My flight from Shanghai arrived at Szcheuan, which is across from Hong Kong in Mainland China. I still had the directions that Xiaomin had written out for me before, that helped me figure out how to get from there to Hong Kong.
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| A neat and orderly queue: how you can tell you aren't in mainland China |
I was again kind of surprised my initial reaction to Hong Kong. Given the british influence over the city for several hundred years, I figured it would appear more like a western city. I was expecting another Shanghai. But instead it felt a lot more dirty then Shanghai, and a lot more Chinese. Yet at the same time, it was still very different from the rest of China. The most noticeable differences was obvious once I got to the subway, and I saw something I hadn’t seen before: a queue. In mainland China, if you leave even an inch gap in front of you, people will assume you aren’t in line and will cut you off. This is something I noticed even before I left the U.S., when mainland Chinese would cut me off in line at the airport.
I was dead tired from the all-nighter we pulled the day previous, and as soon as I got a room, I just went to bed until the next morning. I was staying in a building called the Chungking Mansions, an old building crammed with numerous shops, guesthouses, and hostels and which getting around in is an incredible maze. Almost every time I tried to get in or out, I’d end up getting lost with no idea how to get back. It is kind of infamous for it’s low cost accommodations and for it’s sketchy nature. Whenever I would tell someone I was staying there, they would make a comment about that. However the place is supposedly very safe, and there was a pretty constant police presence there. Not sure if that’s a good sign or not.
Despite being the cheapest place to stay in Hong Kong, it was still surprisingly more expensive then everywhere else I’ve stayed so far, so I decided to stay with someone who offered to host me on couchsurfing. I stayed two nights with him, but trying to live by his early morning schedule when I was forced to leave the apartment was really not working well with my now messed up sleep cycle, and returned to the mansion for the last nights.
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| Repulse Beach, Hong Kong |
After the beach, I headed to the peak, to get a view of the city as the sun was about to set. I skipped paying for the observation deck and just went to a nearby pavilion that had a pretty much identical view for free.
I had made an unfortunate mistake when I applied for my Vietnam visa, and ended buying my ticket to fly in a day before my visa was valid. I only noticed my mistake when it was too late to try and fix it before I left, but was hoping I could get it solved at the Vietnam consulate in Hong Kong. Unfortunately they weren’t able to change my visa, and I had to apply for a new one, which meant hey would have my passport until the morning I leave. Which meant I was stuck in the Hong Kong area and wouldn’t able to visit the nearby areas such as Macau, as I had hoped.
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| Cyndie |
In Hong Kong I met up with a family friend, Cyndie. Cyndie teaches english in a city in mainland China, but happened to be passing through Hong Kong on her way back from her Spring Festival break. She has come to Hong Kong at least a half dozen times, and she told me that she just really enjoys being in the city, as it offers a nice break from mainland China.
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| Tai O |
With her I visited the Art Museum, the Avenue of Stars, and we spent a day doing her favorite loop around the islands of Hong Kong. First we took a ferry and a bus ride to the small fishing village of Tai O and wandered around the stilted village and took a boat tour, then we went to the Big Buddha statue on another part of the island, and finally took a cable car ride back to the subway.
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| Fish Balls; Stinky Tofu; Deep-fried Intestine; Stuffed Chilies, Sausage and Tofu; and Duck Tongue |
My last night in town, Cyndie helped take me get around the street food vendors of Hong Kong as I was resolved to try as much strange Chinese food as I could before I left China. I tried some deep-fried pig intestine, fish balls, duck tongue, and stinky tofu. Ever since Beijing and every city since, I had gotten a whiff of this overwhelming smell, but I was never able to locate the source of it. I couldn’t tell if it was from a food, or something that had died, or what. I had tried to ask various hosts, but they had all given me conflicting answers. But thanks to Cyndie I finally found out the true source of that stench: stinky tofu. Having smelled it everywhere, I had to try some, and it ended up tasting just like it smelled, and it ended up being the only thing in China that I tried and just couldn’t finish.
The next day, after picking up my passport with my new Vietnam visa, Cyndie helped me catch the shuttle to the airport. I arrived with a good two hours to spare, or so I thought. When I went to try and get my ticket, I learned that I had somehow managed to misread my departure time and I had just missed my flight. I tried to get them to transfer me to the next flight, but they couldn’t. So I had to buy a last minute ticket. I tried to find a cheap one online, but it’d be too soon to the departure time and they wouldn’t sell them. Lacking little other choice, I was forced to buy the full price ticket (twice the price of the flight I had just missed and wasn’t able to get a refund on either) and run through security to try and catch this flight without missing it too, but fortunately with that I was finally on my way to Taiwan.
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