Nothing Wins the Justice

So, it has become quite clear that if I don't get the info out to you guys quickly about my trip, I start to write a lot too much, and everyone loses interest. What with the sheer adventure involved in this Hong Kong trip, I'd hardly want to deny us the joys of a travel-diary, so I'm going to do this the way I did in Japan, and actually fill you folks in every day, in however much detail I can.

Day 1 - Welcome to Hong Kong

Be it positive or otherwise, I have the singular fortune of travelling to excitingly new locales every time I go anywhere. That’s probably a great thing, really, since I’ve already proven to be hard to please when it comes to repetitive rocky terrain and the like. I crave a bit of variety from my holidays, and as such - on a purely theoretical level - Hong Kong would seem to be a pretty darn good holiday destination for me, albeit not technically a ‘holiday’ at the moment, and certainly not in any objective way ‘good’.

Let me hit you with some first impressions.

Despite what Ash says, the touchdown and airport experience were rather reminiscent of Narita airport - that is, of Japan. The differences were slight, really: the city-lights were patchier, airport staff didn’t have that weird cheerful look, and there were no cartoon mascots telling you what to do. In that sense, it basically seemed like Japan for boring people - until we got to see a bit more of it and I was able to make a more apt comparison, namely that it’s very much like a tightly-packed version of Romania, for those who don’t rate ‘breathing’ very highly.

Although I had been prepared for it, insofar as possible, there is nothing quite like your first experience of the Hong Kong atmosphere. It’s hard to describe the feeling exactly, but it feels something like a sauna operator trying to kill you. While everyone in the sauna is smoking. And your towel is made of garbage.

As luck would have it, however, I didn’t much get time to dwell on the matter of what this air would do to my lifespan, since I was busy chatting with a con-man who was trying to get Ashnil and me in his car. This guy was so transparently not a member of the staff, that he sorta looped around back to the positive end of the trustworthiness scale. Surely, went my train of thought, no-one this suspicious could actually be successfully operating a bootleg taxi operation? Probably he was just a nice guy who would fetch us a cab, or an actual cabbie who had been on break. Ash and I stood around for a while waiting for him to come back with a taxi for us, before finding out that he had in fact returned some time ago, but saw the airport security guys behind us, floored it and hooned away. Eventually, a pockmarked security man in a Red Army looking uniform came over to pass on some pearls of Confucian wisdom (“dey are BAD guys!”, “dey overcharge, always!”), and lead us to the other end of the airport, where the actual taxi-cabs were.

As it happened, the bootleggers’ operation was actually the better-maintained of the two: whereas the private vehicles and black vans with tinted windows which had dominated the previous section had, of course, been a touch ominous, at least they were all looking up to code. Brand new, even. By contrast, the actual cabs were something else entirely. After a very short wait in line, Ashnil and I were ushered into a decrepit old red Nissan which made the abandoned rustbucket outside my grandfather’s house in Romania (whose wheels had long-since sunk into the tarmac, as though it had been there so long that the concrete had FLOWED AWAY beneath it) look positively roadworthy. Our bags were stuffed into a tiny boot crammed with offal, the lid of which was left hanging open off its hinges, lashed down with a frayed elastic cable. Ash and I were similarly stuffed into a seemingly Bollywood-themed interior, and although I fully expected to sit down on wooden beads or a small animal, the only thing on my seat was a slightly wet tissue, and a price-list suggesting they charged extra for small animals.

And so, we set out on our journey in the sweltering heat, discovering mere moments later that the driver had no idea where our destination was. This started us passing around of scraps of maps and attempting to communicate in a language he barely half-understood, whereas the driver, for his part, began flipping through his own maps, talking, gesticulating, and leaning back to point things out to us on the map, all the while weaving in and out of highway traffic. This, incidentally, taught us a further truth about this place: however much English there was on the signs and such around here, the locals haven’t all picked up a great deal of it, to the point where our earlier intent of simply bumbling our way through here speaking English seems quite laughable indeed, since everyone we’ve talked to so far has responded much more positively to mime. It also taught us not to speak to cab drivers, particularly when their view of the road behind them is obscured by a carving of Ganesh, a huge antenna, and the boot of their own car.

In due course, thanks largely to Ashnil’s magic manila folder which contained printouts of maps, addresses in both English and Chinese, and a ream of background information besides, the cab driver stopped in a street which might have been recently created by swinging a giant weight at some buildings from a crane. Choked as it was with plaster, debris, and the whitewashed interior-but-on-the-outside walls of semi-abandoned hovels, it seemed like maybe he’d had engine trouble, since we certainly saw little around us but the seedy, chained-shut shopfronts of dilapidated restaurants, the pictures of their main-courses looking much like someone had brushed grease onto a live chicken and just boiled the whole damn thing. We soon saw our error when we spotted the words “Grand Blossom House” emblazoned proudly on an unlit sign in an alley. That was the name of our hotel. No engine trouble, alas: this was home.

