Home again
Hey everyone.
My first blog not on a public terminal in some time. It's nice to have my own computer back.
Today I went to the beach for Pita's birthday party. It was quite fun. We played dodgeball.
Eh, that's all for now. I'm sleepy.
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Hey everyone.
My first blog not on a public terminal in some time. It's nice to have my own computer back.
Today I went to the beach for Pita's birthday party. It was quite fun. We played dodgeball.
Eh, that's all for now. I'm sleepy.
1 min left on the public terminal... and someone watching everything i type (people are quite rude here)
About to head home. It was a fun trip. Lots of new things to see, hear, and smell. I miss CA and the USA, though, and I'm sure I'll value the space and stuff i have (at least for a little while.)
The trip is almost over. All we're doing now is finishing off the last items on our list. We're kind of burnt out, though, so we get much less done per day than before.
Today our big activity was a trip to Macau, another nearby SAR that used to be a Portuguese trading post. It was the most expensive element of our trip other than the excursion to Singapore. It was very disappointing.
We started this day trip by heading down to the black sand beach on the southern most island. This beach was only half black sand. The result of this mixture was that it looked very very yucky. The black sand looked like polluted brown sand until you walked right to it. The lifeguards were even making fun of us and muttering about how disgusting this beach is that all the tourists were going to see. We did not spend long there.
We hopped on a bus and headed back north. It was quite clear that this bus was not equipped with an air ride. It was a jarring ride that carried us back to the interchange, which we missed. We exited the bus one stop late and walked along the coast to find the most polluted beaches I've ever seen. Pictures are coming.
Near the next bus stop we decided to take refuge from the heat and humidity inside a casino. Unlike Vegas casinos, you must pass through a security checkpoint to gamble and no backpacks (such as one you would carry to a beach) are allowed.
Since neither of us are gamblers, we hopped on another cinder-block-ride equipped bus (in contrast to an air-ride) and caught an earlier ferry back.
The day ended happy, though, because we bought a bunch of asian snacks for next to nothing and had a good meal (nice steak + steamed veggies + rice + drink for < $5 USD).
Next on the list for the night: hit up the night market and find some nice knock off goods for friends and family back home.
60 seconds left at the public terminal again...
Vacation is still fun. Back in HK. Running otut of places to explore... time to shop. Starting to miss SF. The weather is so hot here.
Hello Everyone,
I'm at the Singapore airport now near my gate about to leave. It was a nice quick 3 day trip here... well more like 1 full day + 2 half days. Also, that one full day was very very rainy!
Singapore is a nice contrast to HK. It's very diverse, being a large part Indian. It's clean and the urban planning takes ascetics in mind above all else. It actually reminded me of Duloc, the city from Shrek. The Chinatown is clean and few people bother you. The subways are packed with public service announcements about doing good deeds and not eating too much gravy. Studying is illegal at the airport. It is even illegal to carry a durian onto the subway! (I have photographic proof... coming soon).
We met with one of Winnie's friends from school. He was very curious to know why we wanted to see Singapore. He described it as boring and said that we should go to Thailand or Malaysia instead, but not Singapore at all. No town pride how sad.
Back to Hong Kong, which although much more stressful has a lot more character imho (no offense to you Singapore natives :)
There is a word I've heard again and again. It always has the same secondary meaning while always having a different primary meaning. This word is mainlander...
The first time I started to hear this word often was when I was in Hawaii. I often overheard the locals call us mainlanders. This meant primarily that we were from the continental US, but secondarily meant that we were different. We were impatient, busy, etc.
This term has come up again evry often for me. As it turns out the residents of Hong Kong have a similar attitude toward those from mainline China. This similar attitude carries an even more negative secondary meaning. Many HK residents that I met feel that those from the mainland are pushy, rude, uneducated and even megalomaniac. I brushed this off as another common stereotype until this week.
My fight against the stereotype started this week when I visited the 20m tall Buddah. All around the statue were smaller bronze statues. On each statue were several signs in both english and chinese bearing the words 'Do not throw coins'. There were also crowds around each sign throwing coins. As Winnie and I took pictures of them violating the rules, our friend overheard several HK residents muttering in cantonese about how embarrassed those mainlanders made them feel.
My fight deteriorated further today when Winnie and I were using an internet terminal at a shopping mall. Some small children lined up behind Winnie and began bumping and pushing. We ignored. Finally, their mother came over and stood in front of Winnie while she was using the terminal! When Winnie alerted this woman that she was being rude, the woman snapped at her and demanded she surrender the terminal. She said Winnie was taking too long. It must be noted that all public terminals in Hong Kong bear a timer. Winnie's timer still had over 10 min remaining (she had been on for less than 5 min). When Winnie pointed to the chinese and english sign that stated 'keep browsing time to 15 min' the woman scowled that Winnie wasn't making any sense and she could not understand the sign.
And so I now understand the stereotype which may be more about new money than about their place of origin. I hope that those of you from Hawaii do not have similar stories about self-important, pushy, annoying American tourists... but I somehow know you do.
Today is all rainy. the rain here is of the heaviest I've ever seen with occasional lightning in the distance. I hope the weather is OK in Singapore next week. It will be fun anyway, I'm sure.
Since the day is rainy, we're spending it at one of the huge shopping mall megalopolises that are popular in Hong Kong. This one is only two malls and one department store and has only one subway station, but it also has over 700 stores. Many of these stores are duplicates for convince.
I finally found a line of model cars common to these parts. Most model cars are the same desirable models as in the states. As it turns out, kids do not enjoy playing with toy minivans anywhere. I purchased a Honda Life which is a sub-compact hatch-back similar to the Toyota Picnic or the Chevy Aveo.
In other news, something interesting finally happened. I can almost understand chinese finally. Until now it's been a string of gibberish. Now I can distinguish individual words. Lets see how much further I progress in the next 7 days.
Time to continue the shopping and people watching. Does anyone want anything from here? Jelly cups maybe?
180 seconds left this time.
*cracks knuckles* (ok that just wasted 15 seconds)
I'm back at the MTR station. We just got back from our FREE junk boat (duck ling) cruise across Victoria Harbor. Cant beat the price. It was fun, and i even got a bonus prize: a sunburn. It's minor though.
After the cruise we went to find a ~1.5 mile long escalator that runs from down town into the residential areas. This means that people commute by escalator. Neat eh?
We're off to go find toy capsule vending machines now. They have much better toys here :)
--Mike
Hey Everyone.
90 seconds left on the public net terminal so here it is fast:
time to go.