Friday in Hong Kong

Well, this is our last full day in China. It’s hard to believe. It feels like we have been planning and anticipating this trip for so long; now it is drawing to a close. It has been a phenomenal experience.
Our day started very early as we needed to get to a 9AM train to Hong Kong and make it through the GuangZhou traffic. We packed Thursday night, and got everybody up at 6AM. We enjoyed our last delicious breakfast at the White Swan, schlepped our bags down to the lobby and waited to get on the hotel shuttle to the train station.
We got a mini tour of the city on the way over. We saw the other side of town and what seemed to be the business district …it was quite impressive. We arrived at the train station and had a bit of a walk…we were clearly in a modern part of China…they swapped out the stationary steps for escalators (note: there is no place one may go in China were one does not encounter a significant number of steps. They seem to enjoy a variety, and there seems to be no requirement whatsoever to make them uniform. Ever walk up a set of stairs and think there is one more step and there’s not? I did that a lot.) We were clearly a spectacle with our bags…the five us each pushing our steamer trunks down the street; as if the blond hair wasn’t enough.
We made our way up the escalator to the outer waiting lounge for the Hong Kong train T805. This was the waiting area to go through customs, which would then lead to the waiting lounge to wait for the train. I was relieved to see that we weren’t the only ones with a lot of bags, there were other uber-packers there too. I was concerned about where we were going to go with all these bags. It is amazing to me that there is really no accommodations made for this. All the train has is a modest overhead rack, that should I put one of Linda’s well packed cases on it, it would surely collapse crushing some unsuspecting Chinese national.
The doors opened and we went through to customs. Now, the way we do this is we each go up individually. So I had out the passports with the departure cards in them and gave them to each of the girls and Linda. This time it so happened I went through first. I wish I had a picture of this (I don’t dare whip out the camera around these very serious Chinese immigration officials). I turned around and there is Ashley..well sort of. I saw the top of a blond head and a hand sticking up holding a US Passport. You could hardly see her over the counter. The immigration officer had to standup and lean over the counter to see that there was someone there. I was proud of the girls, they each went though on their own, managing their own documents.
We got on the train without too much fuss. It was a standard commuter train with 4 seats across, 2 on each side of the aisle. We settled in and at a few minutes after 9, we bid farewell to GuangZhuo and headed off towards Hong Kong. The trip was about an hour and forty minutes. It was an overcast day with drizzle. The country side was grey, and the scenery was mainly fields and small villages. The attendants on the train, I assume they were like conducts, were two lovely young ladies that were dressed in military type uniforms. They checked tickets and collected trash. A little lady in a frilly apron came by later, apparently asking if anybody wanted to order something to eat or drink. I didn’t even attempt it. I saw her come down the isle a little later with a tray of tea. If you didn’t know it, tea is really big here.
The girls pretty much played their DS’s and looked out the window. Linda read her book and Simon slept. I read my book, snoozed a little and watched the country side. Before we knew it, we were pulling into Hong Kong Station. Once again we did the customs thing (I know, your thinking why do you have to go through customs if you’re still in China. We all know that Hong Kong was handed over from British rule back to China in 1997. Well, this is part of the deal in how China took Hong Kong back. They basically left it the same, with the same security measures, economic system, money, etc. Perhaps you have heard the slogan “One Country Two Systems”. It means we can be a communist country and a capitalistic one and make big bucks. In China, you can’t just decide to live in another city or take a job in another city or leave the country…you must have the government’s permission to do all that.. There are lots of mainland Chinese who want to go to Hong Kong and enjoy the freedom and economic advantage they might find there. This is one of the reason for the customs at Hong Kong still existing between the mainland. It is a way for China to continue to control the inflow of people from mainland China. For example, Simon was only allowed to enter Hong Kong for 7 days (we were allowed in for 90)).
We headed out to the sidewalk and waited for our driver. Up pulled what looked like a cargo van. Linda guessed this was an old FedEx delivery vehicle with old park benches bolted inside. I think she might be right. We got very spoiled. All of the drivers we had up to this point kept their vehicles in impeccable shape. While this was clean it clearly had been rode hard and had several lives….but it got us to our destination; the Golden Mile Holiday Inn at Hong Kong.
We got checked in, and agreed to meet back up with Simon at 1PM to head out to Stanley Market. That gave us about an hour and half to clean up and grab something to eat…we were all getting hungry. We dumped our stuff and headed out to the street. Now, we have encountered lots of crowds in China. Unlike 13 years ago, we noticed they seem to actually form lines more often. Before they used to bunch up a lot.
Still, there is less concern over personal space. You just sort of plow through to get where you need to go. For example, when getting off a plane in the US, we usually empty the plane row by row, letting the people in the row ahead of you empty before you proceed up the aisle. Not necessarily true in China. You need to be somewhere …you go, whether that means through, around or over. I guess with 1.5 billion people it’s necessary. One thing about this “personal space” issue that did bother me was the folks on the street begging and the people hawking items (these people were EVERYWHERE). They have no problem touching you. I had one lady come up and actually start slapping me in the arm! It was effective. She got my attention. I don’t what she wanted, she was trying to sell me something. At first you try to be polite and say “no thank you” (which is something like “Bu Xei Xei” in mandarin). Then when they starting poking you and slapping you, you want to land a right hook to their melon. Now if this lady was trying to tell me my pants were on fire, I could understand her behavior. But she was trying to sell me a map of the city or some ridiculous trinket. The panhandlers come up and touch the girls hair, and take their tin cups and poke you in the gut and in the arm and literally stand next to you so they are leaning on you. This was a little troublesome for me.
