Hong Kong and China (part 1)

Hong Kong/China

March 29-April 3

 

DAY 1

We docked in Hong Kong on Monday March 29 at around 7am.  After a brief immigration process (just picking up our passports in person) and a relatively short diplomatic briefing, we were off the ship at around 10am.  Our docking situation reminded me a lot of ours in South Africa, except this time, we were literally docked at a huge, very nice, upscale shopping mall (something that I’d soon find Hong Kong has an abundance of). A gangway, very much like a jetway for airplanes, connected us to the middle of the mall, immediately surrounding us with name-brand stores, restaurants, and one of the several food courts in the mall.  After waiting for friends to get off and spending a few minutes online at one of the complimentary computers at a coffee shop, me and my friend Jonathan (and lots of other SAS students) made a long journey to the Stanley Market, a large waterfront indoor/outdoor market, with lots of restaurants, on the other side of the island.  We began by taking the 10 minute Star Ferry from the small island our ship was docked (still part of Hong Kong) to Hong Kong’s “mainland”.  Conveniently, the Star Ferry docks connected to another huge mall that we had to walk through to get out.  After a full half hour of trying to figure our way around/out of the second mall, we ended up at the Four Seasons hotel that was connected to it, and the concierge was kind enough to provide us with a detailed and personalized sheet telling us how to take the bus system to Stanley, as well as provide us with the name of a great Dim Sum restaurant there and call to make sure that they could seat us.  Maybe they thought we were staying there???  After about a 40 minute bus ride, we arrived at the market, absolutely starving.  We then had an amazing dim sum meal at the restaurant we had been recommended.  We had several kinds of dumplings, a noodle thing, and something else that was delicious, not quite sure what it was.  Our meal was also our first instance showing that Hong Kong wouldn’t be as cheap as the countries we had recently visited (India, Thailand, and Vietnam).  After eating, we walked around the waterfront and market for a while and eventually took the bus back to “downtown” Hong Kong and then took the ferry back to the ship.  After getting back to the ship at around 6pm, we had dinner on the ship and then at 8pm the decks of the ship were filled with people watching the nightly laser-light show on downtown Hong Kong.  Yes, a nightly laser-light show. What does that mean???  It’s hard to describe, but every night at 8pm the many buildings making up Hong Kong’s immense skyline partake in an immense laser light show for about 15 minutes.  Each building “participates” in some way.  Some have huge colorful lights, some windows flash on and off in cool patterns, and several have extremely powerful green lasers that shine.  It was pretty cool to see an entire skyline “put on a show”.  Afterwards, a bunch of the Chicago people and I went to a California Pizza Kitchen conveniently in the ship’s mall for some appetizers and drinks.  Afterwards, we took the ferry to the “mainland” and went out on what I can easily say was the craziest street I have ever seen.  To preface, I should mention that the Rugby World Championships were being played in Hong Kong that week, so there were lots of fans from all over the world there to support their teams.  Usually, SAS students “take over” a street, but this was taken over by crazy rugby fans.  I can honestly say that, hands down, the all of the Halloween celebrations I’ve seen in Madison did not even compare to this.

 

DAY 2

On our second day, I woke up at around 11-ish, walked around the mall and the neighboring streets for a little, and then had lunch in a COMPLETELY local food court type thing.  Looking for a “local” lunch experience, I found an underground food court somewhere, filled only with locals (don’t be mistaken; it was a nice place, with lots of business-men and women on their lunch breaks), with not a word of English printed anywhere, and said this is the perfect place for lunch.  I ordered by pointing at a picture of a plate of food on the menu above the counter, hoping that it was the chicken and rice that it looked like.  I turned out to be correct, and it was actually a pretty good meal, although kind of awkward being literally the only American in the place.  Afterwards, I made my way back to the ship, did some emailing, and packed for our trip to Beijing.  Me and my friend Scott (who spent the morning on a SAS trip for a class) would be going to Beijing in a couple hours.  We were flying out of the city Shenzhen, not Hong Kong, which is part of China’s mainland and to get there had to take a shuttle there, go through immigration to exit Hong Kong and enter China, and then get a cab to the Shenzhen Airport.  The process took several hours, but we arrived with more than enough time to make the flight and even have a pretty awful airport Chinese food meal.  Our flight was three hours long and we were each fortunate enough to have several seats to ourselves, as the plane was not that crowded.  It was very interesting seeing how the airline industry in other countries is in so much better shape than ours, and how so many of the things that have been done away with in recent years are still present.  Everyone got hot towels, several drinks, and a surprisingly good duck/rice/vegetable meal.  We landed in Beijing at around 10pm, with no plans for where to stay for the night.  Not too worried, me and Scott, and two SAS girls that were on the plane with us found a very highly rated hostel in the heart of Beijing that we could stay at for the couple nights.  After a frustrating while trying to get a cab to understand where we were trying to go, and being helped by a very nice traffic officer (who also spoke no English) we were on the way to the hostel.  This was our first true experience of seeing how pretty much no one speaks English in China, which was a very weird concept for us since everywhere else we have been we could manage to get by communicating with at least a little bit of English.  We got to the hostel at around 11:30pm, checked out the room (which we were very impressed with (2 bunk beds)) and passed out.