Reluctantly, we climbed out of the taxi and deposited our (miraculously still intact) baggage on the side of the rubble-strewn street. Thanking the driver (and God) for our survival, we dug out a few hundred dollars between us to pay for our fare. He took the money and drove away. No mention was made of change.

We stood there blinking for a little in the green glare of a 7-Eleven. Stocked and operated just like in Japan, it was the single comfortingly familiar thing on the street. We were hungry, but despite Hong Kong’s apparently famous nightlife and excellent restaurants, all we saw were closed storefronts (with more hideously deformed menu items) and occasional random walkers who avoided our eyes on the street. Pretty much on reflex, Ash and I both ducked into the 7-Eleven and stocked up on Pocky. The walls of nearby buildings occasionally seemed to weep stagnant water (and garbage). This reminded us of some other advice we had gotten, and we bought a large amount of bottled water then and there.

One thing that is true about Hong Kong, at least, is that it’s very cheap to live in. A dollar goes a long, long way ‘round here: the prices are just about the same as in Australia, save that here a dollar’s worth one sixth of what it is back home. As such, just about everything is effectively six times cheaper. As we staggered around looking for a way to enter “Grand Blossom House” (apparently a bridal store), it heartened me to see that whatever the surrounds I’d have to live in, at least I could pick up the entire frozen, plucked carcass of an oily-looking duck for less than the price of a beer back in Sydney.

Further forays into the darkness reminded me that I could also get all kinds of injections for free, so Ash and I wisely rolled our bags into another “Grand Blossom House” entrance, this one bathed in strong red light and offering the “best Geriatric products”. Here, a side-entrance led into a tiny foyer where an upset-looking guard tried to explain in Chinese that we couldn’t stay there, and I ignored his obvious hand-gestures and increasing frustration because there was no way in hell I was leaving his air conditioned foyer to go back out in the furnace-like night-time streets. That, and I was pretty sure this was the right place.

As it happened, this was so, and Ashnil managed to call down a sweet young lady named Sunny, who immediately swept us up in a tour of the place, told us which tiles were safe to step on, and generally outlined how we’d be living for the month. In true Anime style, this was followed up with an announcement that she and Ashnil would be living together, followed by some grinning and bowing and clapping of hands. Armed with his Pocky and thrown into the very unreal cartoon situation for which he’d studied all these years, I figured Ashnil would be right at home, so I decided to check out my rooms and leave him to go walk in on her in the shower, nosebleed, get hit with a hammer, and then make her jealous by ogling his other roommate or something, before the plot gets all surreal and adds robots.

My apartment was not much different from Ash’s, just a little bit smaller. As such, it can be described the way most of the facilities out here could be summed up. It was, in short, amusingly shithouse.

I won’t go into detail about the various preconceptions I had about, say, toilet paper, mirrors you can see yourself in, personal space, etc., and how this place went out of its way to shatter them. Rather, let it suffice to say this was the sort of place whose appearance you would laugh at in a comedy routine, because you don’t expect it could be real. Just imagine looking at any standard item in your living space, and having your brain automatically volunteer the phrase “Is this a joke?”

That’s where I live.

Needless to say, this necessitated a hasty retreat, particularly since I was still extremely hungry. As such, I dragged Ashnil out of his apartment and we went back out to find us a place to eat. Sticky and hot as the apartments were, I had forgotten that the actual outdoors was worse, and as we discovered more and more disturbingly inedible-looking food amongst the dirty alleyways, I began to seriously consider just living off of Pocky for a while. Without a fridge this could be complicated, but certainly manageable. Eventually, though, we found one place that seemed to serve reasonably edible food, and still be open. Coincidentally, it was a Japanese restaurant, and - particularly given how everything here put us in mind of some sort of Evil version of Japan - it was nice to step for a moment out of the heat into a familiar location and pretend we hadn’t taken leave of our senses and flown here instead.

As with any place where social interaction or eating might happen, it appeared to be the polite thing to do in this restaurant to offer a visitor free Chinese Tea. Unfortunately, politeness apparently didn’t dictate that the tea be heated up. Having foolishly accepted it, I sipped at it occasionally, and hoped I wouldn’t get tuberculosis. Looking around at the incomprehensible menu items all over the walls, I retreated to the seemingly much smaller “English menu”, and decided to just get a “multi-course dinner for one”. Thus far, the country wasn’t thrilling me.

