Metropolis
Date: Tuesday, August 9th
Location: Hong Kong
Cockroach count: still ZERO!
Pervert count: oh thousands . . .
This is my second night in Hong Kong (here on refered to as HK) and I must say that it is CRAZY here! So far, I've found it everything I thought it would be and so much more. Aunt Angie and Uncle Peter are the funniest hosts in the world (aside from Gabe's parents) and I am liking them both very much.
Today, I woke up bright and early again at 7am. I suppose I was slightly jet lagged as Sydney is two hours ahead of here. I decided to wander around my uncle's neighborhood on my own and was absolutely enthralled with everything. I walked around the park beside the apartment complex and was stunned with the gorgeous ocean/mountain view, the humid misty air, and all the people doing tai chi by the shore.
There were old ladies and gardeners wearing those big straw rice-patty-worker hats and they were fishing and gardening and whatnot. They thought I was crazy as I kept trying to snap pictures of everything and one strange guy rode by on his bike and said in chinese to me, "that's right pretty girl. keep taking pictures." and then promptly rode off.
I headed back to the apartment after my walk but had to cool down in the library on the way home as it was way too hot. The library was neat and I wandered around the children's section oogling at the Chinese copy of all the classic children's books I grew up reading.
Back at the apartment, we started off after my aunt's bowel movemnt - a very important affair bordering on sacred. If she can't poop, she doesn't leave the house that day. I'm not kidding you. My uncle told me all this over dinner last night and I didn't believe it for myself until this morning. My aunt came out finally and we could move on with our day, but before we could do so, she looked at me seriously and said, "How are your bowels? Have you gone number 2 yet? Are you going to be OK?"
After many assurances I was "regular" and that me and my bowels would be just fine, we left the house. My mother had warned me that my aunt and uncle were funny people but I wasn't quite prepared for this.
We headed onto the MTR (Mass Transit Railway, I think) and went to East Tsim Tsa Tsui where there is "The Avenue of Stars". It's a knock off of the avenue of star's handprints in Hollywood but with Chinese stars on it. I gazed intently at Andy Lau's handprints, Maggie Cheungs, Tony Leungs, Chow Yun Fat's, Jet Li's and so on and so forth. It was totally cool!
What's even neater is that they have a Jackie Chan souvenir shop there. It's jammed pack with posters, videos, DVDs, keychains, etc. all bearing Jackie Chan and ONLY Jackie Chan. I felt like going in for and joke and asking "Do you have any Andy Lau keychains by any chance?" but thought better of it.
There was a lovely view of the harbour and of Hong Kong island itself from the avenue and I stared intently past all the smog. I made out the Hong Kong and China bank buildings and all the other famous silhouettes from movies and postcards I'd seen throughout my life. Giant cargo ships and ferries filled the harbour and sailed along busily while the odd speedboat here and there darted between them. It was surreal. We hopped on a Star Ferry and decided to cross over from Kowloon to Hong Kong.
On the boat ride, my aunt sat there fanning herself (she carries a fan, kleenex, hand sanitizer an an umbrella with her everywhere here) while I busily snapped pictures of everything in sight. The ferry was dangerously slow moving and rocky but I survived and listened intently while my uncle chatted about HK. He loves this place and really enjoys spouting off impressive (and not so impressive) facts about it.
"Anything you could ever want to buy, anything you ever want to eat, any amount of money you ever want to spend, YOU CAN DO IT ALL IN HONG KONG." he kept saying over and over. I gazed out at the tall buildings, the insane shopping complexes and the signs everywhere and decided I believed him.
Once on land again, we wandered in and out of all the buildings with me oogling at everything while my aunt fanned herself and my uncle kept shouting HK propaganda at me. We went into the HSBC building, the China bank building (with the lion statue out front you see on their money!) and a whole whack of fancy malls where I window shopped at Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Versace, etc.
We also went into the tallest building in HK at the moment where my uncle enthusiastically exclaimed, "88 stories high! See? You'd never see this in Calgary! Why would you ever want to live there when you can live in Hong Kong? What does Calgary have the Hong Kong does not?"
"Snow. It's too freaking hot here."
He had no answer to that as my aunt was now busy fanning and kleenexing him after he'd worked up such a sweat getting all excited over telling me about hte tall buildings.
We walked into the IFC building which is located in the prime and richest part of town. I gazed at more name brand store window displays while my uncle kept raving about how each person standing within 50 feet of us could potentially be a multimillionaire. I smiled and tried to give my best impression of being impressed.
I guess he took that as a sign as he continued on ranting about how rich everyone was. "That guy in the suit over there that we just passed," he said excitedly under his breath, " he could be worth at least 2-3 million!"
I nodded and smiled.
"And that girl? That guy? They're all either CEOs or lawyers or accountants! You never realize how small you are till you come to a place like this! Everyone in this district is rich. You don't know what rich is until you come to Hong Kong."
I finally got tired of his tirade on being rich and said, "Yes, but we must remember uncle that money isn't everything."
He didn't seem to hear me. Instead, he dragged me into the nearest "CitySuper!" grocery store and showed me how expensive Australian eggplants and Japanese cabbages were. CitySuper! is the notoriously expensive grocers in HK where only the rich, yuppy and famous shop. Every item of food is imported and the prices are at least five times more than the other stores.
