Hong Kong
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
3
22
Trip End
Jul 15, 2007
Hong Kong,
China
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Saturday: breakfast at Mimi's, ferry to Lamma Island where we walked around for awhile. Talked with a little girl holding on to a very big dog (Lamma has lots of dogs). She told us that the dog :"made the children because he pooped on the playground and that is not allowed." Hmmm.
Had some very good and fairly cheap dim sum - I have to tell you that the shrimpo here have a stronger/better flavor than even the wild caught shrimp we get in the US. On the ferry back to HK Island it was sooo sleepy - rock me on the water. Back on the Island we went back to the wonton place and then back across the harbor to Kowloon and a stop-off in the Chung King Mansions.
Quick geography: Hong Kong Island is, well, it's an island and between the island and the mainland is a deepwater harbor with ships and boats of every size as far as you can see. The mainland closest to the island is Kowloon (Chinese for nine dragons or something like that). Kowloon is a peninsula and there is a road running from close to where the Star Ferry docks (the Star Ferry is how you get back and forth from island to mainland) up the peninsula. That road is Nathan Road and it passes through areas called Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei, Mongkok, and then into the New Territories. Mong Kok is where the Dragon Hostel is and here I am in the little hostel office on their computer...
It's raining in Hong Kong.
01 Ferry to Lamma Island
It rained yesterday, too. Happy day to be in Asia when the rains begin. The Chungking Mansions is a huge building in Tsim Sha Tsui. Lonely Planet says Chungking is "a place like no other place in the world ... you may be put off by the undercurrent of sleaze...lifts like steel coffins..." CKM has the most astonishing collection of people ... Chinese, Pakistani, Afghan, Nigerian, Somali, Egyptian, English, Italian, Indian, Nepali, who knows where all. There are restaurants, clothing stores, phone stores - everything imaginable for sale. We go there for Indian food, to change money, and for an internet cafe run by Anna, a Filipina. As with the rest of the CKM, there is a variety of people in the internet cafe (oh, it is a very small place), including Filipina/o ladyboys of great beauty. What a place. We used the internet, talked with Anna, had a good time.
Back to where we are staying - raining - raining - raining. Went past our bus stop. Leslie goes into a bank to change paper money into coins for bus, etc. (exact change only policy). The man who is helping her looked amused. When she asks for further breakdown into smaller coins a woman comes over and is looking very amused. As it turns out we're in a betting parlor, but they give Leslie what she want - after all, she is the executive director.
Every day we find out something new about the block where we are staying - steamed bun place, Vietnamese restaurant, BBK place, "Japan store," - there's even a two-three story wet and dry market (wet = fish, meat, vegetables, etc. and dry = dry noodles, can good, etc.). We could spend days just on this block. Once we get to Bangkok (10 days from now will upload photos).
Hong Kong guest houses - at least the ones we've stayed in the pasr few years - have a hallway with bottled water and a refrigerator. Also a way to heat water, so you can eat very cheap if you like. Leslie makes "ice cubes" in plastic cups so that at the end of the day she can have iced tea. Oh, we're traveling in style alright.
Right now we're in the Hong Kong airport (free internet service). We fly from here to Bangkok. Layover for a few hours and then to Rangoon. Let me see if I can paste something on Burma into a next post ...
Comments
Who needs a bathroom anyway....
Had to look at that shower several times to figure out how it works. Still not sure!
Who needs a bathroom anyway....
Had to look at that shower several times to figure out how it works. Still not sure!Cecile