Hong Kong Day One

(Molly)

Hi Everybody! We made it to Hong Kong, as did our luggage, to my surprise and delight. Our flight was delayed a day due to snow, which I appreciated because I was a nervous wreck on Wednesday. The delay gave me an extra day to repack and organize my thoughts, and I felt much better by the time we arrived at the airport at 4:30 in the morning on Friday. We checked our bags - Mine, Candice's, and Steve's bags were all under 50 pounds (Steve's barely made it), but Ms. Arkin's is 57. They didn't make her pay any fee on the way over, but we'll have to see how it works out on domestic flights within China. Then we flew Air Canada from Logan to Toronto - that was fabulous. We each got little screens and got to choose what we wanted to watch. I found the one House episode that I missed last season, and Ms. Arkin watched Arrested Development. Then we flew from Toronto to Chicago, which meant we had to go through US customs despite never leaving an airport. Next we flew from Chicago to Hong Kong. This took 15 hours and was very cramped. There was also a family with three small children (one was a baby) sitting next to us. We couldn't really tell how much we slept - most of it was drifting in and out. I had bought about 6 books for the flight ... I read for a total of maybe 2 minutes. After about 27 hours in Airports and on planes, we finally got to Hong Kong! Hong Kong is a very neon city. It seems like a cross between New York City and Las Vegas. Everything is in both Cantonese and English, so it is a really great transition city. Right now the entire city is decorated for the New Year. There are tiny orange bushes EVERYWHERE. I picked one - the fruit is quite sour. There is a lot of red and gold, and a surprising amount of neon orange. When we got to the city, we called my youth group advisor, Jamie, who is in Asia for 2 years and whom we had arranged to meet up with. We took the Star Ferry to meet him in Hong Kong. It was brief, but great - all the buildings have neon moving murals on them. My favorite is one with two goldfish whose tails are waving back and forth. Jamie decided that since we would be having Chinese food for the next two months, we should start out with something different, so he took us to a Thai restaurant in the restaurant district of Hong Kong. Much of Hong Kong is built into Victoria Peak, so it is even steeper than San Francisco! However, everywhere in Hong Kong (and everywhere in China, says Jamie) they love escalators. We took moving sidewalks all the way up the hill to the restaurant. They go down from 6 - 10 in the morning, when people are commuting down to work. Then they go up for the rest of the day. The restaurant district had EVERYTHING - Mexican, Spanish, Italian, American, French, Russian-Ukrainian, Argentinean, Thai ... After we went to dinner, we took a walk down to SoHo, which is short for South Hollywood. It is the bar district. It is hilarious, because it is just as steep as the rest of the peak, and every other row of cobblestones on the road is raised. High Heels + Steep Slope + Raised Cobblestones + Beer = Hilarity. This was a place for serious people-watching. The people in the bars were from all over the world. The Americans were the loudest and the drunkest. We had some Ben + Jerry's and watched the crowd. Then we left the bar district and took a taxi down to the flower market, which closed the next morning at 6 AM. If all the Internationals were at the bars, all the Chinese were at the Flower Market - it was packed solid. I couldn't even see the vendors, so it was better to just get out of the crowd and watch the people coming out, seeing what they were carrying out with them. The crowds here are not as bad for me as back home, because everybody is shorter! We expected Flowers and traditional Chinese crafts. Instead, it was mostly blow-up plastic carnival ware, and a bunch of pinwheels. We saw one man carrying a large blow-up rake... The weather here is fabulous, although a little too humid. It is probably 70 or 75 degrees during the day, so we are all breaking out the short-sleeve t-shirts that we haven't worn since September. Candice is on a mission to find a special kind of Nike sneaker that is sold only in China. We have had 9 sightings so far. We are staying at the YMCA, which is quite nice. The breakfast is great - there are both western and Asian foods. We found sticky rice and pork wrapped in leaves, which we had had before in the states - those were great. Candice says that waiters keep trying to put her napkin in her lap for her, which she finds a little unnerving ("I can do it myself!") Today we went to Lantau to see the Big Buddha. That is one BIG BUDDHA! It took us about an hour to get to the island via the MTR system, which is clean, quick, and easy. The MTR is what we would call a subway, but here a subway is just a tunnel you take under a street instead of crossing it above the ground. Then we had to wait 2 hours for the tram. By the end, our feet were very tired and a little swollen. The Buddha was pretty great. There were also 6 statues of his attendants, who were holding various things. The sign said "don't throw coin," but everyone was tossing coins at the statues, hoping to land them in the attendants' hands. We've seen a lot of kids today in traditional silk dress. We are not sure whether this is just for the New Year, or whether they wear it all the time. Also, we've seen really little kids out until 2 in the morning! Tonight Ms. Arkin and I went out for Italian food. The waiter had a crush on us and was really excited to practice his English. He was very smiley. I'm going to go to bed now, since it's approaching one AM!