because Ho Lin does not ever need to sleep, he's headed out to lunch with Jolie. I look at him blankly, because one thing I know is that I cannot do the Ho and Lisa WE CAN SLEEP WHEN WE'RE DEAD version of traveling. I take a shower and journal instead.
When Ho gets back, STILL NOT HAVING SLEPT AND SEEMINGLY IN NO NEED OF SLEEP, we head out for various errands. We visit Sam the Tailor so Ho can get some threads done. We take a beautiful walk along the ferry pier. Walking along the pier, I say to Ho, "It looks like perming your hair is back in fashion here." Ho says, "I'm pretty sure perms never went OUT of fashion here." Here's my favorite shot of Ho from the trip.
Then, ahem, we head to meet up with Lisa. Try not to laugh one sentence in when I tell you this story. Lisa and I were originally supposed to be staying at a hostel called something like the Spider House Hotel. Right before the trip, Lisa is having a conversation with Ho and says that she wishes she'd read the itinerary more closely because she would have preferred the other hostel he suggested (the Hong Kong Hotel) since it was closer to where he was staying. Ho, being awesome and wanting folks to have a good time, switches the hostel reservations. Except before we left, he couldn't get a hold of Lisa to tell her that we'd switched the reservations, so she thought she was still supposed to go from the airport to the Spider House Hotel and meet us there. Ho and I decide that it will TOTALLY WORK to just show up at the Spider House about 15 minutes before Lisa's expected, intercept her on her way there and take her back to Causeway Bay with us.
Right. I think that you can already probably tell that this plan was doomed to fail.
Sam the Tailor's is awesome as advertised. The shopping and walk to the ferry are awesome as advertised. We arrive at the Spider House Hotel at 5:45pm and there is no Lisa. At 6:30pm there is still no Lisa. Ho talks to the hostel owner who informs us that Lisa was there at 5:30pm but left with her baggage when she realized that I'd never checked in.
But she has to come back, right?
I head to the bus stop to try to intercept her. Ho stays at the hostel to try to intercept her. We wait. And wait. And wait. No Lisa. Finally, at what is now, you know, much later, Ho remembers that Lisa has Jolie's number. And so he calls Jolie...who told Lisa to head to Causeway Bay and wait for us in a restaurant in a (what else?) shopping center! She's been there for an hour. But now, Ho and I have to go back to Sam the Tailor's for a fitting before we can head over. I ponder the good omen of Frank on the plane and decide that a trip that begins with wacky hijinx will probably be a good trip. Wacky!
Finally, we all meet up for dinner at Times Square and my fears of gaining weight on this trip are confirmed. Why hold back? Dinner is drunken chicken, two types of dumplings, fish with pine nuts, string beans, pickled something or other, huge bowls of soup ... food upon food. And, of course, the wonderful company of Jolie to make it even better!
When the food is put down in the center of the table, everybody dives right in with their individual chop sticks, but Jolie immediately insists upon a pair of "serving chopsticks" being brought to the table so that we can all move the food from the platters to our individual plates and THEN use our individual chopsticks. She says the following:
"We used to do it that way in China -- we would all just dive in with our chopsticks, and it was gross and we all knew it was gross, but that's how we ate. Then SARS came along and it totally changed the way we ate."
Can you even imagine? Somebody something like that will really hit the US, but for now, I can't even imagine.
There are several times during the day when I am simply overwhelmed at the huge numbers of people. Ho and Jolie laugh at me, saying "It's not even that busy right now!" But at the end of the evening, I am ready for some space, even if that space is exactly the size of a twin bed in a room shared with Lisa.
And so Lisa and I go to sleep with the windows open and the breeze and non-stop noise coming in. Then, we wake up in the morning, wondering what time it is. When we do the math, we realize that it's 6:30am. Ho and Jolie aren't due to meet us until 10:30am. We promptly go back to bed to try to defeat the jet lag. Which is good, when you hear about how slammin the next day is.
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