New Digs Dug
Well, I’m currently at home, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, that is. On my summer vacation, outside China, and therefore able to access this site. How fantastic!
I’ve made a new one. I suggest that if you’d like to keep up with my travels, you now redirect your fantastic attention to: jumpedtherat.weebly.com
Thank you for your cooperation.
I will miss WordPress, especially now with its swanky new Dashboard.
Loave, Alex.
Good Morning, from Vietnam
WOW! I can post.
I wish I had thought of this earlier, but I’ve been busy with my travels, as one should be when taking 3 weeks off to party in the warmer regions of Asia.
Sorry for the radio silence folks. A lot has happened in the past, well… however long it’s been. So much that I don’t know if I can even mention any of it and do it justice. I can’t even remember the last time I was able to get on here.
As you may have guessed, China’s firewall may have won in the war to blog from the Middle Kingdom. When I get back I’ll keep putting in efforts to find a way to get back here.
But in other news: I’m in Hanoi, Vietnam, with Katie. It’s our last day, and in fact not the morning here at all. It’s currently 3:44pm, VN time. Our train back to Beijing leaves at 6ish, and we have some time to kill so we’re sapping up the internet at our hotel, Central Stars. I recommend it if anyone’s planning on visiting the area.
The past few weeks have been amazing. Eye opening.
My pack is stuffed with things I’ve brought and bought, all in a firm state of disorder, but I don’t care. (Note: this entry is terribly disordered as well, I apologize, if anyone even still checks this.) Traveling down Vietnam was certainly worth all the time we spend in each city, and Cambodia went by too fast. I wish we had found the time to go to Angkor/Siem Reip, but it just didn’t work out :[ Phnom Penh was still so interesting, and in ways I didn’t expect. Kids coming up to
Beijing Cheer
So originally I went through the trouble of grabbing all the urls and doing the html to have photos up here, but my proxy server is turning them into crap. SO. Here I have arranged a slide show to display my last trip to Beijing with Katie.
A little background:
Last weekend she and I took a trip into the capital to cruise around a little, meet up with her friend from high school (how funny, right? He’s studying in Shanghai), and just get out of Baoding for a few days.
We had an absolute blast, just wandering around, singing carols to each other amidst crowds of slightly confused Beijingers, and taking some very choice shots. For some reason the place was crawling with guards eeeeverywhere.
Mid riotous giggles, a Chinese couple approached us and the girlfriend kindly asked, in very good English, if her boyfriend could take a photo with her. I couldn’t help laughing even harder as I snatched a few of her.
Once we got back to Beijing xi station, we snapped a few of the crowds, sat down for some grading (story of my life now), and traveled back to Baoding, munching on the much coveted raspberry Pim, and rocking out to songs on Katie’s ipod. So fun.
Anyway, check them out here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amwphotos/sets/72157603394983692/show/
Well, I have to run to the post and send out the very last of my holiday packages before it’s the new year!! More soon, I promise. I know I’ve been lacking in good content lately. I have no real reason aside from lack of time and a new addiction to facebook scrabble…
Brief moments of lucidity…
I’m currently on my lunch break, but just found WordPress finally working well enough to post up here. I’ve tried to add some photos back into my last post about the animaux, using simple html. No frills, but it’s a start.
Now I have a bus to catch. Hopefully I’ll be able to connect later!
Menagerie
It has been far too long since I was able to connect on here and update things. I’ve been blocked from a bunch of sites, and at one point everything internet related except my web browsers worked. Now I’ve downloaded a miriad of patches with cute names like Gladder (Great Ladder) and Anonymouser, in order to get around such blockades. Let’s hope they continue to work! Also… I’m posting this sans usual imput method, I hope all the pictures show up! Let me know if they do not.
So one topic about which I’ve been meaning to write has been my newly acquired menagerie… of sorts.
Everyone knows I’m an animal person. It can’t be helped. However, it can be restrained, and I have been very good here, in China. The only animals I have bought or somehow obtained myself, with intention to keep, have been fish. As I have noted before, The Chairman Pesce, my red hot fishie, was my first pet here in this new land. He is still bubbling happily away in his plastic bowl.
As for the other creatures in my possession, well, I don’t really know.
It started with Livingston.
Meet Livingston Hermes Sarah Russell Yetu Turtle:
I had some help with the name.