That said, the way to a GrubLord’s heart is through his stomach, and Hong Kong redeemed itself mightily that night. For the price of a burger in Newtown, I had the waitress coming back to me every few minutes, serving up one steaming dish after another, each dish more exotic and flavourful than the last. Eating like a king, at least, would seem to be the norm in Hong Kong, and I can overlook any number of flaws for this amount of chow. Ash only had one dish, and only finished half, probably unable to eat as he distractedly traced the threads of his and Sunny’s destiny into the third Act where she will do just about anything to be with him. As for me, however, I had at least seven dishes and would’ve ordered more, but the place was going to close at 1 AM so I figured we should get our butts to bed at any rate.

This was a mistake. Although it appeared like a bed, my mattress was in fact a concrete slab. Further, the blankets seemed pointless in the stifling heat, and the blinds that would keep the sun from waking me seemed to have been sticky-taped back together after a man had been hurled from the window, their uneven slats doing nothing to stop what would be direct sun on my face in the morning. After briefly considering the floor UNDER the bed as a potential improvement (since at least it’d cut the light), I eventually decided on the bed itself.

Under the rumbling death-metal bass of an ineffectual air-conditioner which looked like it might fall on my head any minute, I closed my eyes and tried to fool my body into thinking I was asleep, all the while making a lengthy list in my head of items I would purchase on the morrow. Chief amongst these were a fan for my room, one of those hats with a fan on it, more bottled water, a few more fans for good measure, more pocky, a handheld vacuum, a food sanitiser and of course…

Some. Goddamn. Toilet. Paper.

Day 2 - One Big Seven Eleven

No-one is likely to believe this, least of all my mother, but it just so happens I have learned a thing or two from my mum about cleanliness. More specifically, I cannot abide a disgusting house, and will even go so far as to clean it. My first morning in Hong Kong, therefore, rather than being spent out-of-doors, was surprisingly enough a frenzy of indignant spring-cleaning. I went on to stock up on cleaning products via a lengthy grocery trip with Ashnil, then everything that could be sponged got sponged, most surfaces twice or more, and a great deal of crap was put into piles and tucked well away. By the end of this transformative process, alas, the place was still a shithole - but at least it was a relatively clean one. Well and truly in touch with my feminine side by this point, I then went one step further and arranged my belongings into categorical groupings that made optimal use of space, before settling down to the burning question of what to wear when I go out.

After slipping on a tight little number in black (read: regular jeans), I buzzed the ol’ Ashmeister, and we set out on today’s adventure. I put on my walkin’ boots, since today would be my favourite kind of day: an exploration day!

There’s nothing quite so fine as wandering randomly in the streets of a completely unfamiliar place. Sweltering hot though it was (and, as Ash couldn’t stop pointing out, super-smoggy), Hong Kong was transformed during the day. Where the night was all metal shutters, scattered debris, mutated chicken carcasses, the scent of garbage and the occasional mangy cat, the “Hung Hom” district (where we live) during the day was quite another matter. Shutters opened to reveal a vast assortment of increasingly useless variety stores, selling everything from sacks of nuts to massive, overelaborate floral wreaths. Nothing says “sorry for screwing your best friend” quite like an artistic arrangement of flowers the size of a car. We walked and we walked and we didn’t stop, however: there were only two days to get explorin’ before we had to start work, and we were set on making the best use of them. After the sheer amount of practice we’ve had lately in covering whole cities on foot, walking a whole day without rest was well within our capabilities. By the end of the day, however, I literally had to scrape my feet with a pumice stone to get the pieces of my socks out of my skin.

Incidentally, damn but the Chinese love their 7-Eleven! I cannot tell you how many 7-Eleven stores we passed today. The further we got out of the slums in which we lived, the nicer Hong Kong city started to look - but there was one universal constant, and that was the omnipresent 7-Eleven. Some marketing survey must’ve indicated that most people would only take up to 15 steps to go find a 7-Eleven, or else give up, since that’s literally how far apart a goodly number of them were. Why you would ever put a 7-Eleven within eyeshot of another one? Who knows, but the fact remains: if you want a stale, shrink-wrapped sandwich, some crackers or instant noodles at any time of day, chances are great that just 15 footsteps will get you to a 7-Eleven.

Hallelujah!

