Life in Hong Kong
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2009
1
4
Trip End
Ongoing
Tai Po, Hong Kong
Sunday, August 30, 2009
I arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday evening, 15th of August 2009 after an uneventful flight. I was met at the airport by Roy, the school principal, and went somewhere called "The Country Club" at Hon Lok Yuen. This is a gated suburb to keep the riff raff out and you need a pass to get in, it's the location of the main feeder primary school for International College Hong Kong, where I will be working. We met up with Elaine, the principal of the primary school and had a social dinner, all very nice and civilized. As usual, it was awkward explaining that I was vegetarian but Roy pointed out a vegetarian section on the menu. I had read that the Chinese don’t really understand vegetarianism and this proved to be the case. The vegetarian menu consisted of Duck, Pork, Chicken and Beef. Maybe it was the animals on the plate that had been vegetarian.
I got taken to my residence at Pinehill Village, Tai Po. This is a training hotel for the mentally handicapped. It’s very nice and friendly but, unfortunately, there is no kitchen. Elaine had done some shopping for me to help settle me in, just the essentials; two bottles of wine, two cans of beer and some snacks. I think that she has the wrong idea about us Australians.
I got up early Sunday morning to go for a wander and get my bearings. The weather is very hot and humid, which makes wandering around difficult. Sunday is the main shopping day in Hong Kong but a lot of things don’t open before 11am. There were lots of people out and about; walking, doing Tai Chi and riding bikes. Women were harvesting weeds from the sides of the roads and tying them in bundles, it looked like they were going to eat them. There is a shopping centre very close to where I’m staying but it is only small. However, the restaurants there were doing good trade for breakfast. I think that most people eat out here. I carried on walking, Elaine had lent me a street directory but it was mostly in Cantonese, and I tried to find my way to a railway station. There are two stations nearby, Tai Po Market and Tai Wo, and I seem to be situated somewhere near the middle. There are also a couple of rivers that meet at Tai Po so these things help to get bearings for navigation.
I got to somewhere called Tai Po Mega Mall; the name is self-explanatory. Hong Kong is literally full of these things. This one is two storey’s high but some are up to seven! They seem to go on forever, like a rabbit warren. They cross roads, rivers and railways; they make unexpected twists and turns so that you pop out of an exit totally disoriented without a clue where you are. The one good thing about them is that they are air conditioned so that you can walk for miles in comfort. There is very little public seating and what there is very quickly fills with selfish old people. For all of those people in Australia cutting down on power usage to save the planet, well done, I’m sure that the token effort is appreciated over here.
The main purpose of the expedition was to find out how to get to the airport to meet Thea and bring her back. I found out that the E41 goes to the airport but couldn’t find out where to catch it. At one point I actually sighted an E41 and tried to follow it to see where it went. I spent another couple of hours wandering around in the heat before I gave up. As I said before, Sunday is a big day in Hong Kong and everyone is out and about. The paths along the river are well patronized and the shady areas under the bridges are full of people playing cards for money, apparently oblivious of the no gambling signs. I got a good first impression of Tai Po. Despite the Mega Mall, it seems to have a traditional Chinese feel to it. People doing what they’ve always done, despite the development going on around them. I can imagine that, when the weather is a little more user friendly, that this will be a nice place to just hang out.
By 11am I was thoroughly exhausted and returned to my lodgings where I was informed that the pool was open. Bewdy, an hour of lap swimming and then on to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is justifiably proud of its public transport system, the centrepiece of which is the railway system. Buses are everywhere but it takes a little while to figure these out. The trains are easy to use, fast and efficient. They are very long, almost always full and run every couple of minutes. They must carry millions of people a day. Changing trains to another line usually involves walking 10 metres across the platform onto another train that is sat there waiting for you. You can get around Hong Kong, even onto the Island, for just a couple of dollars Australian. It’s hard to go wrong but I managed it. First I went in the wrong direction, that’s no problem, just come back again. I remembered that when I was here last time, I caught the train to the end of the line and walked into Kowloon, right on the harbour, so that’s what I tried again. I ended up in the middle of a load of motorways, stinking hot, I was sure that I could walk it and just kept trying. Eventually, thirst and heat exhaustion drove me back to the train station where I asked for help. It turns out that, on that very day, they’d changed the train service. There were signs, announcements and young people in uniforms holding up placards everywhere, just to make sure that everyone knew and no one could miss it. The train now stops one station short of where everyone wants to go and you have to change to another line for one stop. I suppose they know what they’re doing. With this little drama out of the way, I made it down to the harbour and the main tourist area. I went with some Indian guys to get measured for a suit for no better reason than I wanted somewhere to sit down. Eventually I made it to the 'Avenue of Stars’ on the waterfront. This is a lovely area with picture postcard views of Hong Kong Island. I found a seat and rested my feet, watching all the tourists and locals taking pictures of movie star handprints set in the concrete. I eventually got chatting to a young Indian student from London. At 8pm there’s a light show with a commentary but nothing spectacular. However, it’s a great scene as the sun sets and Hong Kong lights up, a large cruise ship went past just on dark. We went for a drink and dinner and then I caught a bus out to the airport. I thought that I had lots of time, I never realized that it was so far and to make matters worse I’d forgotten to bring along Thea’s itinery so didn’t know whether to go to terminal 1 or 2. In the end, Thea found me, complaining that there was no one waiting for her. We caught the E41 back to Tai Po and this took about one and a half hours. It must have been about 1am when we got there and had to catch a taxi to the village. Things had gone pretty smoothly, considering.
