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Published: October 26th 2007
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Ferries
The main form of transport if you happen to find yourself in Discovery Bay. Along with golf buggies. Next morning, it was an early rise to get Bindy to the airport for her morning flight. Being an unaccompanied 'young person', she opted for special assistance to get through Hong Kong airport. She even got a sticker to show how special she was. She regretted her decision from that moment on. Rather amusing for me though. On the way to the airport we relived the trip to Sydney airport by listening to one of the most stupid songs around: Bananaphone, and then I did her the great favour of resinging a couple of lines from one of the catchiest songs in existence over and over, just to make sure she'd have a relaxing and troublefree 9 hour flight home, just with the words "watcha know bout me, watcha watcha know bout me..." going on over and over in her head. I'm such a lovely sister.
I spent the rest of that day near the wharfs of central just chilling and reading, then at 3pm caught the junk of Hong Kong, called the Dukling, for a cruise around the waters of Hong Kong. Junks were the kind of boats that were all around Halong Bay: and I'll tell you something
A junk named Dukling
A piece of historical Hong Kong, which you use the sails of to advertise your business. Classic. for nothing, thems pirate boats. Or at least they used to be, now it's just totally typical of Hong Kong: it's quite an important boat historically, being the last proper one left in Hong Kong, but the brochure on board said you could use the sails of this historically unique vessel to advertise your business. The culture's there, but it's all about the money. Or maybe that's just my experience because I spent a lot of my time there shopping.
Friday night Louie and I went to Tung Chung to see Stardust which is, pretty much, the best movie ever. It's like a fairytale, but set in a magical world which is over a wall in England, with a voodoo doll dead body sword fight, a gay pirate played by Robert De Niro, and a bunch of prince ghosts giving golf claps and cricket-type commentary for the more climatic parts of the film. And there's a moment where a witch gets attacked by ferrets. I could really associate with that.
Saturday was spent swimming again, with that night the World Cup game between England and Australia. Being Australian I'm going to ignore the details of the game, and
Hong Kong Bay
From the Dukling. divert attention to the rather nice Chinese beer I had, called Tsingtao. The only bad thing about going to pubs during big matches is the overcrowdedness: it kind of makes it hard to see, and I don't deal too well with stuffy conditions, and eventually I needed some time out for fresh air. But still, with Discovery Bay full of Aussie and Brit expats it was a good atmosphere, and definitely an experience I'll be repeating when I'm back home.
Sunday we went to Dim Sum in Hong Kong park. It was at a teahouse near the artificial lake and it was fantastic. It was all traditional and ceremonious, with no other tourists in sight. We had gone there originally because it was the only vegetarian dim sum place around, but it was pretty darn cool. Louie ordered a Jasmine Blossom tea, which came as a dried flower in a clear glass, which blossomed into a really gorgeous flower when hot water was added. Jess was totally enchanted by the whole 'growth' of the thing. I for one, loved the ceremonious tea ceremony to prepare my tea even more. After a delicious meal, we headed back through the park,
A bit of Discovery Bay
With it's two largest defining features: the plaza and ferries. stopping at the lake, which was full of turtles and really colourful carp. Then back to Discovery Bay, where they had their monthly Sunday markets, that was a fun pitstop (minus the tears of an overcrowded jumping castle) before heading home.
The rest of my second week in Hong Kong was mainly spent bumming around, reading, shopping... all pretty relaxed activities really. One day I decided that I was going to head into SoHo (the 'hip' part of Hong Kong) and spend the afternoon gallery hopping. After catching the world's largest undercover escalator pretty much to the top, I wandered around for a bit, then found myself without the enthusiasm to look at the works of upcoming Hong Kong artists, when there was a range of rather interesting shops to explore (basically Hong Kong= shopping for me). A lot of what I checked out were antique stores: with things like watches with Mao in the middle, and his hands telling the time; teapots with jade monkeys on them; even those little cages that Buddhists keep birds in. Self restraint held in for that part of my wandering, but gave in when I saw a bakery with the strangest array
The wharf by night
Call me obsessed, but seriously, ferries are a way of life in Hong Kong. Well it was for me anyway. of meringue flavours ever: I think I got caramel, rose, citrus and earl grey tea flavoured. There were many flavours there that I'd never even heard of. So after looking through a few boutiques and checking out the general atmosphere of the place I headed back to Discovery Bay, not totally disappointed in my lack of resolve on the gallery front.
On the subject of strange food experiences, I might mention here my attempt to eat something of an assortment of strange ice cream flavours whenever we dropped in for some after dinner: I think I managed to get black sesame (tastes kind of like hazelnut), white peach and black cherry. Coconut and pineapple on one of my last nights balanced out the black to white ratio.
Another Friday rolled around, and this time John, Lou and I went into Hong Kong to get some dinner at a place called 'rat alley' (yes, because before Hong Kong cleaned up it's act, it was overrun by rats), then to get a foot massage. It was divine. When you go to a place like that, you realise why you only pay $5 for a foot massage in Thailand- something to do I think with the typical decor being a range of mattresses on the floor.
Then it was a thoroughly relaxing weekend (much the way I like it), before my flight on Monday morning. Or at least, what was supposed to be my flight on Monday morning. I got to the airport a solid amount of time before my flight, went to get my ticket which mum had booked over the Internet for me, and was informed that because the credit card used to pay for the ticket wasn't mine, they would have to cancel it. But that I could rebuy it using cash.
I went and waited in the ATM line. My card wouldn't give me enough money. So I waited in another line and got all my foreign currency changed. Then I waited in the ATM line again. Then the ticket giving line again. I couldn't get the ticket, so I went downstairs to wait in line at 7 Eleven to buy credit for my phone to call my parents and sort the situation out. The credit didn't work. So I waited in another line to get coins to use the pay phone. Pay phone downstairs didn't work. The pay phone upstairs didn't work. So I went and used the Internet.
Lets just say a lot of time passed in this manner- with some people being really nice, but no one being particularly helpful. In the end I wasn't able to catch my flight, nor the one that afternoon. I went back to Discovery Bay and waited for Lou and Jess to come home. On the bright side, while waiting I got a lot of my writing done. And, I had a felafel for dinner. Yum.
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