Without recourse to such convenience stores, I nevertheless managed to spend no more than five dollars on lunch today, and receive a two-course meal and a drink. How, you ask? I tried a new restaurant, of course! For the first time, I tried the “Sichuan” flavour of Chinese cuisine, and I found it very much to my liking. As the only English-speaker in the restaurant informed me when he saw me trying to guess at menu items, Sichuan cuisine is incredibly hot. Not only that, the powerful blend of flavours is anything but subtle, incorporating a whole lot of chillies, garlic, ginger, nuts, other herbs, soy and some kind of sour stuff. This results in a party in my mouth to which all kinds of chicken, pork and noodles are invited. It came with the establishment’s signature lemon tea, which was likewise delicious, if a little … black. The ever-present Chinese tea, incidentally, was once again lukewarm-to-cold. Does no-one heat this stuff up? The Sichuan food, however, absolutely gets my thumbs up - particularly at these prices!

After lunch, Ash and I tried out the railways of Hong Kong. Fortunately, Hong Kong’s rail system is far less backwards than Australia’s, and incorporates the same rechargeable radio-tagged fare-card system that’s used in Japan. In place of the Suica card, they have the Octopus. As we rapidly discovered, however, having charged our cards the way we did back in Japan (where every swipe of the card made me cringe for my precious bank balance), we seemed to have greatly overestimated how much the actual transit would cost. See, as luck would have it, Hong Kong’s rail system costs many times less than ours in Australia (even though it’s so much nicer), meaning that after we’d charged our train-cards with a few hundred bucks, the couple of trips we made today cost us just about fifty cents each. Luckily, you can also buy drinks with these train cards. See, otherwise I would feel like a fool.

Our day of exploring led us to our ultimate destination: the Hong Kong Lantern Carnival, held in celebration of the 60-year anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. This was quite an event, featuring a great many traditional handmade lanterns in fanciful shapes, including dragons and peacocks and lightning and clouds and so on. There were big lamps, small lamps, red lamps, gold lamps. The place was thick with people, all watching the various bits of fabulous entertainment. There were stages and traditional theatrical performances (ie. wailing women with painted faces), puppet theatres, food stands, etc., and a huge area for people to set up camp in, where hundreds of families were picnicking beneath the stars. A lot of people wore glowsticks and such, whereas others carried lanterns and food and camera equipment.

Ash and I were distinctly in the camera equipment group, and for the better part of the day we had been discussing photographic techniques. This came to a head here in the festival crowd, as Ash indulged in some of his patented ‘shooting from the hip’ (read: stalking), and I tried to improve my photography skills for real, shooting almost exclusively in manual mode, and setting up my shutter speed, aperture, zoom, ISO, etc. To try to get the effects I was after with each individual shot. Both Ash and I managed to get some rather good shots, and I think I learned more about photography tonight than I picked up in several weeks of classes.

We actually tried to get some shots of ourselves in this environment, too, for once - not something we're typically all that into doing, but one thing about taking photoes involving lanterns at night is that the lanterns pretty much take up the whole shot, leaving the person as a shadowy outline. This doesn't impact Ashnil's looks terribly much, but most people wouldn't recognise me, and using a flash in the darkness just ruins the image. This, alas, was the one photography challenge we never did manage to solve - since HDR only really works with non-moving subjects (or at least a tripod), I have no idea what to do in that situation. Perhaps an NWTJ-ite with more of the skillz could help me out?

Once we were done with the festival, and had wandered the picnic grounds, etc., Ash and I put on some speed and jumped on a train to the next part of the festival. This took us about twenty minutes of jostling our way through crowds, and had the humorous result of delivering us a few hundred meters away from where we’d started (oops!) - at which point we had to walk back the way we came, to go see Puff the Magic Dragon.

Puff (although this wasn’t the name THEY gave him) was quite a fine sort of dragon: essentially a full-length Chinese Festival Dragon of the sort that danced to drumbeats, etc., except that it was made 100%, top-to-toe, of big fat sticks of burning incense. A fiery, glowing red, breathing a great deal of smoke, and making the whole damn district smell authentically Buddhist, Puff was quite the attraction, drawing people from far and wide, and making the dragon himself just about unapproachable, even though the performance actually went for about three hours.

For tonight only, Puff was as popular as 7-Eleven.

Ash and I rounded out our day of adventuring by stopping for some chow on our way back, this time in an upscale café with lovely leather seats. They sold a hearty sort of Japanese-Chinese fusion cuisine, but the deal-maker here was a cocktail of sorts: what appears to be a gradient fruit-juice, green-to-yellow, with a green apple flavour. Rather than using a complicated mix of ingredients and skill, this was achieved with small yellow stars made of jelly, which settle to the bottom, providing the illusion of a gradient. Of course, there’s also the fact that Green Apple is delicious, which should not be overlooked.

