Alex's Asian Adventure

This blog entry is long because I've had an eventful day and feel the need to vomit my experiences on the world. This was yet another day of travel. However, this was a more exciting day of travel because I went to Hong Kong through Shenzhen, where I had to pick up my physical Air India ticket for the flight to Delhi. This was difficult for several reasons:

1. My CITS contact (CITS being the Chinese national travel agency), Mr. Huang, appears to be in Hong Kong today. I briefly talked to him yesterday saying "I'm coming to Shenzhen tomorrow, I need my ticket" and the conversation died (due to my lack of cell phone funding at that moment) before anything could be settled.
2. Shenzhen was ridiculously rainy. I mean torrential downpour. Disgusting. I walked around in this horrid weather with an 80L pack on my back, and a 35L daypack on my chest, wearing my superatomic Mountain Hardwear Backcountry Recon Parka (everyone should have a jacket like this). Every time I walked into a place to ask for directions or something, people looked at me with this combination of Shock & Awe. Shock because I was a white Westerner clearly loaded down and absolutely drenched with water. Awe because I think none of these Chinese could imagine being in my shoes. They carry umbrellas to shield themselves against the sun, for cryin' out loud. I think they might be really terrified of rain. Maybe they felt pity for me.
3. The CITS office is actually closed on Sundays, a fact that I was not made aware of until this afternoon.

By good fortune, I managed to make my way to the right approximate area for the closed CITS office. By more good fortune, on my 6th attempt to reach someone at the office, a human who speaks English picked up and explained that the office was closed. He then directed a taxi driver to his apartment building where he met me ticket in hand. Finally, I completed the process of moving my flight to India to a day earlier. The final leg of this operation took about an hour and a half of walking around in monsoon-like rain. The good news is that I now have a way of getting to Delhi, and I also know that my giant backpack is, in fact, more or less rainproof - if the contents didn't get soaked in today's hurricane-like rainfall, they won't get wet in ordinary rain either.

Anyway, I crossed the border into Hong Kong without trouble and got to the city (the Kowloon side) at around 3 PM. I don't understand this "border" thing very well, considering Hong Kong is actually a part of China. However, under the "one China, two systems" policy it seems like Hong Kong gets to act like a sovereign state in many of the ways that count. Hong Kong has its own currency, for instance - and it also doesn't seem to be affected by the Great Firewall of China. Macau, the former Portugese colony and current Chinese gambling haven, also has its own currency. Weird.

My impression of Hong Kong is that it's something like the London of Asia. It's a city for Big Swinging Dicks and Dickettes. However, unlike London, a wannabe-BSD like me can actually afford to buy things here. That said, it's way more expensive than any of the places I've been to in China. For instance, a single room here costs me 160 HKD per night (roughly 150 kuai), whereas a bigger and better room cost me 50 kuai in Lijiang, and a totally swank room cost 150 kuai in Lhasa.

Speaking of which, the room I'm staying at is so small I think I could touch each of the four walls simultaneously. I might even try to do exactly that tonight. I've literally stayed in tents that were bigger - notably the giant Mountain Hardwear Space Station we slept in last summer on the Mendenhall Glacier. Ahh, good times....

Anyway, just like London is the posh luxury shopping capital of Europe, Hong Kong is the same for Asia. There is a shopping mall here featuring such retailers as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Fendi and Versace. There's opportunities to spend big bucks, galore. The same stores exist in other cities, like Chengdu, but the scale here is just staggering. Simple things are more expensive, too. For instance, street food is on average 3x more expensive in Hong Kong than elsewhere in China. Restaurants of the "10 kuai dinner" variety don't seem to exist here. For instance, today I somehow managed to spend 160 HKD (150 kuai or so) on dinner because I was in the part of town that doesn't have much cheap food - Causeway Bay, on the island. The upshot is that the same meal would have cost triple that amount in Canada, and I was served by a beautiful Chinese girl with gorgeous long black curly hair. Mmmm.......... long black curly hair....

So yes. Things are relatively expensive here, and I'm suffering from sticker shock after being spoiled by being able to live like a king on peanuts in the rest of China. Of course, if I had come straight from Canada I would be creaming my pants at how cheap everything is. What's also interesting is that some things are actualy more expensive here than they would be in Canada. For example, an Arc'Teryx pack I spotted in a gear shop (RT35 - I really want one) is about 50% more expensive here. Bummer.

Also, the scale of Hong Kong is unbelievable. The place is actually pretty big considering how built up it is. Hong Kong Island has a skyline that makes you jaw drop, and I saw it through fog! There are countless enormous beautiful skyscrapers. There are fancy restuarants everywhere (including a Morton's, Big Swinging Dick central). There is an enormous number of shops where you can buy almost anything, there are specialized markets for all kinds of junk (I don't think I want to know what they sell at the Ladies Market). There are people all over the place. A lot of the city is seriously modern. For instance, the subway here makes Toronto look like a clownshow, which I suppose it actually is. Many of the skyscrapers are new. There's neon everywhere. Sensory overload.

However, I should say that in the middle of all this there's lots of evidence of the seamy underbelly of Hong Kong. For instance, the building my guesthouse is located in, Mirador Mansions, looks ugly as sin. When you pass by it, you'd think it's ready for demolition, and going through the hallways only reenforces that impression - fortunately, the actual guesthouse part of the building is renovated and quite nice. People seem to be crammed like sardines in this place, and have to compete for living space with the ubiquitous McDonalds and Starbucks locations. I appreciate the latter, but not the former - and I've yet to set foot in a McCafe, whatever that monstrocity is.

Another similarity with London is that the drivers own the road, and pedestrians better watch out. This is not a city built for walking. If you think of crossing the road, you're likely to be stopped by either:

• A metal barrier.
• Your desire to avoid becoming a red splattery stain on the pavement.
• Both.

Road-crossing is restricted to overpasses and underpasses built for pedestrians. If you want to cross a street where there's no nearby overpass, your only option is climbing over the metal anti-pedestrian fences that line the roads and being very brave. There aren't as many cars here as in Beijing, Xi'an or Chengdu, but they drive much faster because they don't have to worry about pedestrians or cyclists with giant Beijing-style cojones.

I'm also somewhat bemused by the fact that I can get by here with English, since almost everyone speaks at least some English. In the rest of China, you're sometimes hard-pressed to find an English speaker, and if you want to buy yourself a bottle of water you better be ready to point and pantomime unless you can mumble "wo yao shuey" in a way that the native spaeker can understand, and then comprehend that when the storekeeper mumbles "liang kuai wu" in the middle of other incoherent rambling that is a signal for you to fork over 2.5 kuai. Here's everything's much simpler; they say "8 dollars" for the same bottle of water and you fork over the 8 HKD with a feeling of helplessness and resignation.

Tomorrow is my first full day in Hong Kong and I intend to spend part of it picking out a taylor to have some clothes made. I'm not a Big Swinging Dick, but maybe I can at least look respectable at work from time to time. Tayloring is actually quite cheap here, and seems to be monopolized by the South Asian community. Every taylor that accosted me on the street today (and there were quite a few) appeared to be of Indian/Pakiskistani/Bangladeshi origin. It might be a racket.