Bruce Teaching English In China: 2012-06-15 and 2012-06-16 - First day in Hong Kong

Saturday, June 16, 2012

2012-06-15 and 2012-06-16 - First day in Hong Kong

Waking up at 3 AM while travelling is a horrible idea

I had to get from Suzhou to Shanghai South railway station and the absolute latest I could do it was for a train at 4:57 AM so I thought I could manage that

Turns out that you forget some things when you can’t turn the light on in a pitch-black room because you don’t want to wake the other 5 people in your dorm
I could have sworn I remembered everything but when I was about to leave I realized I forgot my sleeping mask and it wouldn’t be a problem if Mingtown Suzhou’s room card reader was working but it wasn’t and they gave the keys to the room to 2 out of 6 of us (I wasn’t one of the 2)

So in order to check out I thought it wouldn’t be a problem because their advertisement said they had a “24 hour English staff”

Yeah, turns out it was a 50-year old Chinese guy in a wife-beater I had to wake up from a nap by banging on the glass door
I tried to explain to him that I lost my sleep mask but we got lost in translation so I had to pull out my ipad app “Pleco” and translate that I lost my American football mask in my room because my dictionary didn’t have the word for sleep mask

We got in and out in under a minute but it was still kind of pain that was completely my fault but the hotel didn’t make my life easier

There is one good thing to getting up at 3 AM in China

You get the America feeling when you're walking down a dark street by yourself you say, "this is kind of creepy"
It was weird just to see no one around and I mean absolutely no one

This was the first time where I just thought, "Where is everybody?" because usually there's people everywhere

Even the train station (and this is the first time since I've been to China that this has happened) barely had anyone in there

Learned how to play Winner ((Chinese: 争上游; Pinyin: Zheng Shangyou)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner_(card_game)
I have seen people play this everywhere in China and I always wanted to learn how to play

On the train ride from Shanghai to Shenzen I finally got a chance to learn when this IT guy from Duluth, GA taught me how to play

I was crushed pretty regularly but I won a couple of rounds and I actually did win one entire game

It was more like me and the girl and her mom who helped me play but I like to think that some of the victory was contributed by me

Slept the rest of the trip

The train ride lasted 18 hours and I slept for 15 hours of it so I’m sure southern China is nice but I’ll have to see it when I take the bullet train from Hong Kong to Beijing

I knew I would love Hong Kong the moment I stepped into customs

All of the signs were in Chinese AND good English

- But then I found out that the bathrooms have tissue paper and soap
I feel bad for security guards on the Chinese side of Hong Kong customs

They don’t even get their names on their chests, they just get numbers (about 6 of them)

You know it’s not a cost issue because most people’s names are only 3 characters long

Plus it was a nice change of pace to have a care-free customs guy

To leave China I NEEDED to have a departure card to get out of the country

I didn’t realize this until I went in line, spent 15 minutes waiting to get to the front, got turned away, and then spent another 15 minutes in line to get out of the country

Getting into Hong Kong was definitely easier

I only filled in half of the arrival card I needed to fill out to get in but the guy still waved me on through

Hong Kong is beautiful

It reminds me a lot of America in that there’s really tall skyscrapers and a lot of people (maybe 80%) speak English

- Only it’s better in that everything is so cheap and the public transportation system rocks!
I miss Chinese street food

Hong Kong is like an American city and as such it’s hard to find cheap food

I could find baozi for 10 RMB without a problem but here it took me 2.5 hours until I found my first food cart

Hong Kong does have delicious street food when you do find it

Although it set me back 11 HKD this was a pretty tasty rice burrito

Got to see the Star Ferry

National Geographic said it was one of the 50 things you have to do in your life and it was actually pretty cool

It only costs 3 HKD to ride it and you get some pretty awesome views of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon

Dim Sum is really good

Because I’m a loser and travel by myself, I had to eat dim sum alone which kind of defeats the purpose but I did it anyway

The barbecued meat rolls made it worth it

Saw Victoria Peak

It was nice because I thought that the rain was clearing (and it did for about 10 minutes today) but by the time I got up there the rain started falling again

I got trapped in a pavilion with an Indian family and they were super nice so at least it made the time go by faster as we waited in vain for the rain to pass

- I’m just glad I only paid 20 HKD total to go to and from there
- It only cost 10 HKD up and 10 HKD down so I just hopped on and thanked my lucky stars I got to save an entire 40 HKD ($5) by taking the bus instead of the tram
Saw the aptly named Big Buddha

I tried to be cheap again and it backfired again

You can take a ferry from Central harbor for 4 HKD less than it takes to take the subway from Central to the island the big Buddha is on so I decided to save my money and take the ferry

I left the central pier of Hong Kong at 3:00 pm and I got in at 3:55 pm where the subway only takes half an hour

That wouldn’t be a problem if the big Buddha didn’t close at 5:30 and the only way up there is a bus that runs once every hour

Luckily I made it with half an hour left

I got to see the ancient “Big Buddha” that was built in 1984 and it was really cool

My favorite part of the island that the Big Buddha was on was that the cows run it

There are cows everywhere and they just walk around like they own the place

I saw two of them walk right onto the grounds of the police station and start grazing there
In fact, my bus on the way up there had to stop in front of a cow twice just so we wouldn’t run over it

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