I actually had another Green Apple flavoured drink on the way back (they're addictive!), which led me to discover yet another fine chinese idea that someone should definitely move over to our country: the super drink-sealer! Instead of giving you some crappy polarcup dome thingamy to clip to your drink, which will just leak out the top or fall off or get shit all over you at the earliest opportunity, the Chinese version of ensuring your drink doesn't spill is an awesome plastic vacuum-seal thingamy that just gets insta-welded to your cup, and results in a drink that literally cannot spill. This plastic membrane is easily punctured with the sharp end of a straw, and thus does not impede your drinking. Genius! If that Green Apple drink hadn't comparatively tasted like crap compared to the café's one, I would give these guys a medal. As it happens, though, street vendors aren't quite at the same level - alas. There wasn't even jelly!

Finally, after a good deal more walking, we made it back to the slums where we lived. For the first time, we entered the area without the scent of garbage assaulting our nostrils. I took this for a good sign.

When I got home, however, I found out that I was no longer alone in my apartment. It started with an eery feeling when I entered, about having not flipped one of the switches myself (some times I am observant!), and ended with an awkward encounter regarding first introductions, what I was doing there, and why I’d used her body-sponge to clean the toilet.

Those pleasantries aside, with my feet exfoliated down to well-worn nubs, I headed to bed… choosing precisely the moment of lying down, prompted by the usual discomforts, to pick up my pillow and turn it over for the first time to try the other side.

On the back of the pillow, ineffectually scrubbed at, was a clearly visible red stain. It had gone dark, like a horrible bloodstain left to clot. My eyes flicked back to my blinds, with their impression of a human body crashing against the window.

I’m still alive and unsyringed, but for how long?

2 days and counting.

Day 3 - City With Two Faces

It’s hard to say what I like most about Hong Kong, because it’s hard to say what I like about Hong Kong. In truth, I wouldn’t want to live here - but precisely because my stay is so temporary, I can enjoy it in ways that would hardly even occur to me if this were a more permanent arrangement. See, my parents have been somewhat aghast at the state of the place, as described in my missives (and actually, it’s worse!), but that’s just it: as someone who enjoys new experiences most of all, and who will only be here for a month, I am in fact very much enjoying all of this.

Allow me to furnish an example. This morning when I flushed my toilet, it made a strange gurgling, slurping noise, and proceeded to slosh the contents of its cistern all over the bathroom floor. Now, typically, this kind of behaviour from a toilet would offend me. Here, however, it is a part of the local colour. Perhaps that’s just how toilets are in Hong Kong? Who knows, right? The point is it’s all temporary, and given the rate at which water dries up in the obscene heat, this episode did little more than yield a bemused expression from me, and fuel a paragraph of my travelogue. As such, perhaps you can appreciate why slumming it like this doesn’t much worry me.

I suppose what I'm saying is, you don't go ice-skating to complain about the cold. Further, if you go on an adventure holiday and contract ebola from hippies, well, it's your own damn fault innit? No-one needs to hear you whine about it later. Besides, what’s a bit of comical discomfort against the joys of an alien culture?

Particularly when I get to write about it!

With reference to said alien culture, I should note that gigantic flower wreaths (apparently big business here in bum town) are not the only kind of incredibly large decorations favoured here. In particular, the following heart-shaped arrangement of chocolates (or just silver-wrapped balls of some sort?) and Hell money really stood out in my mind. Particularly since the purpose of Hell money is being burnt, it seems a waste to fashion a big ol’ stupid love-heart out of it, but what gets me is the fact that said love-heart seems a bit inconsistent in sentiment with its component parts. See, I’ve never much understood the Chinese concept of Hell Money. I mean, it’s simple enough in theory: burn these crazy-ass Hell-issue banknotes, and you’ll have ‘em to spend when you get down there. Presumably, as money is the root of all evil, it’d be strange to give out Heaven money… but isn’t it a bit fatalistic to stock up on petty cash for your trip to Hell? What with inflation and all, it’s hardly going to be worth much when you get there, and more importantly it seems to make a pretty big assumption about the state of your soul. In a country where it’s incredibly rude just to refuse a cup of god-awful lukewarm Chinese Tea, it seems a bit incongruous for people to so readily be gifting one another banknotes that communicate one’s belief that the recipient is due for a lengthy stay in Purgatory, and might need a few bucks for Sichuan Chicken.

But, hey, it’s the slums. Maybe that’s the best afterlife one can hope for in this district. Buy enough giant Hell money love-hearts before the syringe-stabbings claim you, and you’ll be living it up on Beazelbub Avenue, whispering to the other damned souls that the ‘infernal heat’ isn’t such a big deal, really, and the toilets actually work better than back home. Be that as it may, though, Ash and I didn’t wait to find out. We had lookouts to visit, and although we correctly presumed that even a lookout wouldn’t help us to peer through the ever-present smog, nevertheless it was worth going to see ‘em.