I had arranged to get a lift to the school at about 11.30am Monday morning, so we walked into Tai Po to look around. Predictably, we got lost but found a bus back in time. The drive out to the school was very scenic, along a back road that is not frequently used. There are very pretty coastal villages where lots of people go on weekends until a very minor road winds through country park. The school is on the border of a buffer zone and a permit is required to go further, which means that you can’t miss the bus stop as the police take you off. It used to be a government school with quite a bad reputation and had been closed for a few years. International College Hong Kong has completely refurbished most of the buildings, it must have cost millions. Despite the principal telling anyone who’ll listen how wonderful everything is and it will be ready for opening on September 1st, I can’t see it being completely ready. Every time I walked into a classroom there seemed to be a Chinese builder asleep on a table. They’re like cats, they’ll sleep anywhere. There are no books or equipment yet but I’m told that it’s all arriving. Each room has a projector so that you can work directly from a laptop and has wireless Internet so that all students can access the web from their laptops in the classroom. This is going to take some getting used to, I was only just getting the hang of having a white board in Balaklava. The front office staff are all very friendly and helpful, another thing that’s going to take a bit of getting used to (just joking). It’s pretty clear who’ll be running the school. We spent a while wandering about and then Thea and I caught the bus back to Fanling, or thought we had, we actually got off too early and had to catch a mini bus. Fanling is on the railway so we caught a train all the way to Kowloon. We both had ‘Octopus’ cards, which are a type of credit card that you use on public transport and in many shops. You charge them up at railway stations and just touch your wallet to a screen when making a purchase, no need to even take it out. The screen tells you the fare and how much credit is left, it’s a marvelous system. We caught the Star Ferry across to the island and walked into the town. Hong Kong Island is very steep and getting around in the heat wasn’t easy. We wanted to get food but couldn’t settle on a place that we both liked, nothing new there. We just kept on heading upwards and were getting very weary. Eventually we came upon some escalators that surely must have been heading somewhere. The escalators went for miles. We even stopped off at a little supermarket with its entrance in a break in the escalator. We got food and drink for a late lunch and continued up. At the top we were on a street lined with very exclusive looking apartment blocks and nothing else. The escalators only came up and there seemed to be no way of getting down. We assumed that they would have had to lead us to something. I thought that we were heading for the peak, a popular place with great views over Hong Kong, but on looking at the map, something I should perhaps have done earlier, I could see that we were nowhere near there. The Peak Tram was off to the East at the other side of the zoological gardens, so we set off to find the tram. This turned into a real odyssey but the zoo was good. We kept on heading East but I’d given hope of ever reaching the tram when suddenly we just came across it. The historic Peak Tram goes straight up the side of a mountain, very steep. At the top is a large, elaborate viewing area with restaurants and shops, we were there just on dark and view is stunning. This is Hong Kong’s prime residential area. Rather than queue for the tram back down, we managed to catch a bus to the train and home.
It was very late when we got to Tai Wo, so we decided to eat at the railway station. I was keen on finding out about all the different type of eateries; so far I hadn’t been impressed. Perhaps I’d got Chinese cuisine confused with South East Asia, it’s very different. We went to a cheap and cheerful noodle bar and got instant noodles with lettuce floating in a watery broth. It tasted just as good as it sounds so we left after one spoonful. There are a couple of more up market restaurants in another part of the station so we went there. Not many people in the New Territories seem to understand English and, as mentioned before, the Chinese in general don’t have a very good understanding of vegetarianism, so ordering food is a problem. Fortunately, the owner of this place spoke English and I got some vegetables and rice, nothing special but at least I was eating vegetables, we even got offered a free dessert.
