Enter the Dragon: Welcome to Hong Kong

June 2, 2008

The flight to Hong Kong was quite uneventful. I landed at the airport fairly late in the evening. Clearing immigration and getting my bags went off without a hitch. I changed some money and caught the Airport Express train to the city centre. The train ride was quite short (only 24 minutes) but rather expensive (about CA$30). Oh well. At least it dropped me off very close to my destination: Hong Kong Station. As I alighted from the train and exited the station I met my excellent friend, Will Chau, who was waiting for me!

I was so happy! It had been months since I saw any of my Ontario friends. Will Chau is one of my best friends (not that I'm ranking them, or anything) and seeing him in Hong Kong was simply fantastic. He had just finished his final internship for teacher's college in Shenzen (just across the border from Hong Kong in Mainland China) and was now staying at his sister's (Serene Chau) condo near the Hong Kong city centre. I was going to stay there, too, for my time in Hong Kong!

We were hungry so we went to get my first Chinese food in China! We went to a congee (rice porridge) restaurant in the nearby IFC Mall. I felt awkward bringing my big backpack into a restaurant with lots of well dressed and affluent Hong Kong locals, especially since I was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Oh well, I think I should be pretty used to being "out of place" by now.

After dinner, we walked from Hong Kong station to Serene's condo. It took us about half an hour to cover the distance. This walk was different from most walks, though. Hong Kong Island is a mountainous one. Even though the city centre is located beside the harbour at sea level, the terrain rapidly rises behind it. Much of the city is built on the slopes of several peaks. In particular, the nearest peak was the highest one, Victoria Peak. To aid people living higher up the peak (and there are many of them!) there are a series of escalators and pathways leading over city streets and up the mountain side. Serene lived at the end of the very highest escalator, on Conduit Road. As I traveled up the escalators and pathways, we passed above Soho, an area of many international restaurants and bars. Soho is an area more frequented by foreigners than the local Chinese people, but more about Soho later.

When we got home, I met Serene and saw her condo. Will Chau had warned me that it was small. He was right! There was a tiny cramped kitchen, a tiny cramped bathroom, a small bedroom, and a cozy living room. Will Chau and I would be sleeping on the floor in the living room. It was like a sleepover pajama party every night!

June 3, 2008

Serene left for work around 9 AM, which is about the same time that Will Chau and I woke up. I feel that I slept decently well, but there were two complications... two furry complications.

I'm not sure why, but Serene has two cats. I wouldn't think it was a good idea to have two cats in a tiny Hong Kong flat, especially when the owner often works long hours, goes out for dinner frequently, and usually comes home rather late. Oh well, I'm not here to judge.

The cats own the apartment, though. They sleep through most of the day, but are quite active at night. They love knocking things off of tables or shelves. They enjoy going through the catdoor from the bedroom into the living room often. The catdoor makes a loud banging noise when they go through it. Best of all, the cats like the jump on us when we sleep! They don't do these things during the day... mostly only when we try to sleep at night. Augh. I tried to limit my complaining, though. It was very generous of Serene to let me stay at her flat for like two weeks at no cost!

Will and I had breakfast and went out to explore the city. I wore my contact lenses that day. I haven't worn them since then, though. After walking around in air conditioned buildings for many hours, I think my eyes got very dry and the contact lenses were getting very irritating. I decided that, even though the contact lenses were pretty cool, I would generally stick to my glasses. I'd save the lenses for special occasions like snorkeling or other activities where glasses would get in the way.

Anyways, we roamed the long way down from Conduit Road to the city centre. We stopped off at a small zoo and botanical gardens. From the gardens, we were treated to great views of the city skyline.

Yeah, Hong Kong has a lot of skyscrapers... but more about that later!

When we got to the city centre (usually just called "Central") I bought my Octopus card at the MTR station. The Octopus is awesome! It's a card that holds money which you can use to buy rides on the city's mass transit system (the "MTR"). With one swipe of the card, you could buy rides on trams, trains, and buses. Many business (like 7-11, bakeries, and other restaurants) accept the Octopus as a method of payment. The Octopus is much more convenient than cash and helps make cash obsolete. Almost everyone in Hong Kong has an Octopus, and some people have many of them. The best thing about the Octopus you won't waste extra money you put onto it because you can return it and get the extra money back.

I quickly decided, though, that although the name "Octopus" was pretty cool, I had to jazz it up a bit. I quickly starting calling my Octopus "my Octopod." When my Octopod was running low on money, I would say, "I need to put cashmoneys on my Octopod." Only Will Chau would understand my crazy sayings, of course (he's been subjected to them for years). Confusing the locals was part of the fun.

We took the MTR underneath the harbour to the mainland part of Hong Kong. Right across the harbour from Hong Kong Island was Kowloon -- a massive shopping and business area. Kowloon, and in particular, the areas around Tsim Sha Tsui (also called "TST") and Nathan Road, looked to me what "Chinatowns" look like in other cities: lots of small shops with roasted meats hanging in the windows, street food, big signs with Chinese characters on them, and sidewalks jam packed with shoppers. This Chinatown was especially large, though. But that makes sense, since this was really China! Kowloon definitely looked different from central Hong Kong though. The parts of the city close to where Serene lives is much more Westernized: skyscrapers, international restaurants, grocery stores, and condo towers.

Will Chau, who had spent a month working in Shenzen (in Mainland China) remarked on many of the differences between the Mainland and Hong Kong. He always complained about how dirty Shenzen is, how loud and pushy people are, how often they spit on the sidewalk, among other things. After traveling through Thailand, I sort of expected Hong Kong to be the same way, and I was bracing myself for a two-week stay in a place where everyone loves to spit in public. I was happy to discover that Hong Kong isn't that way at all. Hong Kong is much more Westernized (maybe some would say "civilized"?) then most of Southeast Asia or Mainland China. Spitting in public is illegal and people don't do it. People don't push to get on the MTR either. Even with the heat and humidity, Hong Kong was a breath of fresh air.