When I asked a Chinese friend to pet-sit The Chairman for me while I went away to Hong Kong, I didn’t expect to receive a turtle a few days later. I had made the mistake of saying that I thought turtles were cool, and that I knew a few people at home who had them. A few days later, my cell phone rang and I was beckoned downstairs. Lo and behold, she had bought me a turtle.
“Eugh… thanks. You didn’t have to do that. I mean I told you not to. Ok. Ok, thanks.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love him, and it’s been about a month now that I’ve had him, but I was not expecting her to really buy me a living breathing red eared slider. In any event, I decided to make the best of the situation since resources were available at a cheap price by US standards. Here is Livingston’s new abode:
Go big or go home, right? Yes, that’s a water heater and filter. Normally people keep them in fishbowls with no room to run around, but that just seemed cruel.
Unfortunately, the feeding part is a little gross. I did extensive research, and young red eared sliders eat mostly protein while they are still growing. That means worms, generally. It’s pretty disgusting, and smelly, but there’s an outdoor pets market just down the road, and they’ll sell a more than adequate amount to me for about 5 jiao (10 jiao = 1 yuan). Again, that’s like giving me something for free. Plus, The Chairman likes munching on worms too.
When I don’t feel like dealing with the creepy crawlies, Livingston also has turtle pellets, and small feeder fish are ok. Those I generally dump into his tank and let nature take its course. About 4 of them have survived a week so far, while the others perished. It surprises me. They must have some sort of game plan, like hide out by the filter when he gets hungry. Livingston hates the filter, he like the waterfall of fresh water, but the intake part freaks him out because it slowly pulls him towards it when he’s not paddling. Mostly he spends his time gazing at his own reflection underwater, which is pretty endearing. Occasionally I catch him sunning on the deck area.
I don’t even have a deck area.
So that’s my Livvy. A few weeks into it I bought a large sucker fish, Dante, to deal with some minor scum problems in his tank, but that’s not the end, nor the most interesting animal under my watch.
I even had a few geckos somehow find their way in. Here’s some fun photos of them hanging out:
The first time it happened was right after I had assembled Livingston’s new pad. I went into a frenzy shouting, “NO MORE FREAKING ANIMALS. Everyone OUT!” and proceeded to usher the offending herp out of my fauna laden domicile. Now I just kinda let them be, and wait for them to get out on their own. If they made it in, they must have a way out, and sooner or later they’ll run into Newton.
This is Sir Isaac Newton:
Now before you jump all over me for being irresponsible, let me state my case here. First of all, I’m totally against getting a pet of any kind if you’re unable to care for it. I’m not intending to keep the cat. In fact, he’s not even mine, really, he’s jointly cared for by myself, Sarah, and Katie.
One cool morning Katie and Sarah were outside getting their bikes and saw a really weak kitten approaching them, so skinny and tired that he could barely mew. They brought him upstairs and phoned me, the crazy cat woman, to ask if I could watch him while they ran to the store for some food.
Approaching Katie’s room, I was reluctant to believe that he would be in such bad condition. Ready to see a perfectly healthy kitten that was just too cute for them to not scoop up, I was a little unnerved. His bones were not only easily felt, but also seen. I had brought down some water and a pb&j sandwich for myself, and sat with him while he feebly mewed. I was checking him for bugs and mites when he found my sandwich. I thought aloud, “Buddy, you don’t want it, cats don’t like peanut butter.” Believe it or not, he must have been starving enough, because he ended up eating nearly half of the top of it. I felt so bad for this poor animal. I almost wanted to cry, because I couldn’t imagine my own cats back home wanting anything to do with peanut butter and jelly.
When the girls got back we fed him, gently washed him with hand soap, and de-fleaed with a pair of tweezers. The fleas were easy to pick off, they were pretty malnourished themselves, and the girls had picked up some flea drops at a local pet store that the woman said would be ok for kittens.
Now it’s a few weeks later. He’s looking plump and acting rambunctious. We decided a day after taking him in that it’d be best to find a home for him in Baoding, because with the freezing weather coming, we couldn’t just dump him outside. Right now we have a few leads from students and friends, as to some possible homes for Sir Isaac. In the meantime we’ve been switching off on care duty. It makes it easier to tolerate his craziness when there are three of us. I think we all are ready for him to be gone. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love cats, but I can’t stand kittens. They’re cute, but I can’t appreciate them until they’re full grown.
But they still are cute, right?
So that’s it for my animal hoard, thank goodness.