So we found a new twist when we got to the streets of Hong Kong…the ultra aggressive merchandise hawks. These guys, many of them eastern Indians, play some sort of zone coverage on the side walk. You can’t walk 10 feet with someone approaching you..”hey boss, how bout a nice tailored suit. We make nice!” Or “how ‘bout designer copy handbags…you look good!” I had one guy standing in front of a jewelry store where he clearly worked try to sell me no line bifocals! I guess these guys can get you a good deal on anything.
But there is a part of this crowd survival instinct the Chinese have that I respect. It is sort of a “shove or be shoved” approach. I believe it is what has formed the basis of the driving rules of the road that we have been observing. I believe it must have its roots in a form of pedestrian chicken. I was walking along in Stanley market jammed up behind a bunch of people on a narrow street. All of a sudden I felt myself going sideways, off balance and stumbling to the left after receiving a squarely placed blow to my right side. As I turned, ready to give someone a piece of my mind, I realized I had just been hip-checked by a 4’ 6” Chinese woman who couldn’t have been a day under 85 years old. All I could do was start laughing, think about their driving technique and think to myself, “well played, lady.”
Before we met up with Simon at 1PM, our mission was to navigate these streets, cluttered with people and merchandise peddlers and grab something to it. It was at this point I learned something about my wife of 15 years that I never knew. She can spot a McDonalds at 300 yards with the naked eye. I don’t know if she actually saw it was just using the force like they did in Star Wars…but she got us there. We grabbed a quick burger and made it back to meet Simon. The plan was to use public transportation to go to the far side of Hong Kong Island and go to the Stanley Market. Stanley Market is like a fancy, permenant flea market situated on Repulse bay on Hong Kong. It used to be a place where you would go get phenomenal bargains… now, it was fun but not so cheap as we remembered.
Anyway, we got on the subway that went UNDER the harbor and took us to Hong Kong island. At this point, it was obvious Simon wasn’t too clear on how to find the right bus…but he asked a few locals and before you knew it, we were on a double decker bus winding up the hillsides on incredibly narrow roads on our way across the island. The view is breath-taking (and sometimes downright scary). On the way we pass an infamous building that has a hole in it. You can see it in the picture. It is a big appartment buidling with a square hole. The story, as I remember it, was that this building while being built fell on much misfortune (people were killed, etc.). It was so bad that the owner had a fung shua expert diagnose the problem. You see, they built the building in a position that blocked the dragon from coming down off the mountain and getting to the sea (water in front of your house and moutains behind is good fung shua unless you happen to be blocking a dragon who wants to pass by). So they literally modified the building and cut a hole in it to let the dragon pass. Now all is well.
We got to Stanley Market and split up with Simon. He wanted to head for high tea. We had had a quick burger McDonald’s but needed something more to tied us over. So, we stopped at a local café for some appetizers. There is a really big rugby tournament going on in Hong Kong right now. Everywhere you go you run into super-sized rugby players from all over Europe. It seemed right now they were all in the pubs along Repulse Bay.
We spent the next 2 hours walking around the shops and doing a little shopping. These places are funny…they all really have identical stuff. Little of it, if any is authentic and you can bargain on anything. I found that if you go in and ask the price a group of items, then ask for the price individually multiple times you will get multiple answers. These guys will drop their price by 50% with out even trying.. You can still buy the stuff cheap…but the mind reels to think of what little amount they are buying the stuff for. But, it is a lot of fun shopping and haggling.
At around 5pm we hopped back on a public bus and headed back towards the financial district. We got a little way up the road and got stopped in traffic. We could make no sense of the traffic control. We were at a toll booth and they had our lane complete stopped. Two lanes over, a police man would stop the traffic for about five minutes and then let them go through…he did this on and off at weird intervals for about 30 minutes. During that whole 30 minutes…we sat. Eventually we were allowed to go and we crawled back to downtown.
Once there, we walked over to the tram to go up to the top of Victoria’s peak. It was still overcast, but we were hopefully we might get a good view. The tram has been running since the late 1800’s and is one of the steepest trams in existence. We boarded up and took the 10 minute ride up the big hill. When we got there, we got off the tram righ in the gift shop. Turns out, the place at the peak is about 7 levels of gift shops. It is essentially a mini-mall. We took about 7 escalators up to the top observation deck. And when we got there, as our luck always has it, we were standing in a big cloud. You could hardly see your hand in front of your face. The cloud moved in and out with the wind, so we did get some glimpses of the city. It was an amazing facility…something to marvel at. We walked around a bit, took a break for some coffee in a coffee shop in the tower and gazed out the window at the skyline, or at least those parts of it that became visible as the wind blew. It was a cool ride and a nice facility…just too bad we didn’t have a clear evening.
We made our way down the hill and got on another city bus. It is probably worth mentioning that all this public transport was easy because 1) we had a guide who spoke the language, and while not knowing the way all the time, he could at least ask for directions 2) we each had an octopus card that could be used for any of these locations and transportation means (a reload-able transit card). The bus took us down to the ferry boat landing. We hopped the ferry across the harbor to Hong Kong. The views were spectacular. We pulled into the landing, stumbled off the boat and began walking to our hotel. Thank goodnes we had Simon…because there was no way I was finding my way back. But we got there, safe and sound and exhausted. So, we headed to the room to get rested up. We have an early morning tomorrow…we’re heading home.