Heat! Humidity! Oh yes! Hong Kong as both of those in abundance. The weather in Hong Kong was not great. I think it rained every single day I was there. Some days it rained very hard (more on that later). Some days it drizzled all day long. When it wasn't raining, the sky was often gray and overcast. I only saw the blue sky a few times there.

When we got to Kowloon, we both wandered around for hours. We visited the temple on Temple Street (all of the streets had English names), then walked up Nathan Road to the shopping areas of Mung Kok. Will said we could buy anything here. I didn't buy anything, but looked at shoes. They were pretty cheap!

After walking for hours, we stopped for street food. We had some takoyaki (Japanese-style octopus tentacles deep fried in balls of batter with barbecue sauce and seaweed), and an assortment of squid tentacles and fish balls in oily spicy sauce. They were tasty, but a bit too heavy since they were deep fried. Sadly, almost all of the street food was deep fried, which was a big turn-off for me. I relished my days in Thailand when you could find fresh fruit everywhere or get pad thai from street vendors.

We ate our snacks in a concrete park and watched the locals play badminton. There was this one topless old man who thought he was a hot shot and made lots of trick shots. He'd return the birdie by jumping in the air, or swatting at it while facing backwards.

We continued walking for a while after that, but it soon started to rain very very hard and we made our way back home. On the way through Central and Soho, it was raining so hard that we could see the raindrops boiling and evaporating as they landed on hot lights built into the raised walkways in the city.

That night, we both sat around the flat. We had picked up stuff for dinner from the Park 'N' Shop grocery store beside one of the escalators from the city. We drank sake (the same "One Cup" sake that Will and I enjoyed in Japan), drank beer, ate dumplings and steamed broccoli. In the interest of saving money (Hong Kong was not an inexpensive city), we frequented the Park 'N' Shop (and its neighbour grocery store, the Wellcome), to pick up food and drinks. We ate out very rarely, and drank in bars even less. Thankfully, Will's friend, Fun (more about Fun later), had many contacts and obtained a few cases of FREE BEER for us. Will even got to choose which beers to get! Thankfully, Will has very similar beer taste to mine and picked up a case of Erdinger Hefeweisse (a delicious light-coloured wheat beer from Bavaria) and Erdinger Dunkelweisse (an even tastier dark-coloured wheat beer from Bavaria)). He didn't have much to choose from, though. His third choice was a case of Strongbow. The Strongbow was labeled as being 5% alcohol, but it seemed so weak to me that I thought it was just apple juice!

We stayed up late continuing to drink the beer, playing San Juan (a fun German card game that I was carrying with me), and plotting our exploits for the next day. Our plans for the next day were ambitious, indeed!

June 4, 2008

What was our plan for today? We were going to climb a mountain!

We started by taking the MTR to its farthest stop at Tung Chung and grabbing a cable car. I thought the cable car would take us to the top of a mountain. It did, but I was surprised to find out that it then went back down that mountain and deposited us out on the other side. Will Chau did not really enjoy the cable car ride very much. He's deathly afraid of heights (those words are his own).

The view from the cable car was really nice. At the start we could see the towers of the small town of Tung Chung and the airport. The cable car actually took us out over the water, too. As we got farther up the mountain, we passed through the clouds and over alpine trails. I looked in wonder at the trails and mountaintops. I wanted to go hiking! Will Chau instead cringed when the cable car passed the towers. It was going to be a long day!

At the top of the mountain we ate our packed lunch of peanut butter and banana sandwiches (one of our most common meals in Hong Kong) and donned our cheap HK$10 ponchos (CA$1.25). Oh yeah, it was raining. Surprise, surprise. There was a really touristy set up near the cable car station, but we walked past that crap and went to the somewhat-less-touristy-but-more-awesome Big Buddha statue. It was pretty big!

After the Big Buddha we started the real hike. It took us about two hours to reach the summit of Lantau Peak. The top of the mountain was obscured with mist and fog (though it wasn't raining very much). Will was pretty afraid most of the time. I tried to tell him to feed off my own confidence and bravery to get him through it. He still had a rough time, though. Since we couldn't really see the top, we had a hard time knowing how much further we had to go! There was a couple times that we thought we reached the top, did a high five, and then found, to our disappointment, that we still had to slog up higher. The path was steep and rocky. After lots of rest breaks, though, we finally did it! We conquered Lantau Peak!

Will Chau had climbed his first mountain! What a sense of accomplishment! What a boost to the self esteem! Yippee! Though, of course, for me, it was like the fourth mountain I had climbed on this trip. Ahem!

We climbed down the mountain on the other side and caught a bus back to Tung Chung station. All told, it took us like four hours to climb up and back down the peak. It took long enough that we were getting worried about sunset!

So, eventually we made it back to Central. We had picked out our restaurant for that night. I was all hot and bothered to get to this Russian/Ukrainian restaurant in Soho. The place had a really cozy atmosphere; there was a copy of the prayer "Our Father" in Ukrainian on the wall and a fireplace in the corner. The vodka selection was really impressive, but the food wasn't that great, to be honest. I had vareniki (like pierogie with meat) and borscht. Will had cabbage rolls. He was disappointed by them. I promised to hook him up with some of my mom's cabbage rolls when I got back to Canada in September. *hint hint* Mom are you reading this?

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Okay, that wraps up June 4. I've been working on this particular post for a few days now, so I'm going to put it up now. I know I'm way behind, but its getting challenging to keep up to date. Keep up the encouraging words people! It's your feedback that keeps up my motivation to work on this thing!

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Rob Sz, Melbourne, AU