So, Tuesday the 28th September
Neena left earlier than me, with a brief goodbye, that mostly featured me mumbling something incoherent. From the perspective of a few days later this seems rather disatisfying, especially since it's the last physical contact I'll have with any of you for the next few months. It's 9 weeks until I get to Australia and see a familiar face.
If it seems odd that I should know that, hopefully the following blog will help articulate the reasons behind it, if the fact that I am now on my own in unfamiliar lands is not enough of a reason for you. Truthfully, 9 weeks would not be a long time to spend somewhere I was familiar with, like, say Amsterdam, but given that I've never visited any of these places before, and have no idea what to expect, the lack of company is more pronounced that you might expect - though, careful readers will note that I was, in fact, prepared for this eventuallity.
Anyway, getting to the airport proved more of a chore than it might have, because the Japanese weather has turned from scorching hot to hot and RAINING so I finally got to test out my bag's rain-defence-mechanism, by which I mean a little bag that comes out of the top and envelopes the whole thing - thankfully it worked like a charm. I also had the sense to buy a little fold (or scrunch) up rain-jacket, so the whole thing went a bit better than it could have. Then it was airplanes and waiting and airplanes. There's not really a whole hell of a lot to tell you about this end of things. A three and half hour flight to Beijing, followed by an hour and a half in Beijing airport, followed by another three and a half hour flight to Hong Kong.
Now, Hong Kong seen from ten or fifteen thousand feet is a sight to be seen at night. I've heard plenty of places described as Cities of Light, but Hong Kong really does win the title as far as I'm concerned. To add to the fact, we flew over a lightning storm for about ten minutes and it was a truly awesome thing, all that light exploding into being below you. Awed is perhaps too mild a word.
However, Hong Kong from the ground is rather a different story. The rather thin veneer of elegence becomes a choking, ugly explosion of neon and gaudiness. Perhaps if I hadn't just been in Tokyo, or perhaps if I was a city person, which I am very much not, it might have been different, thought honestly I dout it. Hong Kong, to me at least, is just another big city, full of the same - if not more - of those same capitalist decadences and vices you can find anywhere. A populace poor and often desperate crouched below a forest of towering phallic-symbols, streets filled with hustlers and cons, street traders, more sex shows and strip-bars than Amsterdam. Crowds of men, mostly Indian (though not only, and I mention it not out of some latent racism, but simply because it was my experience) at every corner and stop, outside every shopping mall, offering cheap suits, watches, hash or sex shows - or just pimping.
Into this maelstrom, I arrived at about midnight on a Tuesday, expecting to find a somewhat quiet, maybe too quiet city street. Clearly I was wrong. As soon as I got off the bus, only a half-minutes walk from my hostel, I was accosted by at least three guys who all wanted to show me their hostels - "Much better, cheaper, bigger rooms." Some of them may even have been telling the truth, though a few days in Hong Kong suggests to me that I was not in fact wrong to go the place I had booked. Although it was midnight, and had been dark for around six hours, it was still hot, really bloody hot and I was tired and not in the mood for this shit at all.
Finally I got in the doors of my hostels building, and I very clearly remembered the instructions from the email they'd sent. Of particular note the warning to only come to the 13th floor. A man asked me where I was going, I told him (maybe stupidly) and he said he'd show me that way up. I shrugged and said I knew the way. However, he was leading in a manner of speaking, and while we seemed to be going to same way, I wasn't really following. He hit 3 on the lift, I hit 13. There then followed an argument of sorts, where he tried to persuade me I could check in on the 3rd, 13th or 15th floor. Eventually, he got the hint and I simply went where I was supposed to.
There is an agressiveness about the place, and the people, but at the same time, they do generally tend to know when they're not getting anywhere, and know well enough to leave it there. Not always, but I didn't have to deal with that too much. There was one guy, trying to get me to go to his tailor shop, who called me everytime he saw me and followed me down the street for two full days until I eventually told him if I needed a suit I'd happily have gone, but I didn't even need a shirt so he was wasting his time something fierce. After that he left me alone, although I did get a polite hello from him this morning.