Today was our last day free of the 10-hour Chinese workathon, and we decided to head deep into the city’s heart, to see the truly touristy sections of Hong Kong, and spend a lot of money. As it happens, the entirety of the Hong Kong apparatus is geared towards just that: funnelling you through an incessant array of exotic market areas and shopping centres even as you believe you are traversing areas representative of life in and the history of this bustling cross-cultural metropolis.

Given where we lived and all, it was pretty obvious to Ash and I that this incredibly prosperous inner-city section was transparently not the ‘real’ Hong Kong, but I can see how a tourist in a tour group might get the impression that Hong Kong was all beautiful gardens, breathtaking architecture, decadent luxury and high technology. In short, the entirety of the city’s centre, home to the rich and the famous, and all of the regions tourists would gather in between there and the airport, are incredibly nice. I mean it, it’s just beautiful. Palm trees, markets, colours, vibrance, people, trams, fountains, 3rd-largest-tower-in-the-world, wax replicas of Jackie Chan, the works really. Having only passed through this area underground, previously, on our way to the festival, we got to see some very awesome stuff at this point.

Some of the side-streets here in the centre are beautiful, but one place I should make a special mention of is Hong Kong park: a fantastic garden area in the middle of the city with its own giant birdwatching aviary, a big ol’ lookout tower, Chinese lanterns, an artificial waterfall, all sorts of cultural touches, a museum, a tribute to the China olympics, and an art centre. It was a fantastic spot, and we’ll probably be heading back some time later to check it out in full.

Today, though, we were on the clock, and Ash had an important master-plan for our sightseeing which did not brook delays! Awash in the city we never truly knew, Ashnil and I eagerly rushed to the famous “45-degree tram” for the full Hong Kong experience, and then… well, stood in line under the harsh tropical sun for over an hour. The tram we were waiting for is basically a touristic main attraction, incredibly popular largely because it appears first on the list of ‘things to see in Hong Kong’ that they give you at the airport. The tram starts in the center of the city, and lurches steeply upward just about as soon as it exits the station, giving you - quite literally - a whole new angle on the landmarks of the city, as you are dragged all the way up the tallest hill in the region, skyscrapers and greenery going by on all sides. Not a lengthy trip, but a fun one, the 45-degree tram (as it’s known) deposits you in a shopping mecca for foreigners, featuring just about every tacky Chinariffic item you can think of, and a fair few more that you probably can’t. Beyond that, choked with further tourist shops and advertisements for other attractions, lies a scenic lookout which will cost you a couple of days’ lunch and dinner costs in our area to go up and see. Knowing that, if I played my cards right, I could get fifty platters of delicious local yummies for the price of admission made me rather more reluctant to go up there, but really this whole area had a whole ‘nother conception of the value of the Hong Kong dollar. Speaking of which, the area just beyond said lookout was basically a gigantic indoor shopping town, selling extremely pricey trinkets to the foolish tourist masses. There was really nothing much else up there but shops. Why mess with what works, right?

The lookout was nice, and we got some great pictures. I especially enjoyed my lovely new telephoto lens at the top there, since it pretty much doubled as a telescope. The view didn’t last us all that long, however, and beyond that there was little else to do but shop. And shop we did! I think I can safely say that the amount we spent today will never be repeated on this trip. It was, simply put, quite excessive. We stocked up, first and foremost, on the essentials: tacky tourist goods to use as props when we tell the rest of our travel stories to friends and family back in Australia. I don’t know what I’m going to do with an authentic silk scroll depicting Chinese bamboo, but would I really want to let a bargain like that pass me by just ‘cause it’s utterly useless? Well of course not!

The situation was exacerbated, however, when the shops started to get more expensive and brand-name. Why, having already purchased a collection of fine clothing items in Canada from the locally super-popular fashion labels “Roots” and “Dickies”, how could I pass up the chance to add to my designer collection with such classy Hong Kong approved labels as “Wankos” and “Le Coq Sportif”? It’s a miracle I didn’t blow my whole budget right there, but despite the temptation I didn’t want to get shafted by the tourist pricing, so I decided to take advantage of the stiffer competition in other districts (such as Mong Kok).

… PENIS! …

Oh, sorry, that just slipped out.

