Hong Kong

---

In Shenzhen within 10 minutes of getting off the sleeper bus I did my good deed for the day. I was crossing the overpass when I saw a kid, maybe five years old screaming and bawling his eyes out, I made out he’d lost his mum and from his pointing at all the busses passing underneath us. It is entirely possible his mother wasn’t fast enough getting off the bus and therefore trapped. Buses in China will pack like sardines, well beyond the safety limits listed on the vehicle spec plate. If you don’t shove to the point the other passengers fear for their lives then it’s unfortunate but you’re not getting off the bus. I was stunned at the number of people that just carried on about their lives, I’m not just talking businessmen either, women, some of them with kids, teenagers, and old people. I stayed with the kid five minutes before spotting a policeman on the street. I legged it after him carrying all of my possessions (about 24kg) plus 2bags of snacks id bought for the bus and the day ahead. I escorted the police officer back to the screaming child and left it to him. After half an hour on the bus I arrived at Wo Lu station, a typically huge Chinese train station but with the added benefit of being a border crossing for Hong Kong and having an exchange bureau, I got rid of most of my Chinese Yuan keeping some for snacks on the trains id have to take to get across mainland china to Hanoi but I also exchanged £20 Sterling in a Scottish note, something that I couldn’t do in Japan or mainland china. After I passed through customs I was on my way to the centre of Hong Kong island. The hostel I stayed in was near the Temple Street market and within a few subway stops of the Big Buddha and Victoria peak in a place called Chung King mansions. Don’t let the word mansions confuse you, it’s like the Barras market on the ground floor with apartment blocks above which are divided into hostels for various budgets. I think I was the only white person on the ground floor, I didn’t even see that many East Asians but there was an abundance of Nigerians. I think in recent years they’ve all given up selling their knock off goods and faulty electrical crap in the streets of Europe and undertaken a mass migration to Asia, they still use the same approach though and address you as Boss etc the only thing they didn’t say was Del Boy. The hoards of Indians outside selling and harassing you to buy a Copy watch or have a suit tailored are endless, some of them read my body language after the fourth time they’d asked and realised not to venture there again, when this understood we all smiled at each other in passing. I’ve spoken to as many travellers and Asians that would confirm this so I’m by no means alone. An interesting thing I had heard the higher you go the classier the accommodation the farther you are from the roaches. Thankfully I didn’t see any on the 3rd floor...the first couple of hours. I had the small room 6x8 with 4 bunks to myself for the first few hours, long enough to find the aircon didn’t really have any effect and the toilet didn’t flush properly. To do this you have to fill the cistern using the shower. Unlike many of the bathrooms in china there was a western style toilet instead of an Asian squat toilet which also functions as a drain. I spent half an hour just relaxing before I took a walk through the maze of streets, and it is a maze. When I got back I met my roommates, an Australian and an Ecuadorian who I invited to join me in the evening to watch the Light show across the harbour and then a walk along the “Avenue of stars”, Hong Kong's answer to Hollywood boulevard. I found out I had the same size hands as Jackie Chan and the stars of Bruce Lee, Raymond Chow. Tsui Hark and of course Jet Li, although his star was almost completely shadowed by a small drinks stand. I couldn’t help myself posing in front of the Bruce Lee statue. We found a place that looked like a fast food restaurant called the Spaghetti house which we realised wasn’t as cheap as the outside made it look, the food was good though was a nice change from rice and noodles. Since it was almost ten we checked out the Temple Street market and then the Mong Kok markets. The stall owners were quite different to what I’d seen throughout the rest of china art by offering less than half and do then do the dance haggling for a price while putting you’re amateur dramatic skills to the test by acting offended, then, you’re killing me, I’m gonna need a mortgage to afford the item. When you start trying to haggle they will either take the bait or they will push you out the way and then go off on a rant. We got back to the hostel which we would later call the Roach motel. When we turned on the light we saw something move at speed under the bed and later found it to be a small cockroach. The only place it could have come from was a hole in the metal ceiling. I had a go at prying some of the planks tightly into place and then filling the gaps with toilet roll. I wasn’t really that keen on going to sleep but after travelling for around 17 hours beginning the previous day I eventually drifted off.

---