Though, a donkey would be just perfect in my mud room, dontcha think?
Thanksgiving
So far, my holidays spent here in China have been surreal.
Even Halloween seemed fake. I understood that it was October 31st, but suddenly the date had been stripped of its history. It was merely the last day in October, the one before it turns into November.
This Thanksgiving was no different, it all seemed silly and made up, like the “Thanksgiving” party you have in 3rd grade, before you go on real vacation. Or a postponed birthday bash. It’s hard to explain. When society doesn’t post up cartoon cornucopias, or part the Red Sea of work and school to give you a week off, it suddenly isn’t true. It can’t be Thanksgiving! Where are all the construction paper cut-out-hand turkeys and the brown crepe paper?? For that matter… where are the actual turkeys?
As I learned yesterday, in Chinese “turkey” is ‘huǒjī” or “fire chicken,” which to me sounds more like a phoenix. In any case, they don’t gots ‘em.
However, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, I had a really fun Thanksgiving. (Whew, she isn’t miserable!) No, no, it was approaching hilarity when you consider how much time and effort we all took to make things happen. It began with American scheming (HAH, I could make a joke, I won’t). We all decided one night that Thanksgiving really couldn’t go unnoticed, and dug up a plan to secure one of the rooms in the small dining room in Da Bai Lo, across the way, to hold a small dinner to which everyone would bring a dish. Turkey Day, potluck style. Well, if we were going to invite Mark, one of our fellow American teachers, of course we would invite his Mongolian wife, Miigaa. How about some of the other Mongolians? Well if we aren’t just doing Americans anymore, then what about Mr. Kim, our Korean friend? The other Koreans? French? Japanese? Our Chinese friends Yusi and Frankie?
We struck a deal with the dining room. Let us use the whole thing between 3-6pm, when they aren’t open anyway, and we’ll buy all our alcohol there.
Now, I had my reservations, one of which including my dubious cooking ability, but at least I don’t eat meat, and didn’t have to worry about the bird. Instead, I made green beans, pesto/chickpea pasta salad (sniff, reminded me of Lauren a little), helped Natty out with some homemade applesauce, and mashed sweet potatoes.
The latter was my favorite to make. First you have to understand that Baoding, as I may or may not have mentioned before, is home to a population that would rather eat out than cook. That being the case, the streets are lined with vendors selling outdoor food items at the peak times for lunch and dinner. The foods range from sit-down outdoor eateries to stands you might see in New York of Philadelphia selling hot dogs or cheese steaks. Anyway, one popular snack is baked sweet potatoes. You can buy them from men and women who cook them on the street through the use of portable ovens, sometimes with little drawers where they plop the spuds while they bake. It’s pretty cool. Normally, you buy one, are given some newspaper to hold it in, and then peel away the outer skin and try not to get the gooey insides all over your fingers. When I asked the woman for seven, she looked at me like I three heads. “Are you going to EAT these?” she asked, in Chinese. “Shī,” I replied. I love saying “shī” because it both sounds like “sure” and means “yes.”
Later I went home and bashed the hell out of the sweet potatoes. Mark had been so kind as to make me some caramel by boiling a can of condensed milk (you learn something new every day) and I added some of that along with cinnamon, and they were a hit.
Also on the table were sushi, mashed potatoes, potato omelettes, salad, spaghetti and homemade marinara, and for the bird……….. duck. I laughed. Of course. It reminded me a little of that scene in A Christmas Story. As for desert, Katie found REAL cheesecake at a local tea house, we had our applesauce, and Charlotte and Marie Claire made honied pears, but the real delight, the thing that had half the crowd falling over one another, while gasping in astonishment, was pumpkin pie. THAT IS CORRECT, you heard it right, homemade pumpkin pie. The shock amongst the Americans was nearly palpable. Jack, an older man who is also an American teacher at Hebei, had somehow, bent the laws of physics and found the time and means to bake a pumpkin pie. All was well in our world, and as we went around the table expressing our individual thanks for different things in our lives, I am pretty sure that Jack’s pumpkin pie was about the 3rd thing mentioned.
So all in all, I had a really… exotic Thanksgiving. We drew many stares from the dining staff, and members of the foreign student population, but it didn’t matter. I was very thankful for the friends I had there, because with out them, a lot of this season would seem a little meaningless so far from home. I miss all of you dearly who are reading this back in America. I wish I could have had more communication with you yesterday, but know that I’m well, and very very thankful to have you in my life too!