The hostel itself was very clean and also super tiny. Your talking about a space significantly smaller than my bedroom, with a bunkbed and a single (not as big as an actual single, more or less as wide as my shoulders at full stretch) and with less room than you'd fit another bed in left over. It was not comfortable living space for three people, but it was clean, and the staff were actually lovely. I couldn't fault them, even if I remain unenamoured with Hong Kong.
It should be mentioned actually, that I wasn't on Hong Kong island proper, but on Kowloon. The third island that makes who what we know as Hong Kong is Lantau, where Disneyland (more later) and the airport are. It only takes 5 minutes to get to Hong Kong though, and to be honest, it isn't the tourist part, Kowloon is. It's the hotel and shopping district. There's f-all else to do, so you better want to shop, or else see temples, because otherwise there ain't a whole lot to do.
There were two other lads in the room when I first got to it - a dude from Korea and a dude from Estonia, Robert. I was actually told the other guy's name but Asian names are so different and I hear so many that they just seem to slide right out of my brain. It's kinda worrying! Had a breif chat with them but really just wanted to crash and since I was last in the room, I had the shittest bed, top bunk and even though I'm small, I still smacked my damn head off the ceilling every last time I sat up. The pillow also appeared to be made of solid cement and was not conducive to a good night's sleep. At all.
Wednesday 29th September
The day started out fairly well, if a little early. In a room the size of a matchbox, you tend to wake up when your roommates wake up, and generally this wouldn't be a big problem but I was tired and didn't sleep well. Asian-dude was heading out to Macau for the day, but me and Robert decided we'd get some breakfast, have a chat, you know. He's was sound but also leaving that day, so after about an hour I was back to being on my own.
This in itself wasn't much of a problem, but circumstances conspired at this point. I'd started taking my malaria tablets and while the previous two days had gone fine, bar a little stomach fluttering for the first hour, I hadn't had any problems. It could have been the lack of rest, and the heat, but later that day I was seriously unwell and more or less confined to bed for a few hours.
Random, no?
I had some nice lunch in the place too, but as I said, the sickness didn't kick in til later. Afterwards I walked over to Kowloon park, but by the time I finished up there I was starting to feel a bit sick so I headed back to the hostel to crash, which turned out to be a very clever plan because less than an hour later I couldn't get out of the super uncomfortable bed. I tried reading and sleeping but that didn't go so well.
Of course, in the situation, other things started to come to mind, specifically that I was an idiot and why was I doing this when I could be at home, in my proper bed, watching TV or hanging out with friends (but you'll be glad to know such thoughts disapated as I got well again).
I did get up later, and went the convienently located Irish bar two doors down. Of course as well all know Irish bars in other countries are shit, and tend to have more Australians than Irish people, but I had a pint and some food, which I ate half of before I thought I'd get sick all over the place and then headed back to bed again, feeling very sorry for myself. I think I drank two litres of water through all this too, and tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked. Ultimately, I fell asleep, and simply woke up feeling better. I even continued taking my tablets the next day, and had no repeats of the whole terrible ordeal. At the moment, I don't notice anything when I take them, though people keep asking me do I have weird dreams. Simple answer, sure, but I ALWAYS have weird dreams, and I haven't had any in particular that I would class as especially over-active. In fact, given the strangeness of my situation, I reckon they're subdued if anything. Case in point being that I can't remember any of them, and I'm normally pretty good at that. Just little bits, nothing I could tell you about anyway. But then, you aren't reading this to hear about my dreams, but rather my actual doings of things!
Thursday 30th September
So a brave new day dawns over the cityscape of Hong Kong, and while Hong Kong improves precisely none, at least my experience of it begins to perk up a tad! After breakfast I knocked into an opticians in the shopping mall beside the hostel. I had a chat with a really sound Chinese guy about getting my glasses repaired. Turned out the best he could offer was taking out the lenses and putting them in new frames so I decided to just get a new pair of steel frame glasses (my last ones were fancy Red or Dead plastic ones) on the basis they might hold up better and get new lenses for them. I've kept the old ones, probably get them fixed when I go home, just need one very particular part and I could fix them myself. Then I'll have two pairs.
