the great hong kongian novel: a tale of two special administrative regions

Foreword: This post is way longer than I intended it to be. (The original title was "hong kong highlight reel"). If you don't have a desk job with great internet and a lot of time to kill, feel free to just look at the pictures.

fun fact #1: the first 1 1/2 days of the trip were spent with a tour group. aside from deb, corey, myself, sandy-teacher, and patrick-teacher, the tour was entirely peopled by koreans. the tour itself was in korean. apparently, the tour guide rarely said anything worth hearing anyway (sandy said the tour guide spent quite awhile musing on the differences between chinese and korean bathing), so i guess it was for the best. this was made up for in part by the fact that nearly everyone in hong kong speaks english.

Day 1: Thursday

We went to a place called Repulse Bay (seriously). Sandy was completely repulsed by the place, but I didn't think it was that bad. It was a man-made beach (they shipped the sand in from Australia!) with a lot of really tacky Buddhist statues and the like. I think tacky just may be my preferred aesthetic.


We took an entertaining boat ride to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant. It was an opulent, decadent experience, and we had some of the strongest, most god-awful liquor ever produced by man.

After that, we went to Victoria Peak, and took a sweet tram ride down the mountain. There was an incredible view of Hong Kong all alight. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but if you go to the link, you'll see some.


Day 2: Friday

We visited Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong Avenue of Stars. This was awesome. There were stars and hand prints for all the famous Chinese actors. Who'd have thought that such high-flyin', sword-wieldin', ass-kickin', name-takin' martial artists would have such tiny mitts? My hands absolutely dwarf Jet Li's.

(These hand prints are of Tony Leung, aka Broken Sword of "Hero" fame.)

fun fact #2: i guess i've never really been on a guided tour before, but apparently they always try to get you to buy stuff somewhere from some illegitimate miscreants who will give the tour guide a kickback. our tour guide tried to get us to buy... mattresses. we were taken to some illegal warehouse to be talked into buying mattresses... the most illogical purchase ever for a vacationing individual, if you ask me.

After the mattress debacle, we were freed from the chains of the tour, and took a pleasant stroll in Kowloon Park. This is about the time that we realized that Hong Kong has an incredible variety of really amazing- looking trees, namely ones with very impressive roots that can circumvent rocks and walls to get into that sweet, sweet soil.

When the night rolled around, Deb, Partick, the Chois, and myself went to the annual Lunar New Year Fireworks Display, also at Victoria Harbor. These fireworks blew every other fireworks show I've ever seen right out of the water (pun very much intended). The people who invented fireworks sure do know how to do it up right. They had fireworks that took the shape of the Chinese character for "Beijing," and the numbers 2,0,0, and 8 (Although they never quite got all four of 'em up there at once. As Deb so eloquently put it, 'They have the technology, but not the logic.') Apparently, there were about 400,000 people there.

fun fact #3: when finding themselves in crowded situations, asians really love to push people. the koreans do it (especially the middle-aged women or "ajumas") but the chinese do it with a zest and vigor that i haven't seen in the koreans.

The Chois turned out to be extremely adept at managing both the hordes of people and the Hong Kong subways, and we made it back to the hotel in record time. After a short respite, Deb, Patrick, Corey, and I headed out to "Central" to check out the Hong Kong party scene. And what a scene it was. The area turned out to be full of bars and New Year fun. Corey and I had decided earlier on making a different plan than the rest of the group for day 3, namely one that would allow us to sleep later, so we took a thorough tour of the bars and closed Hong Kong around 5 am. There was a great deal of boasting on my part about having kicked China's ass on the Chinese New Year. Some German guys tipped us off on the location of McDonald's, but roping a taxi proved to be difficult. We couldn't figure out if it was because we were white, drunk, on the wrong side of the street, or some combination of the three. In any case, we eventually nabbed one and made it to McDonald's just in time for the changeover to breakfast, allowing us to eat both a burger and a McMuffin. Also, the guy ahead of us in line turned out to be a Hofstra graduate! He even showed me his Hofstra ID. For the remainder of the night, I drove Corey absolutely mad with my intense and very vocal disbelief at having run into such a person.