Now I have to tackle the “toxic amounts of leftovers” that are in my fridge, to quote Dave Barry. But maybe I’ll do some dishes first. I didn’t have the heart to last night, and this morning I ate my cereal out of a mug.
At long last!
Dearest Ladies and Jellyspoons,
I apologize for having not posted in a long while. I have so much to write, but neither time nor, as of late, a connection to this site! I have been struggling with signing on for about a week at least. I am off to the post office soon to mail out some packages, but when I return I really do hope that this window has not closed, and I may be able to get more up here.
I don’t even want to hint at topics because I’ll go on forever! Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about you.
Wo de pengyou,
-The Woman Behind the Curtain
Trick Yer Teach
Today I shared the joy that is Halloween with my students. I relayed a brief note about Samhain and the Celtic side of the story, but mainly focused on the candy and pranks when I explained the general concept and history last week in preparation.
So I went out and bought some candy, enough for my students to have a few. I searched my wardrobe for a good color combination, and headed to class. I expected to find everyone patiently waiting for me, as always, but instead I walked into an empty classroom. My senior, Breakfast, walked in and asked if I had changed the room plan. Puzzled, I said no, and that maybe there was a mix up. Then I looked at the board. Scrawled across it were images of skulls, crossbones, bats, and at the center, a sketched girl with pointy teeth and one eye dangling. I started laughing as Connie walked in and said, “I have been sent to tell you that no one will return until there is a piece of candy on every desk!” I really couldn’t stop laughing as I spread the candy out on the desks.
They actually pranked me.
My schedule loving, teacher respecting students. I suppose it doesn’t seem like much, but it surprised the hell out of me, and I loved it. They all came back in with giggles that turned to gasps at the sight of REAL CANDY. Yes, yes, I had indeed brought it.
We told ghost stories that they had written and I shared a few of my own. I even turned the vocabulary quiz into a spooky Ray Bradbury rip off. Oh, it was excellent. I finished up the class with a slideshow of some of my favorite Halloween photos, care of my mother. Here are the pics for your general amusement:
Stego Baby
Yellow Bird
One of the best Halloween Parties around.
I did love my half-sandwich idea which was only whole when next to Jen’s other half, but Mum had the awesome idea of the roll of film negatives, complete with reverse shading:
You can’t forget the Quail.
The glasses really made this one.
But nothing beats the Lifesavers for recent costumes.
I miss being with my friends this year, but at least I can poison a few minds over here.
Muahahahaha.
Han Tombs
Last weekend Charlotte, Richard, Jane, and I went on a trip to the local Mancheng Han Tombs in Baoding County. Lots of fun, though the tombs themselves were small and overpriced (AND photography was banned, pshaw). The journey there was definitely the fun part. During the two bus, 1 cab journey to get to the park I was squished between two burly men in the back of one of the buses, and then laughed as I attempted to explain to the cabbie that I was the only American in our group. “Wǒ shì měiquóren… ta shì yinguóren? Yinggélánren?, ta shì fǎguóren, ta shì…uhm.. ruska? What’s ‘Russian’ in Chinese?”* Anyway, here are a few photos from the trip which I quite enjoyed:
The entrance to the park at the base of the tomb area.
This woman was picking what look like a cross between peaches and tomatoes from this tree.
(Note the huge Buddha on the left, we never found him…)
But we chose to climb.
Where we began our climb.
Hi, Charlotte.
Autumn in China.
This building, at a resting point up the hill, had a great view.
Also, lots of ladybugs. Their swarming annoyed me.
The view:
Later when we were climbing down, I took a shot of corn drying on these roofs.
A very fun trip indeed, though the distance was a little taxing. On the way home, Richard and I compared notes on Brit and American slang for various things, though we always seemed to come back to the theme of drunkenness. I especially appreciated knowing that “to be pissed” means drunk, and not angry. Quite different. I wish I had some views of inside the tombs, but if you’re interested there’s this site: Baoding Han Tombs.
More exciting adventures to come :}
Hong Kong Part 2: We’ll just have to do it tomorrow.
I’d like to preface this entry by apologizing for how long it’s taken me to update. As of late I have been preoccupied with teaching, and especially a new surprise gift which was recently given to my by a friend. But more on that later.
