I am now in the other hemisphere and the keyboard is swimming infront of my eves.. I'm kinda spaced out since I had about an hour of sleep last night and with a cappacino next to me am fighting it until about 9pm tonight.. (for most of you that will be 8am! I'm 13 hours ahead of you!) The last few days have been exausting also! I arrived in Hong Kong an hour early after a very smooth flight and about 6 hours sleep. The first thing that struck me was the smell - a mixture between doughnuts and exhaust fumes! I eventually found my bus and a ticket and told the driver to let me know where Yee Wo st stop was and I was able to get off! I had the impression that this hostle was massive and having hostled in many cities in Europe and US I imagined that it would be fairly obvious... It wasn't and wandered about the streets for about 20 mins asking people who didn't speak much engrish (...yep I ment to write it that way!) if they knew where it was. Eventually I asked at a shop where they sold laptops and they were able to look up the address online to make sure I had it correct. I was only a few hundred meters away but in through a residence only door to a building. I was let in by someone cause the doorman just sat and ignored me and the other guy that was tring to get into the place, checked in and was shown to my room which turned out to be in a different building with 4 beds in it.The room was tiny for the amount of stuff it had in it and the beds were butted right up next to each other without a gap. They were all single beds and the place was fairly clean and I was met by a French traveller who was looking for work in the area. The thing that surprised me the most was that he was a HE! and both the other beds were also taken up, also with boys! They (fortunately) all turned out to be very nice and were either travelling through or looking for work in the City. They informed me that the shower was hot with the cold tap and vice versa and that there was light show that I had just missed that was on every night at 8pm in Kowloon! Honk Kong is a shopaholic's fix for a year! The city is crammed with shops of all varieties (mostly chains) over several floors and most of the lower half of the bigger buildings are dedicated to malls and plazas. Every where I went I saw people either on the phone or taking pictures... and that wasn't the tourists! They love it the Chineese pose more times than Victoria beckham and me combined! So without much motivation I hit the streets and forund random stuff to eat that I couldn't identify until I had bought it and the vendor couldn't tell me what it was either... I had to resort to asking people on the street and in the que for food from these stalls what it might be. Often the responce was "I don't know the Engrish... it's yummy!" That has got to be worth trying eh!?
So after a cosy night and all of the morning with my roomies...(I slept until 12!) I hit the city once again, I headed along the streets and bought some breakfast. a croissant with a frankfurter stuck through the middle of it and a custard thing! I was heading for the Victoria Peak and bought my ticket for the finicular railway to the top!!! ME..? HIKE UP THERE!? I had to be fast I only had two whole days. at the top it was stunning and kinda horrendous too! the cramped city with a smog at about eyeline and protected park land right next to it! Of course at the top there was no less than two shopping malls wich included a super market and I don't know how many restuants and shops and a piaist that was playing a medley of Christmas carols while swaying to their rythmic tones. After quinting into the sunlight tryingto take a picture of myself infront of the view I took many small steps to reach the mid levels (confucious would be proud!) Where I found the escalators for pedestrians.. and after taking great touble to find this very Hong-Kong-convienience attraction and not realising that they only went up for the majority of the mile that they assend I walked down past them for a mile! This was a Sunday and I was astonished to find that pretty much in every public space were vast numbers of groups of women sitting on teh ground on plastic/ newspaper or blankets.... thousands of them.... wherever I went... and what have they done with the men?! I was confused.. they weren't begging or were dressed in a shabby way, htey were just sitting together talking and eating, playing cards or bingo, sometimes they were cutting each others hair or playing loud music and teaching each other to salsa dance! I later found out that they were the women form the big phillipeno community that lived there... they all got together for their day off. I walked to and took the star ferry (so quaint! and the seats can be swapped so you can face the direction of travel!) to Kowloon and sat with a good view of the skyscrapers with about an hour to go before the grand starting of the light show (it was meant to be REALLY good!) I had sat next to another English woman and we started chatting. Her Name is Dawn and she was a lawyer here on bussiness and had also come to see the show (her second look - it MUST be good!). I turned out to be halarious.. as it was a sunday the narration was in Cantoneese and the multi pitched tones came accross the rather good speaker that it was about to start.. the the introductions were made and after each building and it's sponsor was dicribed the rythmic acid house synthesised drum beats came over the PAS and the corresponding building 'flashed for us'! It was called a symphony of lights and at 8pm a dude pushed a button and this plays, flashes and it is reasonably in time with the music but the BEST bit was the reactions from the Chinese behind dawn and I 'oooooohhhhhhhh! 'ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhoooooooo!'. Naf! But definatly woth the effort just for the crowd participation. We both headed into Kowloon and Up Nathan road... The sound track to this was "copy bag? Channel? Prada?" or " you want copy Rolex?" The Temple St night market was fun and we looked about and stopped in the Wang Sung Hawkers Cooked Food Baazar, for some local grub... it was well ventalated, you could see the sky scrapers above us through the large hole in the roof. Daw was very kind and the (very cheap) food was on her - Thanks Dawn! She then headed back and I spent time looking about and taking photos... I went back to the ferry to find that the last one had left..!! Ooops! In the end, after to trying to find someone to speak english to I made it to the MTR (the tube) to take be back to the Island! Anyway folks that is the it for the moment.. it is rather long winded sorry... tune in next time for the next installment
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