More nodding and smiling. My uncle was scoffing at all the prices and yet, at hte same time, telling me to admire the ppl who pay that much for it. I realised, with a pang, that I'd probably never get through to him and a simple comment like "money isn't everything" was falling on deaf ears.
We went from the richest part of town to one of the poorest. We hopped on the train and headed to the wet street market (gai see) in Wan Chai. It was my first ever experience in a Chinese market street and it was WICKED. Chickens in cages were everywhere. They were getting picked up all the time and displayed to the picky customers before meeting their doom. Fish, crabs, crayfish, shrimp, lobsters, ALL LIVE swam around in tanks. Crazy old ladies, shirtless old men pulling large carts with boxes of crabs on them. Other men in stained white wifebeaters selling fruit.
It stank. It was noisy. It was chaotic. It was AWESOME.
Personally, this was much more interesting to me than the rich part of town. I grew up singing the Chinese nursery rhymes about running to the street markets to buy chicken and turtles (in Cantonese, chicken and turtle rhyme with each other) and rumour has it that my dad was born/grew up in one of these gungy street things.
We walked through the market to the bus which took us to Victoria Peak where we did a 40 minute hike to and from the viewing point. We passed lots of stringy old men jogging in white tank tops and short shorts, the largest waterfall in HK, several dogs, and many mansions complete with servant's quarters and Philippino maids. At the top, the view was utterly gorgeous. I gazed out on the harbour and all of the Hong Kong/Kowloon business district.
Buildings were shoved onto everywhere that buildings could be shoved and where there was no more room for high rises, the ocean was being filled in to make room. They say that the inlet between Kowloon and Kong Kong is slowly disappearing. And while the metropolis was amazing, I was busy trying to snap pics of the goshawks and other birds that were flying about in the air. There were at least five hawks all swooping about and I was entranced by them.
Afterwards, we went out for another succulent sea food dinner of endangered habitat species and I decided to accept my fate of going to Green Peace hell. At least Iknew that most of China and Hong Kong was going with me. But why do those reef fish and crustaceans have to be so damned tastey? WHY? Heck, if I were a fish, I'd try to taste like crap. (I know, I know, they don't have a choice over how they taste but it's a thought.)
Well, am off to bed now. My aunt has given me a fan and a huge bag of kleenex to keep myself sweat free. She also told me to keep an umbrella around tomorrow so I could use it as a sun shade. I saw several ppl walking around like that today. Crazy place this!
Location: Hong Kong
Cockroach count: still ZERO!
Pervert count: oh thousands . . .
This is my second night in Hong Kong (here on refered to as HK) and I must say that it is CRAZY here! So far, I've found it everything I thought it would be and so much more. Aunt Angie and Uncle Peter are the funniest hosts in the world (aside from Gabe's parents) and I am liking them both very much.
Today, I woke up bright and early again at 7am. I suppose I was slightly jet lagged as Sydney is two hours ahead of here. I decided to wander around my uncle's neighborhood on my own and was absolutely enthralled with everything. I walked around the park beside the apartment complex and was stunned with the gorgeous ocean/mountain view, the humid misty air, and all the people doing tai chi by the shore.
There were old ladies and gardeners wearing those big straw rice-patty-worker hats and they were fishing and gardening and whatnot. They thought I was crazy as I kept trying to snap pictures of everything and one strange guy rode by on his bike and said in chinese to me, "that's right pretty girl. keep taking pictures." and then promptly rode off.
I headed back to the apartment after my walk but had to cool down in the library on the way home as it was way too hot. The library was neat and I wandered around the children's section oogling at the Chinese copy of all the classic children's books I grew up reading.
Back at the apartment, we started off after my aunt's bowel movemnt - a very important affair bordering on sacred. If she can't poop, she doesn't leave the house that day. I'm not kidding you. My uncle told me all this over dinner last night and I didn't believe it for myself until this morning. My aunt came out finally and we could move on with our day, but before we could do so, she looked at me seriously and said, "How are your bowels? Have you gone number 2 yet? Are you going to be OK?"
After many assurances I was "regular" and that me and my bowels would be just fine, we left the house. My mother had warned me that my aunt and uncle were funny people but I wasn't quite prepared for this.
We headed onto the MTR (Mass Transit Railway, I think) and went to East Tsim Tsa Tsui where there is "The Avenue of Stars". It's a knock off of the avenue of star's handprints in Hollywood but with Chinese stars on it. I gazed intently at Andy Lau's handprints, Maggie Cheungs, Tony Leungs, Chow Yun Fat's, Jet Li's and so on and so forth. It was totally cool!
What's even neater is that they have a Jackie Chan souvenir shop there. It's jammed pack with posters, videos, DVDs, keychains, etc. all bearing Jackie Chan and ONLY Jackie Chan. I felt like going in for and joke and asking "Do you have any Andy Lau keychains by any chance?" but thought better of it.