Anyways, this was just about the end of today’s little adventure, however. With the horror of a typical Chinese workday fast approaching, Ash and I decided to fortify ourselves with extra sleep, and as such had to curtail our shopping pleasures. Not that we would’ve stuck around anyway: oddly enough, the deeper you got into the ol’ shopping in Hong Kong, the more it started to feel like Japan or the US, anyways - not merely in the shopping culture and all that, but in the pricing! There’s little point trying to bargain-shop in an area where being fleeced is the norm, and nothing much even feels like the place you’re ostensibly getting a souvenir for. Surrounded by European, US and Japanese stores, only the occasional Hong Kong or China flag reminded us of where we actually were. That said, the Japanese influence did cap off an excellent day’s exploring, when Ash - having only recently mentioned that ‘if English weren’t the official second language, Japanese would be’ - convinced me of his argument by pointing out something I had never expected to see here in Hong Kong.

There, on the highest hill in Hong Kong, in the big ol’ souvenir shopping centre, was an instance of Harajuku’s finest dessert store, the source of my delectations as far back as Tokyo Tower, and my favourite of Japanese delights: Marion’s Crepes!

Never mind the price, for which I could probably have eaten a whole dog back in our district, I immediately rushed over and devoured the biggest darn Crepe I could find. Strawberries, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, cheesecake, pancake and jam created a fusion of deliciousness that perfectly capped off the day. Why, so delicious was this crepe, that it made me skip the whole part of today’s travelogue about standing in line to get back down the hill, eating a yum-cha-style dinner and getting poisoned by the local cuisine. Lost in the warm afterglow of all of those strawberries, these memories were rendered entirely inconsequential, and rather than write the corresponding paragraphs, Liviu went straight to sleep.

Good night.

Day 4 - Turning Chi-a-nese-a

Woke up early this morning, to another vaguely humorous nightmare. I’m not sure what it is about Hong Kong, but whereas I typically don’t much dream at all, in this country I have been having bizarre dreams every night, each time involving one of my friends in a weird way. Last night, Elo was trying to bludgeon me to death with a cudgel. Tonight, Ethistan and I created a theme-park with a Pacman theme, where Muslim women played the parts of ghosts. I’m pretty sure Pacman was played by an Indy-Jones-style rolling boulder.

I can’t wait to see what my other friends will be up to in my dreams. Unless, of course, these dreams are a symptom of the smog damaging my brain. But hey, whatever the case, I’m not dead yet - meaning I’ve lasted at least 3 days. Eat your heart out, smog and syringes!

Bouyed up as I was with my apparent invincibility, I decided to really challenge myself today, and pursue the reputedly soul-crushing labour that is: a typical Chinese Workday! (Dun dun dun!) And, not satisfied with what would already be a shock to my lazy-ass system, I would be doing it at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Uniquely positioned between the Gun Club Barracks and the Perpetual Funeral Parlor, this seemed like a heck of a place to up the ante. After all, I gotta get good odds for all those office tipsters betting on the day of my demise.

Hong Kong Polytechnic straddles the thin red line between Hong Kong’s arsehole (where the regular folk live), and the land of milk and honey (where they shop). Here, mere blocks away from an object lesson in garbage disposal, quite suddenly everything turns sexy and modern, everyone speaks English, and there isn’t a speck of dust anywhere in sight.

It is, quite simply, unbelievable. Beyond the mystic boundary that separates the Hallowed Ground of the university from everything else, unpleasantness just doesn’t exist. A legion of green-clad worker-bees stalk the premises, picking up garbage, trimming the lawns, straightening the signs, polishing the banisters, disinfecting the buttons on the lifts once an hour, fixing breakages, brewing coffee and tea, even following behind people with mops to ensure nothing gets footprints on it. The result, of course, could well be the most orderly, cleanly, well-organised place I’ve ever seen.

However, despite this eccentricity, certainly the most shocking thing since Soylent Green is something I learned today. Namely: the Chinese are People!

Given what one hears about Chinese folks, particularly when one is a PhD student who constantly gets compared to the biggest nerds amongst them, it’s quite a heartening thing to find out that the real people behind the looming spectre of your inadequacy are not quite so one-dimensional (or socially awkward) as they are represented. While it is true that they work extremely long hours, seem to have very few hobbies, and just generally have pretty whacked-out priorities in their life from where I’m standing, the Chinese overachievers I was introduced to today were all (perhaps unexpectedly) very friendly, awesome people, and people I wouldn’t be that much averse to swapping places with for a while.

To give just one example, I must return briefly to the topic of Ash’s roommate, the inimitable Sunny. Given that she was still at work at 10 pm on a Sunday, just yesterday, I think we can agree that she fits the stereotype of a Chinese overachiever rather handily; but you would be far off if you were to think that this describes her. A prime example of breaking the stereotype, this girl is far from an overworked, stressed-out mess. In fact, Sunny may aptly be the sunniest person I have ever met. I can’t fathom where she gets so much good cheer, but frankly it makes me a little jealous. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone before who is just so happy all the time that she makes everyone around her happier as a result. Accustomed as I am to the company of cynics and jerks, her infectious good cheer is an unfamiliar stimulus that makes me crazy and suspicious.

