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Published: October 2nd 2006
It was a strange and bizarre train journey from Shanghai to Hong Kong...one that I don't particularly care to experience again! The 27 hour train journey, (traveling 3rd class to save money) was to be a ‘quiet’ time for me and my book, perhaps update my trip diary and feed myself from my bag of groceries. Nothing says train journey like a loaf of bread, jam, instant noodles and coffee!
As I passed through immigration in the Shanghai train station, I was immediately "spotted" by a tall (fairly handsome) African businessman. From this point on, until I ditched him in the busy subways of Kowloon, he would persistently try to win my heart and make me his African bride. What is it about African guys and white girls?!
To make a long (and ridiculous) story short, I used a man for money for the first time in my life. I honestly didn't feel good about it, but I did it... and now I've confessed. This Mobile executive changed his 1st class ticket to a 3rd class ticket (so he could talk to me the whole trip), only because I said no to his offer to upgrade my own ticket.
He paid for our meals in the expensive train car restaurant, tried to convince me that the pope was actually a Muslim and talked about my potential new life in Gambia, and how I would be treated like a Queen. Inside my head, my eyes were rolling continuously. No matter how many times I told him I wasn't interested, he continually bought me more and more. Too bad there weren’t more stores on the train! hhhmmmm...when is morality going to kick in for Krysta?!
When we finally reached Hong Kong, I let him buy me one more meal, and after promising to let him take me to Macao for a couple days, he bought me a transit card and put lots of cash onto it! hahahahaha...oh dear, in retrospect, I sort of feel bad about all this...but anyways. Two full days of expensive meals, a loaded transit pass and all I did was giggle inwardly at the ridiculousness of this situation. I left him at the subway, promising to call him the next day and then without another look back, ditched him to meet Roni. All in all, a great story I think! hahahahaha, I’m sorry dad. You’re probably
reading this with clenched fists. Don't worry, this guy was harmless!
With Matarr out of the picture, I was ready to meet up with Roni, a friend of mine from Japan, for some J-land gossip, reminiscing and relaxation!
Roni left Japan at the same time I did and relocated to Hong Kong with another teaching job. She'd already set herself up in a small but cute bachelor-ette apartment in Kennedy Town, which is on Hong Kong Island. With my huge pack, I boarded the old-fashioned tramcar, and with the wind hitting me full on, I was whisked away to hunt down Roni's doorstep, with her address in hand.
My first day in HK was much like my first in Shanghai. Relax. Do laundry. Update my belated blogs. Watch cable television. Lovely. When I finally got my butt in gear, I headed out to Central, where I complained to myself about yet another cloudy day and inwardly prayed for blue sky. I walked everywhere I could, discovering the area, admiring Hong Kong Park and window-shopping in my now-favorite mall, Pacific Place. I’m not usually drawn to fancy clothes or expensive things, but this mall was gorgeous! Perhaps it’s
the fact that I haven’t bought new clothes in almost a year, or that I’ve been in ‘thrifty’ mode for the last 7 years, but if I had the money (and if I were a size 2), I would have left there with shop keepers trailing behind me holding all my bags. Hong Kong (by far) has the best shopping I’ve ever seen!
After my afternoon of drooling through store windows, I met up with my old friend Wilda Lau from Toronto, who had originally left Toronto with me when I moved to Japan, but has since been working in HK. We hadn’t seen each other in 3 years and it was an utter delight to catch up on each other’s lives, reminisce about Toronto and Japan, all while eating heavenly vegetarian Thai food. I’m so glad that I have friends in so many areas of the world!
When Wilda and I left each other in Tokyo back in 2003, never would I have imagined that the next time we saw each other would be in Hong Kong three years later, and be able to pick up our friendship RIGHT where we left it. Thank goodness for the
digital age of communication!
With Roni off work for the weekend, we set out to discover not only things that I had never seen before, but also explore the sights she hadn’t yet laid eyes as well. First things first, we met another ex-JET friend of ours in the SoHo district. Monique had been in Japan for my 2nd and 3rd years in Japan and it was great to see yet another familiar face. We explored SoHo and climbed the hill to see her new apartment. Monique was living out of a hotel for the past 2 weeks searching for a suitable apartment and although I only saw the building from the outside, I’d say it was good she waited!