On the Tuesday I had planned to go to Macau. My visa hadn’t arrived in time to send it to me in Australia and it needs to be in your passport when you enter the country. This meant leaving the country and then coming back again. Thea was excited about this, as she was to get another stamp in her passport. We didn’t set off until about 9am and it took four different trains to get to the ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island, but as I said, changing trains is no problem. We went over on a ‘Turbo Jet’, which is very smooth and very quick. Thousands of people go over every day, mostly to gamble. Macau has become a centre of gambling with huge casinos covering most of the territory, or at least that is how it seems. People used to visit Macau to soak in its Portuguese, colonial splendour, but now they just go to the casinos. It’s a bit like the dash from Perth to Rottnest Island on a morning except much, much bigger and crossing International frontiers; so actually, it’s nothing like going from Perth to Rottnest. There was a huge bottleneck at the Macau immigration station, which held us up a while, but the strange thing was, with literally thousands of people going through, out the other side there was no one. Numerous touts trying to sell tours of Macau accosted us but we decided not to bother. I had no idea what to do now that we were in Macau; I thought we’d just follow the crowd. However, there was no one, they’d all just disappeared. I don’t know what it was we’d missed. I think that it must be that most people had something arranged for when they got there, how come everyone knows what to do except me? I saw a bus station, so we went and found a bus for the centre of town; it was stinking hot so I hoped that the centre of town was the right place to go. There were lots of people travelling on tourist buses but no one on the bus that we were on. I was getting quite worried that we’d done the wrong thing. We got off when the buildings started to look colonial and nice. This turned out to be a good move because the area that we wandered around was really nice. We didn’t go too far because of the heat but a very pleasant day was had in Macau. Thea bought gifts and two pair of shoes and I bought a pair of sandals that I didn’t need. Once you get caught up in this shopping it is hard to resist. I had to buy the sandals so that Thea could get an extra 10% off the shoes. Lunch was another disaster; I’ve got to get this food situation sorted out sooner rather than later. I was willing to have noodl’es at a street stall but Thea wanted to sit down in a restaurant. We ended up in a crowded, hot place with shit food. I have to try a range of reasonably priced restaurants to get the hang of what is available, it’s not going well.
We walked around the ruins of an old church and fortress, sat in a park and strolled down alleyways. We made our way over to the ‘Grand Lisboa’, the most over the top piece of architecture that I have ever seen. It’s difficult to describe, art deco on drugs. It’s a huge building and cannot be ignored, I think I liked it but wouldn’t want there to be two of them in the world. The inside was just as over the top in its opulence as the outside.
The trip back in the evening wasn’t so crowded and the formalities with my visa were performed without fuss. We went straight back to Tai Wo and again ate at the station at yet another restaurant. Shit, tinned food again, I’m beginning to worry.
Thea was leaving at 2pm on Wednesday so was in a panic about getting to the airport on time. We had everything sussed with the buses and I couldn’t see a problem, however, Thea insisted that we needed to leave at 9am. We arrived about three and a half hours early. It was tough saying goodbye, I don’t mind leaving other people behind but it hurts when they leave me. I felt a bit empty when she’d gone.
I went back to Tai Po and wandered around, checking the price and availability of things. There wasn’t really a plan when I came over here but I certainly wasn’t thinking of buying white goods. I suppose I never really thought it through to that extent. It’s like one of these crap T.V. shows where someone has an accident and wakes up in a different time. I fell asleep in Hoyleton and woke up in consumer world. Shopping seems to be the national pastime. You can walk for days through endless, indoor shopping malls that are totally void of any character and whose only saving grace is that they are air conditioned. I’ve been looking at various ways to cook and there are a number of options. I don’t think that Chinese homes are big on kitchens, hence, all of the restaurants. Plug in induction plates, gas rings with disposable canisters and small convection ovens the size of microwaves are in all the shops. I’ve been looking at crappy furniture, beds, tables etc. It’s breaking my heart. The next time that Emily walks into my shed and walks out with a solid timber piece of hand crafted furniture she needs to think about this. There’s not much point in buying anything until I know where I’m going to live but I did buy a steam iron. What does it tell you about the person that I’ve become when my first purchase in Hong Kong is a steam iron? The instructions were in Chinese and I turned it on to see if it worked but left the plastic cover on the plate. I had to get a knife and scrape it all off and pick the melted bits of plastic out of the steam holes. I never knew that setting up home over here would be so complicated.