Earlier today, a small group of us were standing around having an incredibly boring conversation, and I was startled to find I was enjoying myself. Grinning like a fool as I discussed filling out administrative forms and submitting them, I had some part of my brain suddenly ‘click’ on and start to analyse the situation. Why would I enjoy pointless office-work? I despise pointless office-work! My eyes flicked to Sunny. "It’s YOU," came a voice in my head. "YOU’RE doing this…" Innocently, she smiled at me, and we laughed together at some inane comment. I signed a form with a flourish, quite cheerfully. "HOW are you doing this?!"

I couldn’t work out why, but for a little while longer, just doing paperwork made me happy. It wigged me out. The next time Sunny handed me a document, I reached out to take it, and a voice in my head went "No, don’t take it!"

I took it anyway. But I watched her carefully for any sudden moves. "I’m on to you, witch…"

However, it really wasn’t just her. Sure, the culture around here encourages a lot of self-sacrifice and incredibly long work-hours… but it would seem that somewhere along the way, people decided that if work was going to be such a major part of your life, you might as well enjoy it. People here have nice, ergonomic chairs, and the workspaces are amazingly quiet and pleasant. The temperature is just right, the rooms are colour co-ordinated, people clean up after you, the coffee machine is super-fancy and always well-stocked, you can get very high-quality tea just by putting a little capsule into a machine (ooh!), people can customise their workspace as much as they like, and have sofas and TVs to relax with if they want to… I’ve seen folks playing World of Warcraft, watching movies, reading magazines, etc. The grounds are beautiful, and people go for a stroll or go have cheap delicious meals whenever they want.

What’s anyone going to say, after all? They’re here constantly, working day and night, so what right does anyone have to object to them doing a spot of World of Warcraft or reading when the mood strikes them?

I hate to say it, since my bosses may eventually read this, but I’m actually quite taken with the whole idea. Unlike in Australia, where you feel like a criminal just for answering a personal mail on ‘company time’, and you have to minimize MSN Messenger every time a co-worker walks by (even if you’re talking to your supervisor overseas!), here in Hong Kong people take it a little easier in the minute-by-minute, even if (perhaps because) they work a few more hours in the day.

Ash and I both found ourselves working from about 8:30 am to 9 pm at night without even really noticing or worrying about it. In fact, today may have been one of the most focused, productive periods of work that I’ve had this entire year… and it is only the first of many! Perhaps the enjoyment won’t last, and the tedium will return, but for now at least, I find myself able to focus on my work here at uni just as well as (if not better than) I do when working from home, which isn’t something I have ever been able to do back in Australia, where a day spent at uni is typically a day mostly written off from actual effective work.

It is a little weird to get up to go home at 9:15 pm and realise that you have grown the beginnings of a beard in just the time you’ve been at uni… but overall, this could be just the boost my research needs to get some big tasks finished. And if the feeling doesn’t last, I could always get Ash to hunt for Sunny’s stash of happy pills.

Or join her for an afternoon of filing.

Syfro: Sounds like quite a town ^_^

Given that you pretty much knew how hot it was going to be, I find it amusing that you still wanted to pack warm clothing... but then again, the LivMan LIKES it hot!!

GrubLord: Yeah... well... I expected 'extremes of temperature variation' to be between hot and cold, rather than hot and FUCKING HOT.

RJorb: Amusing, as always, and the colours in your Day 2 photos are amazingly vivid. I'm impressed!

Also, FYI, the super-drink sealer has been in Australia for years! At any ol' EasyWay store, you can see your drink being vacuum-sealed in mere moments. Wondrous!

Syfro: Hidden bloodstains throughout your apartment? Dream Elo's reach is far indeed...

GrubLord: Whaddaya know, Jubs! I stand corrected.

That said, I've never actually seen an EasyWay in Australia (or anywhere for that matter).

And, yeah, Dream Elo has his fingers in many pies. I'd tell you more, but I figure I should limit myself to one snarky observation about my squalid living conditions per day, lest it take over my travelogue...

Ranneko: They are not that uncommon, there is one between uni and central for instance.

I actually don't like most of the drinks they offer, but I have friends who absolutely love the occasional easyway drink. There's one just near north sydney station too.

GrubLord: Oh, hey, I accidentally used the image titles from Day 4 of my US travelogue on these images... oops!

Fixed now.

Really should finish that US one some time.