After a Mexican lunch, we crossed over to Kowloon to see the clock tower and surrounding sights. Right on the harbor was the Museum of Art, and with a banner outside advertising an exhibit called “Hair Dialogue”, it wasn’t difficult to entice us to venture in.
The exhibit, to put it bluntly, was freakin awesome.
The exhibit was made completely out of donated hair. The first installment was a room with walls constructed solely of hair
interwoven into words from all alphabets in phrases that weren’t meant to be understood, but just to emphasize peoples’ differences and commonalities at the same time. Walking up close to the wall was eerie, you think about the person/people who donated those strands of hair, the different hairs combining to become one letter on the wall and it’s mystifying. It was truly a remarkable art installment, I felt lucky to see it. The next room was just as impressive, as after removing our shoes we turned a corner and glanced upon hundreds of small shoes…again, all made of hair! I just couldn’t get over it! Made of HAIR! Noticeably, there were barely any blonde, red or gray shoes, and I kept wondering if the color of shoes was in direct reflection of the world’s hair colors. I.e., the majority of people in our world have black hair, and so there WOULD be obviously more black shoes. I couldn’t find anything about that written in the brochure, but it would be pretty cool if I was right, eh?! Hahahahaha…oh I love typing “eh”.
To end off our day of sightseeing, we took in the harbor skyscraper light show. From the
Kowloon side, we watched as the buildings across from us lit up, performed a dance, and stimulated the senses, all while tourists snapped pictures to their hearts’ content. (Myself included) To be honest, I thought it was going to be more exciting, more lights etc. But it was still cool to see.
On Sunday, we caught a ferry over to Lantau island (also where HK Disneyland and the airport is) to see the big Buddha. We had to take a LONG and expensive bus through the mountains and along the coast up to the Po Lin Monastery which is at the base of the Buddha mountain. We lunched at the all-vegetarian Po Lin cafeteria (not so yummy) and then made the hike up all those stairs just to saw “Yeah, I’ve been in Buddha.” The hike up wasn’t all that hard actually and the view from the top was VERY worth it. We latched ourselves onto a tour group inside the statue and were treated to a free history lesson from an English speaking tour guide. Score!
After the splendors of the view from atop and walking clockwise around Buddha (otherwise you will have bad luck), we thought
it only right to walk the trail to the Path Of Wisdom. Not knowing much about where we were going, I assumed the trail we walked along WAS this so called “Path of Wisdom”. Little did I know that at the end of the trail, we’d be met with an even BETTER view and the actual attraction wasn’t the trail but the words of wisdom inscribed into trees placed into a figure 8 on the side of the mountain. You’ll just have to scroll down to the pictures, because I can’t describe it very well.
Not many people felt the need to keep exploring the area after climbing the Buddha, so Roni and I were practically alone there on the side of the mountain with this gorgeous view and the blue sky and fresh air all around us. It was a surreal moment for me, and I thought to myself, that it was days like this that have made this trip truly worth it. Funny how those thoughts often occur to me after I’ve hiked a mountain or I’m staring at an indescribable view. I wish all of you reading this blog could see these sights like I have.
I hope the pictures do it justice.
It was back to work for Roni on Monday, but as I’m obviously unemployed, I went right back out to do some more exploring. After hours of walking random streets, taking in the sights, smells and sounds of Hong Kong, I glanced upward for some reason…and there in gold and red lettering was a sign I had TRULY never seen before in my life. A business with my last name! I almost went into shock! “Banwell Development Ltd.” My Welsh last name isn’t very popular, and to see it amidst Chinese characters in the middle of HK was overwhelming! After taking more then a ridiculous amount of pictures of just the sign (and puzzling those watching me), I knocked on the glass windows of the shop with an insane look on my face, saying through the locked door,
“Are you the owner?! That’s my last name on your sign?! Can I come in?”
The woman through the glass doors was OBVIOUSLY scared of the white girl so eager to get into her seed shop. She finally found someone else inside who spoke English and brought her to the door.
“Yes? Can
I help you?”
“Hi! Sorry if I scared you, it’s just that, your store…this is my last name! I’ve never seen it on a business sign before. Can I come in?”
(Very hesitantly) “Ummm…okay.” And she opened the door.