So Natty and I were elated– we had the pink effing file folder. We probably should have taken less time to get to the passport office, but couldn’t help but relax a little now that we had the papers back. Again on the Express to the main island, we talked about meeting up with the others, as we had planned, at 2pm. The passport office couldn’t take that long, right? Especially if Ivy and the other higher-ups only gave us one business day in which to do it during the trip, right?
Mmm, no. When we got to the office the others were no where to be seen. We took the forms given us, and a number (which I forget but was about 30 ahead of what was currently being called), and sat down. The benches were arranged in this large room facing about ten teller windows, four of which were operational. It was around 11:30am. Flash forward an hour, and our number was still not called. At noon they “closed” for lunch until 2pm. In reality that meant that they locked the door outside, but let stay those who had already taken numbers, and served them through now one window out of ten. At 1:20, with every form double checked and everything in order, we were growing restless. I murmured to Natty that we still had to meet the others at 2pm back at the hostel on Kowloon. One of us could go, and the other wait for the number to be called. Then, maybe we could have one person apply for both. That meant that the other would go to Kowloon without his or her passport. Tough choice. I noted that the police probably wouldn’t stop me for questioning, but Natty does look like the troublesome type. ONLY kidding.
I stayed behind. When our number was called I was surprised and nearly didn’t make it up in time, as they had rushed through the five numbers which preceded my own.
Talk about anticlimactic. I had our passports, our documents, and our money ready (a US Z-visa with a 1-day rush would come to $1030, please [we were told it would be around $600... $1030 HKD is only about $133 USD, but still!]). The woman grabbed everything, didn’t even ask me where Nathaniel B Hussey was, and then told me to please come back and pick them up on Monday.
Monday? One-day rush? One business day, Ma’am. There’s no way to have it done… No.
Outside the office at 2:30, while I was waiting for Natty, I ran into Katie and Sarah. Everyone else who had applied in the morning were coming back at 3:15 to pick up their passports, and the girls had come early to check out the shopping in the neighborhood. I relayed my news. At least we’d have visas, but we had to stay until Monday now, instead of leaving for the mainland again on Sunday with the others.
When Natty returned we got some lunch on the street and reviewed our current situation:
++++The visa issue was dealt with, and off of our shoulders for now.
—But the fee was much more than we had anticipated.
-And we’d have to pay for another night in the hostel.
—And reschedule our flight… if possible.
—–If not, we would probably have to buy a new flight back.
–Which meant going to the airport again, and the Express tickets are $60 one-way.
+A train might be cheaper.
–Natty was almost out of money.
+I had enough to cover basic needs for both.
++The fishy dough balls we were eating were really yummy.
Trying to make the best of things, we resolved to call the airport and see what they said about the situation. After the run-around from two automated services and deskworker at the Hong Kong Int’l Customer Service desk, I finally got ahold of the Air China downtown office. Because we were in a group of seven, we couldn’t just switch our flight, we would need to re-book (how was that different? I was too frustrated to fight with the guy over it) for $430 per person. That’d be $860 for both, please. Ugh. Fine. He told us to come to the downtown office to do so, the airport itself couldn’t help us.
We got back to the hostel exhausted. I had a slight headache from dealing with office workers and automated messaging services via a subway pay phone. Unfortunately, we had one more call to make, and that was to Ivy, to update her on our situation. (PS: I wanted to throw my calling card across the room after listening to a 3 minute long message about calling the Philippines EVERY time I wanted to place a call using it.) When I finally reached her, she seemed happy that we had recovered the documents, and applied for the visa. I told her of the processing time, and though she was disappointed, she never came off as angry in the least, which was really reassuring. She could not refund us the charge for re-booking, but she could arrange a car to meet us in Beijing once we knew our arrival time.
It was something.
It was now around 6:00pm, and everyone was hungry. I suggested a night market nearby on Kowloon where a woman, Terry, a 2-year resident of HK who had chatted with me in the visa office, had recommended for cheap street cuisine. Off of Jordan Street, we found a few blocks of little stall-like restaurants selling dishes of various origins. We settled at an Indian place which accommodated the vegetarian needs of Sarah, Chris, and I while giving the others a spicy dose of lamb marsala. Katie didn’t seem the biggest fan of Indian cuisine, but stuck around for our marvelous company. The portions were just as you’d expect for a place catering to tourists: small, and expensive. However, it tasted great, and I realized how much I’d missed Indian food. Chris and I gobbled up our veggie curry and naan. Natty, however, was less impressed with the quality and quantity, and to add insult to injury, got overcharged for the extra bread they brought him but he did not order.
