Hong Kong with the tours

I have found my home. Hong Kong: The City That Never Sleeps!!!

Both my dad and I were up to our usual hours, about 2:30-3:00 in the morning (even in HK I can’t escape it) but the difference was that this time, the whole city was awake with us!! Last night, we went shopping, and the market closed at midnight. We then proceeded to walk home. As we walked home, we passed a McDonald’s McCafe. I was curious, and my dad took a picture of the outside menu. The ice cream sounded like a good idea, and I realized we hadn’t had dinner yet, so we went in. Underneath the ground, it was a big place! The weird thing was that it was full! After we got our food, including my dad’s special-order-no-sauce-filet-o-fish that took an extra 5 minutes to make, I looked around, and there were absolutely no places to sit. People would watch certain tables like hawks and when one would open, people would literally run to sit there. We had to wait for a table for a while. We finally got one with someone else’s trash all over it, but at that point it really didn’t matter. It was so busy that I wanted to know what time it was, but I couldn’t find a clock anywhere. (You would think with so many knock-off watch places, I could find a decent watch to buy, but no.) We finally found one on the TV that some people were watching. It took a while before I could figure out what time 00:22:12 was. Dad and I finally figured that it stood for midnight twenty-two and twelve seconds. When I try to sleep at night, it’s weird getting used to the noise of the traffic that is still going on.. the traffic that continues the whole night. It’s noisy.

I did experience jet lag yesterday. Actually, I’ll start from the beginning of the day.

We woke up at like 8 and showered (this city makes you filthy—I’m tempted to take like two showers a day, at least) in order to meet our tour guide at 9:30. We then went in our bus to a couple of places. Oh, really fast before I forget, I was going to put down how interesting the vehicles are here. There are absolutely no trucks. Not even a little two door Toyota have I seen. The cars are really narrow, compared to ours, and the buses are really really narrow, compared to ours. Our tour bus seats I remember looked absolutely TINY when I first got picked up in it. I wondered if they were seats meant for a child. However, I realized that I do physically FIT in one, it’s just not what I’m used to thinking as fitting in. Like, in America, to “fit” in a seat means that one has room to move about and ooze over the seat, if necessary. Here, the people are all so little. (The tour guide was joking about a new.. how would you say it… 6 person cable car that they just put in. He said that it fits 6 Chinese, 4 German, and 8 Japanese. My cousin Lance mumbled in the back that that meant that about 2 Americans could fit in it.) I haven’t seen an obese person yet. Maybe they all just chill in their apartments and not on the streets, where I’ve been… or maybe they don’t exist! Ok, I know they exist.. but still.. I wonder.

Where was I? Oh yes. Tour. We got picked up and went to the south end of HK island. There was a beach there. Apparently it used to be polluted in like 1986 and then the government took all the crap sand away and put in some new sand. There are now 20 thousand swimmers/sun bathers there on average. Our tour guide, Matthew, joked that sometimes they call it “Excuse Me” Bay instead of Refuge Bay because you have to say excuse me so many times (or you’ll get slapped by the sunbathing woman you just stepped on). Our day was kinda overcast and breezy, so there really weren’t that many people there. However, it was still warm. The humidity kept things still feeling quite warm. For the most part, we had the place to ourselves. On the other side of the beach, there were a bunch of colorful statues made out of that tile that almost everything in HK is made out of. I guess back around WWI time they had a problem with pirates so they made the statues and put them there in order to keep the evil [pirate] spirits out. I guess it worked because the pirates really stopped around there. Chinese people are so superstitious.

Following the beach and my ice cream cone (I got a Nestle Drumstick that I was munching everywhere), we went to Victoria Peak. It’s like the Beverly Hills of Hong Kong. All the rich people live there. Matthew was talking about feng shui and how this one building looked like a giant burning cigarette. Someone told the owner that it looked like that and he got really upset because that was bad feng shui and his building was likely to be burned down. He hired an expert and he told him to put a pool on the top of it to keep the fire signs balanced with the water or whatever and there’s been a pool on top ever since. No one swims in it, but it’s interesting to hear about. Apparently, feng shui gets really expensive, but up in Victoria Peak, no one cares; they’re all rich enough that money doesn’t matter. Jackie Chan lives up there! When we got to the top, it was too cloudy to see very far (sad, I know) and it was very windy. They turned the outlook point into a tourist attraction though and put this big ole mall on the top of the mountain so you can shop while you’re there. We met this little old man selling laminated copies of what the peak looked like on a beautiful day and then what it looked like back in 1952. He was so nice. I felt bad though because you can’t make much money selling money pictures for about the equivalent of 2 dollars for two. Alas.

