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Published: June 29th 2010
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cleaning the toilet...the boys during the semester were dirtyI had my interview for Beijing Home Delivery and got the job. The manager told me I could start the following Wednesday, which gave me nine days of freedom. Katie would still be in China for a couple weeks so we decided to go to Hong Kong. It would be a good adventure for her, and it would be a way for me to reset my visa again so I could stay another couple months and not worry about it.
We had plenty of time so we decided to buy train tickets. The tickets cost about $75 dollars one way and the train takes 24 hours. The tickets are for a bed so it’s actually not bad. Two days after buying the tickets, and me getting my tattoo (I wrote a different blog for that already) we boarded the train. The train leaves at 8 pm. We were both on the top bunk of a triple bunk bed, but we were facing each other so we could sit up there and talk. The night wasn’t bad; we ate some instant noodles and went to bed shortly after they cut the lights at around 10:30. The next day we slept quite
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fang fang...the first few pics are just of me and katie being the only left over students in Beijing, we went to Kro's Nest to see our favorite waitress a bit, talked about random things, and read. We also talked for a while with some people; there were a couple cute Chinese babies we played with too. One interesting thing that happened is when I was eating instant noodles. I was eating and a very old lady was intently watching me, staring old people are kind of common for me so I didn’t really mind. All of a sudden she started crying, and then wailing watching me eat my noodles. Her daughter, who also wasn’t young, told me it was because she was afraid just eating instant noodles wouldn’t fill me up. That kind of thing is definitely a Chinese thing; old people always want to make sure you are full. It was kind of scary, I didn’t know what to do, I felt bad she was crying but there’s nothing really I could do. I told her I was full and her daughter had her lie down and rest.
Towards the end of the trip it got really boring, Katie and I got restless, but to be honest it’s way better than a long plane ride. We arrived, actually in Shenzhen, we didn’t buy tickets to Hong
Kong because we thought it was more expensive. Shenzhen has a subway that goes to Hong Kong because it is only about half hour away, just across the Chinese mainland border. We passed through customs and immigration and took the train to Tsim Sha Tsui, where the hostels were. We came up out of the subway and it was about 11pm. The streets were pretty busy. There were scantily dressed ladies and slightly sketchy looking men all over, both were of all different nationalities. We wandered and found Katie’s hostel, which was pretty nice, but she thanked me for accompanying her to wander outside. I jumped back on the subway and headed to my friend Naomi’s apartment, she and her roommates had extra room so I stayed with them.
The next day Katie and I met up at Mong Kok, which is the main shopping area on the mainland side of Hong Kong. Naomi and her friends had to work so it was just me and Katie for the day. We walked around some markets for a while which was pretty fun. They had a lot of things, most of them were a little more expensive than Chinese goods,
but the quality was also better. I bought two T-shirts, together they only cost like 7 dollars and they were real T-shirts instead of Chinese quality T-shirts. After shopping we stumbled upon the famous Hong Kong flower market. Katie works at a flower shop in the states near her University (American University in Washington D.C.) so it was interesting to hear her talk about different plants, and she was pretty excited about everything. After the flower market we found the Bird Market. The Bird Market is crazy; there are these homemade wooden cages everywhere with little birds calling out from them. Some of the shop-owners have big talking parrots sitting outside of their shops. It was really interesting but also very loud experience. The last crazy market we saw that day was the goldfish market. Just as you would expect, it’s a street with a bunch of shops that sell fish. We ate some lunch and decided to head to Naomi’s apartment to grab my map of Hong Kong that I had forgotten. Naomi’s roommate was there so we sat and talked for a while and rested from our wandering all morning. We decided it would be a good idea
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my tattoo bleeding to go to the train station and buy my return ticket since I had forgotten to buy it in Shenzhen before crossing the border. Naomi’s roommate invited us to eat dinner there so we said we’d come back after buying the ticket.
Nothing exciting happened during our trip to the train station. I found out that the ticket from Hong Kong isn’t any more expensive than the ticket from Shenzhen, so I bought that. It made it a lot more convenient because I didn’t have to cross the border, just jump on the train straight out of Hong Kong. Katie had already bought a plane ticket to Qingdao to see her friend who lives there, so we wouldn’t be returning to Beijing together.