To cap off the night, we still had to get to the downtown office and fix our tickets. I had the idea to call ahead of time to make sure they were still open, and found that, indeed, they were not. Wonderful, especially when I had made plans to spend the following day, Saturday, checking out the local museums with Sarah and Katie.
I called the airport and asked for the address of the downtown office and their hours of operation for the next day. I figured out a way to bypass the Philippines message and even got a very helpful woman on the line who confidently told me that the Air China office was off of Queen’s Rd on HK island, and that they opened at 9 the following morning. Well, at least we could fix the problem tomorrow.
We got fruit smoothies and went back to the hostel, to our dorm room which we now shared with a british girl and an Italian guy named Sergio. Vanilla Sky was on the TV, and I watched a little before I gave in to a deep sleep.
The next morning when we all met up Katie and Sarah very graciously agreed to wait for me to come back from the downtown office, that way we could go to the Museum of Art together. In the meantime, Phil and Mr. Kim wanted to go see the Science Museum, so timing worked out nicely, for once. Chris was heading to the main island too, and so the three of us hopped on the super efficient subway and soon afterwards found the building. On a side note: everything looks larger on maps of Hong Kong, but in reality, it’s a pretty manageable size.
At the elevator lobby we looked up the office on a board and approached the lifts. The doorman stopped us and told us that the Air China office wasn’t open on weekends. Oh. Really.
I had to go up and see for myself, so Natty and I climbed into the elevator anyway.
When the doors opened, we were greeted by a rather Alfred Hitchcock image:
(Note the newspaper headline.)
There is no 2nd floor on the weekends…
I could only laugh. Monday. We would reschedule our flight on Monday, the day we needed to leave. We would have to book our new flight after we had, to their knowledge, simply missed the other. Fantastic.
Chris, Natty, and I walked up a few streets, shaking our heads, and I put all thoughts of paperwork, scheduling, and business out of my mind as we climbed the largest escalator in the world (right) towards an open produce market.
My spirits lifted when I found a large, healthy looking stack of big, round Granny Smith Apples with stickers that said “Product of the USA” on them. I bought the largest one I could see. It tasted like home. Here are some of the photos I took while we were looking around:
We hopped around a few camera shops and then ducked into a foreign language bookstore where we hung out for a good 20 minutes, at least. During this time I oogled the travel guide section and found the Lonely Planet guide to Volunteering abroad– fascinating. I wanted to buy it so badly but I didn’t feel like spending more money than I needed at the moment. I left the boys there still pouring over the books and then made my way back to Kowloon to meet up with Katie and Sarah.
The Museum of Art was really mind blowing. We were still crazy nomads when these people were creating amazing ceramics. It blew my mind. I fell in love with some of the modern stuff too like a 1940′s scroll painting by Wu Hao, and one called “Pomegranates and Peaches” by Yin Rutian featuring bats eating both fruits. I wished they had sold prints at the museum shop.
Afterwards, I convinced Katie and Sarah to check out the Museum of History, which was still on Kowloon, but north of our hostel on a street parallel to Nathan. From my guide book it looked as though they had some neat reproductions of traditional boats, and a lot of Hong Kong artifacts. All in all, it was a blast, and Katie even mentioned liking the history museum better than the other ones she visited that day. I took this shot of Katie while there:
That evening Katie, Phil, Sarah, and I had planned to take the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak, the highest point on Hong Kong. It’s a total rip off, but then again, everything is in Hong Kong when you’ve been living in Baoding. When translated back into USD it’s reasonable enough. The rickety coach, pulled by a system underneath the car, took about ten minutes to climb up the mountain. What’s disappointing is all the junk on the top, like a virtual mall of western stores and kitchy booths, but the view (taken from a Burger King patio I’ll add) was amazing:
For dinner that night Natty, Chris, Phil, and I went to a Shanghainese Vegetarian place and had some amazing food. We were the only Westerners there, which was kinda cool considering all the touristy places we had been in the past few days. I was pleased. I pulled an “I’ll have what they’re having” when I spotted a couple with a clear glass teapot full of chunks of fruit and hot red tea on the way in. It turned out to be a fruity hot tea with honey and an pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, peach, etc. Delish. We even had some veggie Dim Sum (I thought of Char, who has urged me to find some ever since I landed).