On my way into the tram up to the Peak, an Aussie fella stopped me and asked of I'd mind taking a picture of him and his girlfriend, so I said I would. He made a joke about me not being like that guy who steals the camera and it took me a few minutes to figure out what he meant, but eventually I realised he was talking about that old episode of Mr Bean!
After the Peak, I meandered around awhile, saw random things on the side of the street and stuff, nothing in particular. Hong Kong is an interesting place to navigate on foot. Most of your walking is actually done on walkways above the road. There's a huge network of these paths, which are very well signposted and reasonably easy to get around. To be honest, I didn't think it would be so easy to find the peak, but every time I was just getting sure I'd gone wrong, I found another sign pointing me in the right direction.
Had some random Chinese chickeny thing for dinner and a pint in the Irish bar and then headed back to the hostel to mess around on the internet. At some point that evening/night two new people turned up, two girls from Switzerland (the second set of Swiss on this adventure, you might be aware). Also, while the room was empty I took advantage and moved my stuff from the shittest bed to the best bed, sorry girls . . . They're names were (and presumably continue to be) Selena and Meo [pronouced like Mayo, though not spelled that way - I asked]. They'd just gotten off a plane from San Fransisco so they were wrecked, but they were still good craic, and it was good to have some people to talk shit with, especially about places we'd all been, since there turned out to be quite a few.
They were a good laugh too so it was a vast improvement on the night before. Although, I will say, Selena had an almost Nate-ish penchant for standing around in her underwear - all the same I must admit, the view was much more acceptable with her. Just saying. On the otherhand, there wasn't really anywhere else for her to stand - The table I'm sitting at right now has about the same area of the standing room in the place. So they drifted off to sleep and I read my book with the aid of my fantastic book light that I splurged on in Waterstones two days before I left. And I finally finished the absolutely AMAZINGLY BRILLIANT IMAJICA that night too.
Fans of Stephen King's fantasy works, like the Dark Tower, the Stand, IT or Insomnia will most definitely love it, along with fans of Neil Gaiman's more adult books, like American Gods for instance. China Mieville fans should read it, since Mieville clearly owes a huge debt to both Barker and Gaiman (not that Mieville is not superbly talented in his own right or anything), not just stylistically, but in terms of making London (and England in general) an equal platform for the fantasy genre as New York or Stephen King's Maine. Interesting considering that when the genre was kickstarted Dublin and London along with Rome and Madrid were the cities of choice for the fantastical. Nice to see the European cities taking back their own mythologies.
But that's probably totally off topic. Wait, there was a topic? Hang on, let me scroll back up.
Yes . . . so then I went asleep.
Friday 1st October
Wait a minute, how the Hell is it October??? When did that happen? Well apparently it did!
Went to Disneyland! Was a fairly basic one though, and if it wasn't for the extra Halloween stuff they'd laid on, it probably would have been quite disappointing. Space Mountain was good though, and I had the benefit of being a single rider so I got to skip the queue every time I went on it!
After I got back from Disney I was just chilling in the hostel for awhile. When the girls got back they invited me to go with them to the fireworks for National Day, and since I was kinda planning on going for a look anyway I said grand. Turned out to be good craic, though we got the time wrong so instead of being an hour early, we were two hours early! Bollox!
They were pretty good though, check them out here -
Afterwards, we began the long trek home through closed and pack streets - think SkyFest, though without the drinking, thankfully, but with several million more people. By the time we got back to the hostel the queue for the lift was around the corner, so we took the stairs, which were long and bloody steep, so that by the end of it we were actually wrecked. It was more or less a hop, stumble fall into bed from there!
The next morning I packed my trunk and said good bye to the girls and off I went to get the fuck outa Hong Kong!! Wasn't sorry to leave it (since as I finish this I am in fact in Thailand, safe and sound) and will do my damnedest never ever to go back! If I could do it all over again, I'd probably have stayed in Japan a few extra days, maybe gone to Hiroshima or something like that, but what can you do? At least you guys will know for the next time!
Thus concluding this Long Overdue Report,
Shane!!
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