When we got back to the apartment the three girls were all there making dinner. Their apartment is very small, but it’s not bad. The food they made was delicious. My favorite was the salmon. I hadn’t had salmon since I had sushi at Naomi’s for Chinese New Year. Dinner was tasty and the girls are all very nice, it was a fun night. We had planned on going to watch the building light show,
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train to hong kong...i'm too big for china but ended up just hanging out and talking in the apartment too late. Katie and I planned to walk around Hong Kong Island the next day, so I was excited because that side is very interesting, there is a ridiculous amount of money everywhere.
The next morning I took the subway as far south as I could to meet Katie at the coast. We took the ferry across the bay to Hong Kong Island, which is actually the cheapest method. It cost less than 50 cents to get across, and it was a pretty cool ferry. We decided to do pretty much the same route I took when I was exploring Hong Kong myself in January. We checked out the longest escalator in the world, went to see monkeys and other animals at the animal park, saw the aviary and so on. We planned on meeting the three girls to go to Victoria Peak, which overlooks the city, but when we got to our planned meeting point we were like three hours early. Walking across most of Hong Kong island didn’t take nearly as long as we thought it would.
We ended up walking back almost to where
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haha we started, but took a shorter route not through the parks. We found a street market selling food similar to a lot of places in China, but a little more spendy. We kept walking by all these happy hour signs at a bunch of nice western style bars, pretty much every European country and different American themes were represented. We chose a little European bar with some couches that was smaller and cozy. We sat down on a couch and ordered a couple German beers. They were a little spendy but nothing ridiculous compared to a similar place’s prices in the US. It was very good to have some very good beer and relax for a while in the A/C, if I haven’t mentioned it yet, it was nice and hot the whole time in Hong Kong.
After the beer we headed back to the meeting point, just in time to meet the girls. We got in line for the train car that goes up the mountain, but then found out we could take a bus for much cheaper. The bus had a lot of cheap people like us on it, but it was worth the saved money. At
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sign pointing to hong kong the top we had to pay a pretty steep fee to go to the viewing point, but it was very cool. We got there when the sun was setting and stayed until it was dark, the lights were very cool. We originally planned on seeing the light show, but the view from the top was cool so we didn’t want to hurry down for it.
By the time we got back to the mainland side to look at the buildings some of the big building lights were off, but we decided to chill for a while anyway. Katie bought me a Heineken, so we sat looking out at the harbor and the lights of Hong Kong. It was already past ten o’clock, and even later when we decided to go eat dinner. We went to the area Katie was staying, which has a lot of Indian food places. There were random guys all over trying to convince us to go to their restaurant. We followed one guy up some extremely sketchy back stairway, I was waiting for his accomplices to jump out and rob us when we arrived at a pretty nice place. It was a little spendy for
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flower market our taste, so we went back downstairs. We found one more guy who claimed he would give us a pretty good price. We questioned him and it sounded okay, so we went. By the way, we is Katie, Naomi, Naomi’s roommate and I. We ate some amazing curry and nan bread for a good price, so we were happy.
The next day it was already time for me to go back to Beijing. My train left in the afternoon so I got up and got some breakfast on my own. I planned on doing some shopping because I needed some nice pants for my internship and I can never find what I want in China unless it’s extremely expensive. There were a lot of great places to shop in Hong Kong. The products were just a little more expensive than cheap Chinese things and much better quality. I found quite a few things I liked which was good, I haven’t gotten any clothes for a long time and my handful of t-shirts that I have here are getting worn out. I also bought a pair of shoes which were on sale. It’s almost impossible to find nice shoes on
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flowers! sale in China, most stores are big brand name fancy stores like the Nike and Puma store in the luxury shopping area, which obviously don’t have a sale rack.
I was happy with my accomplishments for the morning so I went back to pack. After packing it was just about time to go. I said goodbye to everyone and jumped on the subway that took me to the train station. One last thing about the trip home… In my compartment there were a couple Chinese women and one guy a couple years younger than me, he was Mongolian. He could speak a little bit of English, but no Chinese. Of course the Chinese women were very interested in both of us, so whenever they wanted to ask him a question they made me translate for them. The problem was, he wasn’t great at English, but we got pretty much all of their questions answered. The one lady kept giving us food because she was worried we were still kids and our mom wasn’t around to feed us so she said she would, typical Chinese mother, very generous with food. The Mongolian guy’s dad was actually the coach of the
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cruisin' the flower market Mongolian national hockey team, which I found pretty awesome. His mom lives in Hong Kong, that is why he was there. There is a 24 train from Mongolia to Beijing and then 24 hours to Hong Kong, long trip.
That rounds out the Hong Kong trip! Peace!
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Grandma
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Thanks Jacob for the Hong Kong blog. Great reading first thing in the morning!