After the peak, we went to Aberdeen, where we took a tour of the Aberdeen Jewelry Factory. It was so cool! The tour ended with us in the showroom where all the finished jewelry was… I’m sure it was well priced for diamonds and gold, but it was still expensive to me! It was kinda fun to have the counter people fawn over you though. This one lady kept putting diamond rings on my fingers and I kept having to take them off. Dang it.

Next to the factory was another factory entitled something to the effect of “East Sea Fish Balls Company” or something. My dad and I were snickering and I mumbled that that was funny. Then Matthew asked what was so funny about it. (Uh….?!) I stalled for time and then my dad changed the subject and said something about how he had a soup with them it in or something. (I think it’s just a bunch of fish rolled up in a little ball or something.)

I just said “or something” a lot. Oops.

After Aberdeen was the sampan ride. We went around in a sweet little ancient sampan boat and toured the HK harbor where the fishermen live.

Later, Dad had some coconut soy milk. It was pretty good! I bought 2 liters of evian water. That was better. When we got back from the tour, we went down to the hotel’s restaurant for dim sum… that was so good! Best dim sum I’ve ever had. (Dim sum is like what you have for breakfast. It’s a bunch of, like, Chinese appetizers that you eat as a meal. You just order a bunch of different varieties and they bring out this small portion of each. Then you sample everything and eat so many varieties you eventually get full. So good.) We got a substantial discount for being hotel guests too. Sweet!

One of the most fun things that I like here is that you can just walk out on the street and within minutes find a bakery or drug store or whatever you need and I can just buy a Chinese sweet roll to snack on just on a whim. There are a couple fresh flower and fruit markets too.. but woo wee do the durian fruits stink!! I watched a thing on them on the food channel.. this guy was trying all sorts of random food. That day was Asian day. He could eat everything except the durian fruit. Look it up—it’s so nasty. Smells like… rotting flesh or something.

When we got back to the hotel room after dim sum, I was feeling a little tired. My dad called his Bishop friend from his mission and they arranged to meet in a few hours. Dad saw I was tired and suggested a nap. I didn’t want to but before I could finish my protesting sentence, I was asleep.

Um…. Seven hours later, we woke up. Whoops. We apologized profusely and arranged to meet him today instead. He’s going to take half a day off of work to show us around a bunch of church sites! Cool, huh!!

So yes, I experienced jet lag. It was one in the afternoon here which would have been about 11 at night back home. (HK time is the same as eastern time, only the AM/PM is flipped. It’s exactly halfway around the world from NY. Just subtract two hours from it and flip the AM/PM and you get home time.)

We went shopping from about an hour after I woke up until about midnight. It was so fun!! You have to barter with the shopkeepers (more like tentkeepers… and the market was so huge! Think EISF on steroids) to get the price you want. It seemed that the shopkeepers on the outside had more expensive prices than the ones on the inside, but the goods were all virtually the same. So you had to be smart about it. It was funny listening to the women who try to sell to you at one price and you walk away and then about 5 shops down you find the exact same thing at half the price. Literally. I want to shop more but they tell me I can find half the stuff in China for probably even cheaper. Grumble. Ok, true. Finding a way to pack it all is going to be the fragile stuff. How do you pack breakables?! Great.

Anyway, we’re supposed to meet dad’s friend Cecil soon. I’ll try to post tomorrow! Tomorrow morning we leave HK for Guangzhou via train. I’ll be in the Ever Joint Hotel tomorrow night. We’ll see what their internet policy is.

Oh, P.S. Dad was deleting some pics and for some reason it started chunking them in groups of nine so we accidentally deleted a buttload of pics from his camera’s memory card. Consequently, I will post some pics as soon as we recover them.

Sweet trash can.

Yay! Dad was having fun finally!

Big tile statue.. decoration. some are there to keep the pirates away.


Me pretending to be the goddess of repulse bay


more pics when we un-delete the memory card.. whooops