Once inside, I didn’t really know what to say, I just wanted to see what this little shop was all about! Turns out that the present owners bought the shop from English men a few years back and never changed the name. Go figure!
We had a small little conversation through the help of one of her customers and she gave me a couple business cards (which I of course thought were a riot) and then I left. Taking a couple more pictures of course! Fun times eh?!
Tuesday was another full day of sight seeing, and the blisters on my feet can attest to the fact that I walked from one end of Hong Kong to the other! The Chi Lin Monastery in Diamond Hill was a place of utter solitude with female nuns running the place and Buddhist chants played over the load speaker. I loved the chants so much; I even splurged and bought the CD!
The monastery was empty of tourist/travelers and I was free to walk slowly through the grounds and ignore the skyscrapers that outlined the walled complex.
A couple of boring and repetitive temples later, I found myself at the Kowloon Walled City Park, which seemed to be the ‘cool’ hangout for old folks. They gathered in small groups to play chess or go, and practiced tai chi by themselves in a quite corner. Again, I’d found a place of solitude in the middle of the raging metropolis of Hong Kong.
After a full day of walking, you’d think that walking through a market would be at the bottom of my list, but the sights and sounds of the temple market were calling my name! I met back up with Roni and Monique, and we dined in the middle of the market on street vendors’ stools and watched as people picked out their fresh seafood dinners at the shop next door. (Seriously, it was VERY fresh seafood! I took a video of all the crabs, shrimp etc clawing over one another saying “pick me! pick me” to each patron).
Drawing a close to the end of
my time in Hong Kong, I had just enough time to fit in two last dinners with friends. On Wednesday night, Roni and I joined some of her new friends at their apartment for dinner. Brandi, Emma and Christy had an amazing apartment, with an even more amazing view. We had a lovely girls’ night and I thoroughly enjoyed the gal gabfest and the stories from each of them of their previous travels.
My last night in Hong Kong, I met someone I was meant to meet more then three years earlier in Wakuya, but it took us all this time to finally be in the same place at the same time. Herby Lai worked at my high schools in Japan the year before me and had sent me numerous emails about my up coming life in Japan. He left a few days before I arrived, so we never got a chance to meet. After my adjustment period in Japan and after my last few questions had been answered, we sort of lost touch, but knowing I was going to be in his home town of Hong Kong, I sent him an email suggesting we get together for
dinner. When I hadn’t heard anything back from him in two weeks, I figured it was a lost cause, but low and behold, after returning from dinner with the girls the night before, he emailed me and we were able to meet up on my last night in town.
Herby brought along his lovely fiancé Michelle and we feasted on Thai food while exchanging stories of Wakuya and the people we knew in common. It was a conversation that would have been much different had we met when I first arrived in Japan, and I loved being able to talk to someone who knew about my situation in Japan and could share similar insights on life in rural Wakuya. Herby and Michelle are getting married pretty soon and their honeymoon travel plans hope to take them back to Wakuya once again.
My passport had been in the hands of the Vietnamese embassy for the past week and I was relieved to have it back in my hands finally. Friday September 22nd, I was flying to Saigon, Vietnam at 8pm. That gave me one full day to get to Macau, see all the sights I could, and
get back in time for my flight. But to be fair, I think Macau deserves it’s own blog, so that will be the next one.
To summerize Hong Kong for you in three words, I loved it. Even though I have no intention of living in Asian again any time soon, Hong Kong is definitely the city I would like to do it in. With all the amenities you need/want, but still retaining that Asian flair, it makes for a perfect city. I even told Roni I was going to write to the HK tourism bureau and tell them how much I loved it. (Still haven’t done that yet though…)
It was great to spend so much time with Roni, and she was a spectacular host, even giving me her bedroom for the whole 10 days I was there, while she slept on the living room floor. (I was utterly spoiled, of course!) Thanks again Roni, I hope to be able to return the favor one day.
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Kym
non-member comment
There's names for girls like you!!!!
I can't believe you did that! I'm glad you were able to ditch the guy so easlily! I loved Hong Kong. One of the cool things I did was take a ferry to a small island called Chung Chao, or somehting like that. There are no cars there. I rented a windsurfer and sailed in the South China Sea. And of course the tram up Victoria Peak if you haven't done that yet. Enjoy!