Sunlight!
As part of the process for getting my visa, I had to take a quick trip (about 48 hours) to Hong Kong. Ash couldn’t join due to cost and school obligations, which sucks for her because the most noticeable difference between Shanghai and Hong Kong this time of year is weather: Shanghai was raining and cold while HK was hot and humid. Neither is ideal, but I’ll admit that the quick trip to HK was a bit like spending an hour in the sauna in the dead of winter.
Most of the other obvious differences between the two cities are because of the British occupation. Namely, there are more white (and black) people, more English speakers and signs, and a lot of streets and places have English names.
Occurred to me that the Chinese names for roads must be entirely different than English names, so each road has two names. That seems a little more confusing than Shanghai, where even though it’s tough for us to correctly pronounce some street names, at least there’s only one for each.
I arrived in Shenzhen, a Chinese city near Hong Kong, at around 1 AM due to a flight delay. All the bus services to Hong Kong were closed for the night, so I had to negotiate with a bunch of Chinese cab drivers all yelling at me at once. I imagine they see me as an ideal client, given how tired, confused, and “waiguoren” (foreigner) I look. I managed to talk one down to half the initial offer, which was probably still a ridiculous price to pay. I got in the cab and he drove around the parking lot for another 20 minutes yelling “qu nali?” (where are you going?) to everyone he saw. I guess my fare alone wasn’t enough to get him out of the parking lot. After some heated debates with other cab drivers, and my broken-Chinese requests to hit the road, we finally got a Chinese couple in the car and headed out.
About 10 miles down the road we pulled over where there were 5 or 6 cabs on the side of the highway. I was asked to get out and switch cabs, while the other couple was taken to their destination. I had no idea what was going on.
The next cab took me to customs, and I then had to argue with him over the price since he hadn’t been involved in the original negotiation. I walked away with him yelling something at my back…I just hope it wasn’t “you’ve overpaid me by quite a bit; come get your money back!” Doubtful.
After customs I paid for a bus to take me into HK. Luckily right to my hotel. 4 AM.
Next morning I got up early to get to the visa office. I find it a bit hard to walk around in HK. Sometimes the only way to cross at intersections is through an above-ground tunnel, and it’s not always clear where the tunnels start and end. A lot of them go straight into the sides of buildings.
After a sweaty walk to the right building, I managed to get all the visa documents turned in. Went back to the hotel and slept for 3 hours. That night I ate at Ebeneezer’s Kebab, which was spitting distance from my hotel and was supposedly good and cheap. Check and check. Then a metro ride up to Kowloon, which is on the peninsula north of Hong Kong Island but still part of the city. I bought Ashley a long overdue Christmas present—a nice digital camera that we’ll write a separate post about—and then walked through Kowloon Park and up to Temple Street Night Market.
The market was recommended by two trusted experts for travel info: Time Magazine and my parents. It’s pretty similar to the “fake market” in Shanghai, except they’re much less willing to haggle over price. So I bought Ashley a much-needed umbrella but probably paid too much. There were lots of knickknacks, electronics, paintings, DVDs, mahjong sets, playing cards, tea sets, etc. Finished off the night by sitting down at a street-corner restaurant that had enough foreigners eating at it to make me feel relatively safe, and ate dinner. I ordered tofu, although there were some pretty weird shellfish options.
Next morning I got up, met a friend for lunch at a tapas restaurant, and then hit the road for Shenzhen again. Much easier on the way back, as I paid for a private van to take me through the border. Didn’t even have to get out at customs; they just rolled down the window so the person in the booth could compare my passport picture to my face, and then we kept driving. I felt like I was being smuggled.
Happy to be home again, although the weather here in Shanghai is awful. Using a new method of putting pictures on blog by linking to a Picasa album. So click below to see a few more pics.
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| Hong Kong, March 2010 |
Tags: Hong Kong, restaurants, shopping, travel, visa, weather
Sounds like a rough trip, but at least you accomplished what you went for. Does the visa have to be renewed periodically?
The new camera takes good photos. I like being able to enlarge them and watch a slide show in Picasa.
Hope your weather improves. Does Shanghai get monsoons?
Good job, Rob! You’re a brave expat to negotiate all that cab flim flam stuff. I would have been pretty skeptical about that drop off at the cab gathering spot. Next time you’ll be telling the other couple to get out of the cab & find a new ride & make the original driver take you where you had already determined. this I say from the warmth & comfort of my own kitchen. I like the old method of viewing the pictures right with the verbage. I couldn’t link back to the blog & had to close Picasa & reopen roshley. Everyone will be happy to see the new entries.
p.s. Did postcards arrive yet?
A hectic weekend for you Rob. I was surprised to learn that you needed to go through customs when you entered Hong Kong and you needed your passport?
I was under the impression that Hong Kong is now a part of China.
Your experience with the cab drivers reminds me of taking a shuttle out of LAX and the driver goes around and around looking for more fares. Very annoying.
Love the photos.
Dear Rob
A+ for the story and A+ for the photos. I can almost hear those obnoxious taxi cab drivers yelling. I wouldn’t know what they were saying either. However my Asian face would make them yell louder. Just remember you are taller and smarter. Are the photos taken with the new digital camera? Thank you for the links. Most people my age don’t know how that is done.
Hazel