 

DAY 3

We woke up the next morning at around 10am and went to Beijing’s central train station to buy our overnight train tickets to Shanghai for the next night.  I can’t even begin to describe the 2 hour process that it took us to get the tickets.  The train station was the size of an airport, and along the outside were dozens and dozens of ticket windows, each with at least 30 people in line.  And did I mention that there was not a word of English on any sign anywhere and that each line was for something different.  Or that for about an hour of trying to find help, no one, actually no one, spoke any English.  Eventually we decided to wait in one of the lines and had prepared a piece of paper with “Shanghai” in Chinese and the date we wanted to go.  After waiting in line for about a half hour, we got to the front only to see that the woman behind the counter spoke no English, couldn’t help us, and just moved on to the person behind us in line.  That was when an incredibly nice, young Chinese student, who had probably taken a basic English class saw us and tried to help us.  After asking several train station security guards, he was able to direct us to the “foreigner/tourist” ticket window, which was around several buildings and down a long corridor.  We thanked him and were finally able to buy our tickets.  Afterwards, we had a quick lunch nearby at what seemed to be a chain-like Chinese restaurant.  After lunch, we took the subway to Tieneman Square where we walked around for a while before going to the Forbidden City.  The Forbidden City was enormous, and seemed to be huge pavilion and building, one after another, before leading to a gigantic garden area.  We spent several hours there before going to see all of the Olympic stuff.  We got to see the Water Cube, which is immense (and blue), a lot bigger than it ever seemed on TV, as well its neighboring National Stadium (The Bird’s Nest), which we were fortunate to arrive just before the stopped selling tickets for tours.  We took a tour of the stadium, getting to walk freely on the field and sit in the stands while they looped highlights from last summer’s games on the many screens.  After the Olympic sites, we took the subway (unfortunately during rush hour) back.  This was the most insane train/subway experience ever.  I have never seen so many people cram into a train.  The train would arrive, already seemingly filled, with people sitting and standing, just to see another 50 people squeeze their way in.  After having to transfer three different times, we made it back to the station by our hostel.  On our walk back, we stopped at a delicious smelling, hole-in-the-wall dumpling place for a quick bite.  As we’d become accustomed to, the “menu” (list of 5 or 6 things on the wall) was all in Chinese with now numbers/prices, or at least not written in normal numeral characters.  There were 3 make-shift tables, the other two filled with locals.  It was pretty funny; after sitting down we knew the old man and woman running the place spoke no English and they knew that we spoke no Chinese.  We “ordered” simply by pointing at what the people at the other table were eating.  We ended up having four “trays” of 6-8 dumplings; all different kinds and all delicious.  When we were ready to pay, we had no idea how much our meal cost and they had no idea how to tell us.  So, the old woman took the amount we owe out of the register to show us how much to pay.  We were kind of unsure what she meant since she only held up 16 yuan, which is a little less than $2.  But we paid, and went back to the hostel.  After resting for a little and using their cheap internet stations, we went for a late dinner at a nearby restaurant where I had a decent chicken dish.   Next, we went back to the hostel, talked and played cards with a bunch of other SAS students staying there before going to bed.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

I’ll have the rest up in a few days, along with Japan’s post.  We get to Hawaii tomorrow morning; or for that matter in a few hours.  My phone WILL work, so please give me a call, regardless of what time it is for me.

 

Hope everything’s great at home and Happy Anniversary Nonny and Papa!!!