First up:
Dear the 2 random Japanese girls sitting next to me on the flight to Hong Kong: I thought it was very nice of you to do nothing except giggle at my funny accent or whatever when I translated what the Chinese flight attendant was trying to explain to you. I was particularly impressed by the gratitude you showed me by not even saying thank you when I tried to help you out of a situation your own ignorance created. I would also like to thank you for following this up with that "Shit, what do we do now we know that the foreigner next to us understands our entirely unremarkable conversation" act I grew to love so much. It was particularly nice of you to remind me of the thing I liked least about Japan while I was rather upset about having to leave.
I hope you have a lovely holiday in Hong Kong.
Oh, come on, did you really think I was going to let this blog go without a last rant :-)
So, Hong Kong! It was of course my luck that there was a typhoon on the one day I was there :-) And Tony was in America :-( sob sob...
It's pretty jam-packed and completely different from Japan. This was made clear to me pretty quickly when I got my ticket for the Airport Express into Central from the Airport:
Me: Hi, can I get a day return to Central please?
Station attendant: "Buy your ticket in Central. AND GET ON THE TRAIN NOW DAMNIT!!!!!
Hong Kong Dollars are pretty cool, although the coins are way too big.
I thought Central was a bit boring to be honest... Although if I happened to have loads and loads of money...
Went over to Mong Kok at Christina's suggestion, which was much more interesting. The Goldfish market really is something to see... about 4 solid blocks of fish stores... They like to stare there as well. Not like Japanese "I wasn't looking, honest" staring though... as in "walk right up to you and look you right in the eyes and then up and down for as long as it takes for the traffic lights to change" staring... They have Yoshinoya and 7/11 (complete with Pocari Sweat!!!! I'm gonna miss that stuff...) over there at well!
The Star Ferry was really cool as well. Perhaps best not to do that when it's blowing a Typhoon on the other hand. Oh, and I think I saw the SDU raiding the boat in front of ours in the middle of the harbour...
Overall I thought the place was pretty interesting, thought I'm not sure I'd want to live there... it's a bit like a dirtier version of Japan minus the politeness... On the other hand that does come with plus-points. Probably a good idea to visit on a day when there's no Typhoon as well.
Oh, and even though there was a typhoon chucking it down, it was something like 32C and humidity of 7 bazillion (worse than Japan!)
Oh, and they put my passport stamps on the same page as my Japanese ones (Just under my now cancelled Student visa) :-( Now it just looks like I have tons of Japanese stamps :-(
It was kinda strange to be back among so many westerners as well... Central seemed to be about 50/50 Chinese/western... Maybe that's why I liked Mong Kok more... Guess I'll have to get used to this again. Also, it was kinda hard to make sure I didn't speak Japanese to the Chinese people :-X
Oh, and I made the obligatory Starbucks visit... Final results: Japanese > UK = Hong Kong > Philippines.
Asia, I'll miss you X
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment