Hong Kong Adventures: Day One

Nei ho!

This weekend I had the amazing opportunity to visit one of the world’s most famous cities: Hong Kong!

Like Macau, Hong Kong is also an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China. It has its own currency, the Hong Kong Dollar, and its own government. “One country, two systems,” is the motto of both Macau and Hong Kong, referring to the unification of China. But these SARs operate under capitalist systems, while mainland China remains socialist.

Being in Macau, it is actually quite easy to get to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is just across the bay from Macau, and you can get there by a 45-minute ferry ride. Americans also do not need to apply for a visa to Hong Kong; they just stamp your passport at Immigrations and you’re on your way!

I met Nanja from Holland and Iris from Finland at the temple across the street from my apartment early on Saturday morning. Nanja’s IFT Buddy, Snow, was able to get us cheap tickets one-way to Hong Kong by ferry, since her friend works for the TurboJet company. For MOP 80 each (USD $10), we were able to sit in the “Super Class.” We got bigger, comfier seats, and even got a free lunch, which was pretty tasty!


Despite our really nice “Super Class” seats, I still got a little motion sick from the ferry ride. I was really glad to get off the boat onto Hong Kong soil. We took a taxi to our hostel, which was on the famous Nathan Road.

Our hostel was located in a really interesting location. It was in a small skyscraper building with many other hostels, restaurants, and shopping vendors. Nathan Road itself has a large concentration of Indian people, and as soon as we stepped out of the taxi we were bombarded by Indian men trying to sell us their wares, give us discount cards to their restaurants, and even trying to get us to go to their hostel instead.


The first floor of the building was a maze of restaurants and small shops selling everything from Hong Kong souvenirs to Bollywood movies (I bought one!). We finally fought through the crowd of people to the elevator, which took us up to our hostel, the Ashoka Guesthouse.


Now I’ve never stayed in a hostel before, but it’s the only way European students travel! I figured it was all part of the experience of being a starving student doing foreign traveling. When we first arrived, we met the Indian guys that ran the hostel and got checked in. Our room wasn’t ready, so the two younger guys went to clean our room while the third older guy came out to entertain us.

This guy had a large turban wrap on his head. He was really a nice guy and brought out chairs for us to sit in while we waited in the tiny lobby (okay, it was more like a closet with a desk…). The three of us girls felt a little awkward just sitting there crammed in the room, and I think the man could sense that, so he tried breaking the ice with us. His English wasn’t so good, so when he asked which of the three of us was “supreme,” we were a little confused. He meant which one of us was the leader of our little group, and Nanja told him we were “democratic” and had no leader! He pointed at me and said I should be the leader since I was from the US, but I told him we believed in equality between the three of us.

After another awkward silence (which wasn’t so silent because we kept giggling), he asked if we were laughing at his turban. We told him no, and he proceeded to entertain us by pulling his really, really long, curly hair out of his turban. I decided that he really was a nice man, and was just trying to make us feel more comfortable and at home in his guesthouse.

Our room was ready then, so we went inside to drop off our stuff. It was really tiny, and we were a little disappointed because the room looked NOTHING like the pictures online, but we were encouraged by the award for “Cleanest Hostel by Hostelbookers.com: December ‘09” that hung in the lobby. We had heard that Hong Kong hostels were notorious for bed bugs, but the sign made us feel a little better. Ashoka Guesthouse also had some really good reviews online for cleanliness, so we were also encouraged by that as we stared at our tiny, tiny room.

We’d booked a double bed and a single bed room, but the double bed was only slightly bigger than the single and could barely hold Nanja and me. We figured that we really only needed a place to sleep and keep our stuff in during our weekend in Hong Kong, and this place did the trick. I mean, you can’t beat $13 for one night, right?


We dropped off our stuff and hit the town for some shopping! We all got some Hong Kong currency (Iris had enough left over from her last trip to pay the taxi from the ferry terminal and our hostel fee). Although we bought three single-trip passes for the Subway, mine for some reason decided not to work, so I had to buy another before being allowed behind the gate.

We hit the Festival Walk mall, and on the way from the Subway station we saw a bus driver that looked exactly like the Chinese John Lennon! Nanja got some pictures of him, and we ran away giggling when he spotted us pointing our camera at him!


We spent a bit of time looking around the Festival Mall, but we didn’t do much shopping because they were all upscale stores like Calvin Klein, Armani, Ralph Lauren, etc. The prices were pretty good by Western standards, but still out of our student price range.

The mall was really cool! We got Ben & Jerry’s from a kiosk and sat down to watch the ice skaters on the indoor rink in the food court! Iris was really excited for this rare treat to Ben & Jerry’s, but Nanja was a bit wary about spending so much money on ice cream. I was confused, since Ben & Jerry’s isn’t an expensive ice cream brand, but Iris reminded me that everywhere outside the US has to have it imported.


After Festival Walk we went to the Kowloon area to do some shopping. Before our second round of shopping we ate at Burger King, since this was another rare treat for Iris. I took a picture of a really funny Burger King ad that advertised a cowgirl and the Statue of Liberty using Chinese models.


We were a little disappointed again with the shopping here. There were some really cool stores with really cool stuff, but we couldn’t get out of the tourist areas to find the local prices. I did end up finding some cheap Audrey Hepburn movies for $2.50 each, so I was satisfied for the time being.

We went back to Nathan Road to do a third round of shopping to see if we’d find better luck with local prices there. Again, we were met with disappointing Western prices. One store was a really amazing underground boutique with everything I could possibly want, but the prices were what I would pay normally for my clothes back home, so I refrained (it was hard). We made a pact to return before going home this summer to blow the rest of our money on clothes.


I found a couple of nice shirts that I really liked at one boutique, but like so many other stores in Asia they wouldn’t let me try them on. Usually my policy is that I must ALWAYS try it on before I buy it, but these were loose enough clothing that I didn’t think it would be a problem. I paid a Western price for each of them (USD $25), but admittedly it felt kind of cool being able to afford shopping at these upscale Hong Kong boutiques.

At last we found a boutique with local prices!!! The three of us went crazy, and I ended up buying three really nice shirts and one vest for about USD $50. It was about the best I think anyone could do in Hong Kong, with it being such a Westernized, commercial city.

We took our purchases back to our hostel building, and on the way we stopped at a street vendor so Iris and I could buy some traditional Japanese kimonos for USD $8 each! Nanja asked the vendor if she knew which Indian restaurant (of many) inside our building had the best Indian food. She personally escorted us to her friend inside and told him to take really good care of us in his restaurant. He gave us a 10% discount card and brought us up to his restaurant.

This was a really interesting dining experience. The restaurant was situated in a couple of different rooms on this small floor of the building, and we ended up sitting in a waiting room for a couple minutes with a freezer, a couple wholesale packages of Coca-Cola, and other items that indicated it was used more as a storage room than a waiting area.

At last we were taken to our table, which was in one of the three eating rooms and was really crowded. We ordered our food, which actually ended up being pretty good! I had some Tandoori chicken along with some bread, which I dipped in Nanja and Iris’s saucy dishes. Overall, it was very delicious, even if I had serious doubts about the sanitation standards of the place (the bathroom was absolutely filthy!).


We dropped off our shopping bags and left to find the movie theater. The reason we came to Hong Kong this weekend was to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. We had booked tickets at the Grand Cinema, which was supposedly a 15-minute walk from our hostel. It was the newest cinema in Hong Kong, featuring state-of-the-art vibrating seats to enhance your movie experience (yeah, we made some jokes about that). But we were very excited about it!

Unfortunately, we got lost. I mean, seriously lost. We were running all over the area trying to find this movie theater, and ended up going to two different ones before eventually finding it, including many stops in stores and hotels asking for directions. The second theater was the Grand Ocean, not the Grand Cinema, and we argued with them about our tickets until we realized we were in the wrong place. They wrote down the name of the place we were supposed to go to for the taxi driver, and we were on our way to our third location.

Unfortunately, we finally arrived at the right place a full half hour after the movie had started. We explained our situation to the woman at the counter, who wouldn’t switch us to another movie time or put us in another movie. We asked for a refund, but she flat-out refused. Extremely disappointed, we left the mall and took a taxi back to our hostel.

We’d remembered that the first movie theater was in the shopping complex directly across the street from our hostel, so we went inside to see if we could still get in to see the movie (it was almost 11:00 pm at this point). Luckily, they did, and we were able to finally see Alice in Wonderland in 3D (but no vibrating chairs)!


It was really cool, because at the very end of the movie Alice makes a reference to expanding her father’s business into Hong Kong, and we were sitting in Hong Kong at that moment! It was a really cool way to wrap up the movie, and we left exhausted, but in high spirits.

By the time we got back to our hostel, it was almost 2:00 am. We were disappointed to find that the water in the sink didn’t work, but we were able to use bottled water to brush our teeth and wash our faces.

As Nanja came out of the bathroom, toothbrush still in mouth, Iris suddenly began shrieking and leapt back onto the bed. Nanja swung around and found a GIGANTIC cockroach on the wall between the front door and the bathroom. She screamed too and ran over to the bed with us, while the three of us continued shrieking like banshees. I grabbed hairspray out of my bag and began spraying full-on at the cockroach, but it didn’t seem to do anything! It fell to the ground and started scuttling around, and I leapt back onto the bed and continued screaming.

Finally, one of the Indian guys (who was sleeping of the floor behind the front desk) came in to ask what was wrong. We pointed to the cockroach under the bed, and he grabbed his broom and started whacking at it. Nanja told him to stop and just take it outside the room, so he did and we slammed the door. After a few minutes he came back in to check on us, and assured us that this was unusual. We were a bit skeptical.

It took us a long time to calm down, and we were even afraid to turn off the lights to go to sleep. We kept looking around for more, and trying to figure out how it could have gotten in.

Finally, we crawled into bed and started settling down. Nanja and I shared the larger bed, even if it was a little cramped. I kept feeling paranoid about the bed bug rumors and more cockroaches, and I kept feeling itching, like things were biting me. It was only psychological, but when I reached down to brush at my thigh I accidentally bumped Nanja, who started screaming again.

If I wasn’t so completely exhausted from my day in Hong Kong, I might not have been able to sleep. But I figured it was all part of my Chinese experience, sleeping in a filthy, bug-infested hostel in a strange, foreign city. I felt oddly content.

Coming Soon: Day Two of my Hong Kong Adventure!

Until next time,
Kati

P.S. Thank you, Nanja and Iris, for taking pictures of our first day in Hong Kong!