The conversation was a key part of this experience as well. Phil brought up his discomfort when eating at a restaurant that had a large statue of Buddha displayed. I was a little puzzled at why Buddhism specifically made him uncomfortable, and we all started in on a long discussion of right and wrong, religion, and morality. I won’t do it any justice by trying to even relay the key points, but the word of the night was “synthesize” when talking about the religious moral foundation of childhood being melded with the different views of others you run into as an adult.
That night the girls and I went out bar hopping around Kowloon, and though Sarah wasn’t feeling too well and went home early, we all had a good time. At the end of our tour, Katie and I ducked into an Irish pub looking place close to the hostel. There we met a South African guy whose name escapes me now. In any event, he was one of the coolest people I’ve met in a while, and we stuck around talking to him for about three hours. It was a really nice time, and after our first drink, we only had one more, which he bought for Katie and I. Probably in his late 40′s, this guy had been made to fight in the war when he was around our age, and was now a businessman taking a short trip to Hong Kong. We got him to talk about his home country, and even say a few phrases in Afrikaans, which was so cool and strange to hear. He also spoke something like four local African dialects. We butted heads a little on the topics of politics and hunting, but it was all really friendly conversation, and when we left to go back to the hostel he wished us a good night, and that was that. I had such a great time.
Back in the dorm room Natty had made better friends with Elsa, the British girl on the bottom of his bunk, and Erik, the German turned Canadian, on the bottom of mine. They were both characters. Erik spouted conspiracy theories in a somewhat heavy German accent, and Elsa peacefully interjected here and there telling us about her own fascinating life. The following night Natty and I would spend dinner with her and learn more about how she had been traveling the world for a year and planned to land in Australia. She was brought up Anglican but seemed to share a lot of the new age-y spiritual ideas as I.
Sunday, the day of our original flight came, and after some sightseeing time (during which Katie and I checked out the Botanical Gardens), Natty and I accompanied the others to the airport. We double checked at the desk to make sure that there was no possible way that they could do anything for us at the airport itself… where all the flying and booking stuff usually happened anyway. No. I wanted to pull a Parker Woman on them and ask WHAT the HELL people are SUPPOSED to do on the weekends IF THIS DOES HAPPEN EVER. But I didn’t. They didn’t have the equipment to handle that kind of request at the airport itself, was the woman’s answer. Oh, right. The change-your-flight-from-a-multiple-party-booking machine. I hear those are quite large, after all. I mean where would they put it?
As the others walked away towards the gate I silently wondered if by some other twist of fate I would ever see them again, doomed to stay on Hong Kong forever in a permanent state of bureaucratic disarray until they deported us. At least my UTI seemed to be clearing up, magically.
Early on Monday morning Natty and I packed up, and hoped for the best. What if they didn’t have any seats left on a flight back to Beijing and we had to stay longer? What would we do? As it was, Natty would be missing classes by not being at He Da (Heběi Dàxué [Huh-bay Dah-shway] = Hebei University) that day. Oh, and then what if we got the plane tickets but the visa office decided they couldn’t give us our passports yet. There were just so many possibilities swirling around in my mind.
Luckily, $860 and 4 hours later, we were on a plane back to Beijing, passports and visas in hand. Not in the seat pocket in front of me.
I would have liked to give the lighter side of my Hong Kong visit more justice, but I just don’t have the energy to write any more about that trip. It’s finally over, and I could have kissed the ground in Beijing when we landed. This is not to say that I wouldn’t go back to Hong Kong to give the city another look. In fact, I’d really enjoy that. While I was there I was blown away by how diverse the area was, the wonderful array of ethnic restaurants, efficiency and cleanliness of the streets and public transportation, and overall feel of the city.
I really do recommend it to anyone who’s thinking of going. It is very very tourism-centered, however, I still did find portions of my trip immensely enjoyable. My top three are: 3) The botanical gardens’ orchid room with Katie, 2) A late night ferry ride across the harbor with Natty, and 1) my walk from the bookstore on HK island back through the open market, to the subway back to Kowloon. That last one just felt nice to take my time, enjoy the sun and the people on the streets. I imagined myself living there on Honk Kong Island, shopping for my grocery items and ducking into one of the local bakeries for an egg tart. I don’t know why I like wandering around places on my own so much. Maybe because people think it’s somewhat dangerous for a 22 year old girl to travel alone around anywhere in Asia. I remember laughing at what my grandmother might say.
Don’t tell her, ok?
This is your brain. This is your brain on Hong Kong.
