The final destination

Hong Kong... After a lot of queueing, border controls and taking the amazingly fast KRC railway from Lo Wu to Kowloon Tong I managed to find my way to the famous Chungking mansions that has been synomymous to budget accomodation in Hong Kong for decades. I went straight away to a hostel run by Jackey Chan (sounds familiar, huh?) and got a room for 100 HK $. Actually the Chinese yuans and Hongkong dollars rates are the same so I didn't have to learn another currency. The Chungking mansions are full with immigrants from Pakistan, India, Africa, curry houses, dirt-chip hostels and different kind of merchants. The hostel is newly renovated and my room has air-con and a tv. The room is really minuscule, I'm not exaggerating when I say it's only 2 square meters. The bed looks like it would have been stolen from the hospital, but still the place is nice and pretty safe with an excellent location on the Kowloon islands southern tip in Tsim Sha Tui where most of the hotels and tourist orientated shops are located.
(Oh my good, I start to sound like Lonely Planet after reading it nearly daily for two months :D )

On Monday I didn't do much except that I went to visit Juha in his dormitory. He is going to study in the Hong Kong university for the coming academic year. The dormitory was awesome with 12 blocks and it was very new. I met his group and participated (or more like watched) when they played breaking-the-ice games and talked with some of them. I went in and they were all clapping their hands when Juha presented me. He shares the room with a Chinese dentistry student. They all seemed really nice and I envied Juha a bit. Compared to my exchange (which I interrupted) with the bleak and old dormitory, no tutors or orientation for international student and no activities either everything seemed much better. And it's not like I had a culture shock, because I do speak French rather fluently and no the culture pretty well. They had girls and boys floors and I had to write my details at the reception and was asked to leave at 11 pm. I got accompanied to the MTR (=metro, the worlds best, many claim and I do agree based on my limited metro knowledge). Many of the students had travelled in Europe which indicates they are richer than average Chinese.

On Tuesday I went to a Korean fast-food place. I dared to eat Korean food even though the first time I did it I ended up in a Mongolian hospital. Well, the food was excellent and reasonably priced. The Museum of history was unfortunately closed, but I went to the Hong Kong Science museum instead. I got student discount and my ISIC has paid itself back many times. The was an exhibition with dinosaur fossiles that had been found in China. They were pretty impressive. The rest of the exhibition was full of demonstrations of different inventions and how they work and an hall for entirely for humans body functions. So I found out that I'm near-sighted, average hight jumper, bad in balance and endurance, having a too fast heart beat, but I'm excellent in making puzzles. I think it's due to the tetris mania I had some years ago :) My eye&hand coordination is also quite good, which is of course a good feature for a guitar player.

I didn't manage to get a host here, but I called two CS members who said they might be interested in meeting me. Neither one of them remembered me from earlier, the other said he couldn't host me and other said she doesn't have time. I felt quite uneasy. First it's impossible to find a host and then people don't even remember you. Tomorrow I feel like going to Lantau, an island that is less-crowded to enjoy a beach for the last time before returning to chilly Finland. There are many ways getting to the airport so unless I end up in an accident everything should work out well.
HK is pretty nice place for a Westerner. Western toilets, a lot off ATM's, bilingual sings with Cantonese and English, most of the people speak English, public transport is easy and efficient, you can get any food you want and actually here in Tsim Sha Tsui and Chunking Mansions I can find everything under the same roof. It's very convenient to have a fast internet connection and listen to Kent, Paris Combo and Muse from Youtube that is loading really fast.

I was hoping I could survive with the money I exchanged but it's probably impossible, it's so expensive. In two days it's going to be so cold and expensive, but still it will be great to return with everything starting again and Matias coming to meet my bus in Tampere.

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