Day 3: Saturday

fun fact #4: there was a man on our tour who we affectionately dubbed "the cookie monster." the first night of the tour, he got absolutely blasted and macked viciously on this absurdly oversized carry-on bag full of nothing but cookies. we took quite a liking to the man after he fell asleep on the bus clinging desperately to his bag of snacks, and even after we had broken from the tour, we kept happily spotting him around hong kong.

Corey and I made moves around noon. We had a delicious Thai meal, failed to visit a temple because the line was absurd, and made our way to Cat Street, a market-alley. The pushy salespeople touting their wares were plentiful. I was eyeing a necklace with a big medallion with something carved into it. Upon asking the lady what it was, she informed us that it was a "penis." I asked, "Penis?" to which she responded, "Yes, penis. For long life." I asked repeatedly, but she kept insisting that it was a penis, which it surely wasn't. I inspected the item again. "Oh, you mean a phoenix?" I asked. To which she responded, "Yes, ok. My English bad." I bought the necklace.

Then we spotted another park. We went to it. It was nice.

Then came the great Macauian debacle. The ferry system was unprepared for the New Year weekend rush, to say the least. It took us hours to get there, hours to unsuccessfully search for a hotel when we realized it'd take hours to get back to Hong Kong, and said hours to get back to Hong Kong. While we were there however, we did eat the most delicious buffet of every meat under the sun. It was at a restaurant called "Africana," and it was made up of a bunch of little huts that you ate in. We couldn't get in touch with Mr. Choi or Sandy, but being the gumshoes that we are, we went on the knowledge that Mr. Choi loves the MGM Grand and baccarat, and we found the rest of the group straightaway. I lost a bunch of money on the slots right away, but the worm turned when I hit the roulette table. I hit a bunch of numbers, doubling my money a few times, and ended up breaking even. Corey and I were again separated from the group when they left early. We went searching for a bar and instead found a bowling alley. It was in the basement of a dilapidated old warehouse down a seedy back-alley. There were about 6 lanes in the whole place, and the state of the bathroom was beyond questionable. The record absolutely stopped when we walked in. Apparently they don't get many foreigners in there. Again I broke even, as we each won one game. Then came the Great Escape, and we finally returned to our hotel at about 7:30 am.

Day 4: Sunday

We ate lunch at Outback and I had my first steak in four months. It was awesome. We did a little shopping, and then Corey and I decided we wanted to go to see a temple and a jade market.

First, we went to Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. It was huge and beautiful. Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are all practiced there. While we expected a touristy, walk through the temple and take pictures sort of thing, we instead got a faceful of incense. We were among the very few tourists in the place, and instead it was packed with Chinese who had gone to the temple to pray. Despite the message that was being played repeatedly over the speakers advising the worshipers to limit their incense, each of them was holding a fistful of smoking sticks. I thought I'd die of smoke inhalation, but it was a pretty awesome thing to see.

Then we again stumbled upon a park. Hong Kong is filled with parks.

We made our way to the jade market. This was another cool place. We were harassed by peddlers, and both ultimately probably got ripped off for some phony jade. But we didn't pay much, and Corey got a cool little lion-y guy and I got a sweet bracelet.

We played in an arcade for a piece and then met up with the rest of the group again. We ate Mexican food, another thing we've been deprived of for months. Then I went with Patrick-teacher to get a massage. The massage place was as questionable as the bowling alley in Macau, only more so, because instead of bowling, I was getting a massage. The masseuse absolutely brutalized my back, but it was all to the good, because I felt great afterward.

And that's my tale. We went back to the hotel, got on our tour bus, and went to the airport late Sunday night. We slept the whole plane ride back, and got to Gunsan in time to take a brief nap before dreaded work on Monday.

much love, kelly