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| Arrive in Hong Kong | |
| Hong Kong | |
| Afternoon train to Shanghai. |
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15
August 2001 Hong Kong We arived in the mid afternoon after a creaky but uneventful flight. We were very excited about being in Hong Kong. It had a great energy and it made us both a little homesick for New York- all kinds of people crowding in the streets paying alot of money for food and wearing expensive stylish clothes- how could we not miss New York. We took a long walk in the afternoon up to the ladies market and back via the night market. Jay gawked at all the fancy electronics and mobile phones of the future. We were a little confused about the exchange rate so we thought everything was REALLY expensive- it turns out stuff was just pretty expensive. So that first day we really didn't buy anything. We did however go to see a Hong Kong action movie- which was in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean with English and Chinese sub-titles. It was a pretty classic tale of hired killers and police officers and big shoot outs and pan-Asian plots to take over the world of hired killers etc. All in all a great time.A very satisfying way to spend the evening in Hong Kong. 16 August 2001 We were booked on a half day city tour for the morning. This was our one and only "group tour" event for the trip. It was fine-it made us appreciate our other methods of travel. For the morning in Hong Kong though, it made perfect sense, the sights there are pretty minor- it seems to be more about being than seening in alot of ways. We went with the bus group to the top of Victoria peak and looked out over the sprawling city full of cheap high rises filled with cramped apartments. We visited a floating village in dowtown HK- eveidently a lot more people used to live there, but its been going out of fashion to be a "boat person" and the fishing's not as good as it used to be et.- so now they take the tourists through to earn a little extra cash. Really it wasn't much different from the Cambodian and Vietnamese fishing villages- except that these ouse boats were all equipped with generators and TVs and air conditioners etc. Next stop with the group was a jewelry factory. They gave us the way to tell fake pearls from real pearls- you rub them together- if they're fake they'll feel slippery- real pearls have a kind of gritty feeling. The jewelry on offer at the factory was mostly ugly and very expensive- we did know the true exchange rate by now. They did have a weird room full of email forward wisdom- all posted on plaques on the walls. This was prety silly and enjoyable- quotes like "The Boss is always right- even though he may be stupid and ignorant and not know his head from a hole in the ground he's always right," but also more of the goofy variety. Well- it was just odd enough to catch our attention. The last stop on our group tour was the Stanley market. We found that to be uninspiring. They had t-shirts and lots of stuff made in China- we figured we wait til we were really there to buy Chinese stuff. After the morning tour we were dropped off at our hotel about 3 pm and headed straight out for Dim Sum. We went to a restaurant near the hotel and reccomended by our guide. It was very good. It was up on the third floor in the back of a shopping mall- we came to discover that much of Hong Kong is hidden in vertical nooks and crannies. We had a great lunch, but unfortunately we proabbly can't ever go back there. After lunch we spent a while eyeing all the fancy computer goods on display the on the floor below the restaurant. About an hour later we realised that we didn't have the camera with us anymore and went back up to the restaurant to look for it. A woman working there acted very suspicious but insited that they didn't have it. We went back to the hotel and asked the concierge to call over to the restaurant and ask in Chinese about the camera- we thought there might have been communication problems. Well he got an earful from the lady and informed us again that "no they didn't have the camera, the woman had informed him we'd just been there, blah blah blah-" basically no one was very pleased with us. So next we called the tour company and luckily the camera was sitting there on the bus- so now we can't go back to the Jade Garden restaurant- oh well. Well, My other agenda for Hong Kong was to get a hair cut. My hair had been in my eyes and bugging me. So I'd also asked the tour guide for a suggestion earlier in the day for a hair establishment. He pointed me in the direction of a shop near the hotel, where he was sure they'd speak good English. It was very glamourous. I had to pick what level of hair artist I wanted- ranging from assistant stylist- to executive artist or something like that. I selected in the middle- someone from the senior creative team- I mean I didn't need some consultant messing up my hair. Well, a very hip guy named Amen appeared and proceeded to cut my hair- mostly by using the "Cousin It" method of pushing it all in my eyes and cutting from that postion. Literally he combed it all forward and worked like that for about and hour and a half. When he was done, I looked like my Japanamation self- lots of little jagged edges of hair framed my face. There are very stylized wispies cut on all sides and a nice solid cute shape over all to the hair cut. Jay was quite impressed when he saw what they'd done to me. Of course it lasted for about 10 minutes. We went out into the wind of the evening and it was basically a big short mess in short order. We had a delicious dinner at a fancy hotel and then called it an evening. 17 August 2001 Hong Kong to- train to Shanghai We had the whole morning in Hong Kong. We had a lot of errands to run and mostly used it up taking care of practical business- like shipping home our loot from Fedex. I was also trying to buy some pants before we left Hong Kong, because one of the 2 pairs I brought with me was starting to disintigrate on my body. Some more back of the 3 rd floor explorations in another shopping mall, led us to an awesome restaurant for lunch- www.hkoldrest.com- and the filene's basement of Hong Kong- the IT store. We tried on super cheap clothes, but unfortunately there was nothing in my size. Its hard to shop for clothes in Asian countries. They laugh when they hear my shoe size and Jay's size 12 they cant even fathom. IN clothes in China where we are right now, I am an XXL for shirts and an XL for pants. So we didn't get any pants or shoes at the super hip IT store. We stopped at a grocery store before heading out to the train station just after 1 PM... |