There was a lovely view of the harbour and of Hong Kong island itself from the avenue and I stared intently past all the smog. I made out the Hong Kong and China bank buildings and all the other famous silhouettes from movies and postcards I'd seen throughout my life. Giant cargo ships and ferries filled the harbour and sailed along busily while the odd speedboat here and there darted between them. It was surreal. We hopped on a Star Ferry and decided to cross over from Kowloon to Hong Kong.
On the boat ride, my aunt sat there fanning herself (she carries a fan, kleenex, hand sanitizer an an umbrella with her everywhere here) while I busily snapped pictures of everything in sight. The ferry was dangerously slow moving and rocky but I survived and listened intently while my uncle chatted about HK. He loves this place and really enjoys spouting off impressive (and not so impressive) facts about it.
"Anything you could ever want to buy, anything you ever want to eat, any amount of money you ever want to spend, YOU CAN DO IT ALL IN HONG KONG." he kept saying over and over. I gazed out at the tall buildings, the insane shopping complexes and the signs everywhere and decided I believed him.
Once on land again, we wandered in and out of all the buildings with me oogling at everything while my aunt fanned herself and my uncle kept shouting HK propaganda at me. We went into the HSBC building, the China bank building (with the lion statue out front you see on their money!) and a whole whack of fancy malls where I window shopped at Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Versace, etc.
We also went into the tallest building in HK at the moment where my uncle enthusiastically exclaimed, "88 stories high! See? You'd never see this in Calgary! Why would you ever want to live there when you can live in Hong Kong? What does Calgary have the Hong Kong does not?"
"Snow. It's too freaking hot here."
He had no answer to that as my aunt was now busy fanning and kleenexing him after he'd worked up such a sweat getting all excited over telling me about hte tall buildings.
We walked into the IFC building which is located in the prime and richest part of town. I gazed at more name brand store window displays while my uncle kept raving about how each person standing within 50 feet of us could potentially be a multimillionaire. I smiled and tried to give my best impression of being impressed.
I guess he took that as a sign as he continued on ranting about how rich everyone was. "That guy in the suit over there that we just passed," he said excitedly under his breath, " he could be worth at least 2-3 million!"
I nodded and smiled.
"And that girl? That guy? They're all either CEOs or lawyers or accountants! You never realize how small you are till you come to a place like this! Everyone in this district is rich. You don't know what rich is until you come to Hong Kong."
I finally got tired of his tirade on being rich and said, "Yes, but we must remember uncle that money isn't everything."
He didn't seem to hear me. Instead, he dragged me into the nearest "CitySuper!" grocery store and showed me how expensive Australian eggplants and Japanese cabbages were. CitySuper! is the notoriously expensive grocers in HK where only the rich, yuppy and famous shop. Every item of food is imported and the prices are at least five times more than the other stores.
More nodding and smiling. My uncle was scoffing at all the prices and yet, at hte same time, telling me to admire the ppl who pay that much for it. I realised, with a pang, that I'd probably never get through to him and a simple comment like "money isn't everything" was falling on deaf ears.
We went from the richest part of town to one of the poorest. We hopped on the train and headed to the wet street market (gai see) in Wan Chai. It was my first ever experience in a Chinese market street and it was WICKED. Chickens in cages were everywhere. They were getting picked up all the time and displayed to the picky customers before meeting their doom. Fish, crabs, crayfish, shrimp, lobsters, ALL LIVE swam around in tanks. Crazy old ladies, shirtless old men pulling large carts with boxes of crabs on them. Other men in stained white wifebeaters selling fruit.
It stank. It was noisy. It was chaotic. It was AWESOME.
Personally, this was much more interesting to me than the rich part of town. I grew up singing the Chinese nursery rhymes about running to the street markets to buy chicken and turtles (in Cantonese, chicken and turtle rhyme with each other) and rumour has it that my dad was born/grew up in one of these gungy street things.
We walked through the market to the bus which took us to Victoria Peak where we did a 40 minute hike to and from the viewing point. We passed lots of stringy old men jogging in white tank tops and short shorts, the largest waterfall in HK, several dogs, and many mansions complete with servant's quarters and Philippino maids. At the top, the view was utterly gorgeous. I gazed out on the harbour and all of the Hong Kong/Kowloon business district.
Buildings were shoved onto everywhere that buildings could be shoved and where there was no more room for high rises, the ocean was being filled in to make room. They say that the inlet between Kowloon and Kong Kong is slowly disappearing. And while the metropolis was amazing, I was busy trying to snap pics of the goshawks and other birds that were flying about in the air. There were at least five hawks all swooping about and I was entranced by them.
Afterwards, we went out for another succulent sea food dinner of endangered habitat species and I decided to accept my fate of going to Green Peace hell. At least Iknew that most of China and Hong Kong was going with me. But why do those reef fish and crustaceans have to be so damned tastey? WHY? Heck, if I were a fish, I'd try to taste like crap. (I know, I know, they don't have a choice over how they taste but it's a thought.)
Well, am off to bed now. My aunt has given me a fan and a huge bag of kleenex to keep myself sweat free. She also told me to keep an umbrella around tomorrow so I could use it as a sun shade. I saw several ppl walking around like that today. Crazy place this!
posted by Viv at 7:09 p.m.
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