The Joys of Hong Kong Travel (and pictures)

I suppose the story starts even before Mom arrived in Hong Kong late Saturday night. Continuing the PSB Fun theme, I had to arrive in Hong Kong early on Friday to initiate the process of getting a new visa. Frustrating after my exhaustive efforts only a few days before to get an extension on my last visa, but such is life. Get an extension or face a fine and possibly miss your flight for a few lousy days of non-visa endorsed stay. But that's ok; it meant I got a day off work and a whole two days to myself in one of the most interesting cities in China. I had big plans for hamburgers and steaks and caesar salads and sandwiches and cheese - all the things you can't get in China. I get in around 1:00 and have a huge filling lunch at my hotel (one of those oversized club sandwiches that you really shouldn't finish, but it would be such a shame to waste food). And then I take off, determined to work up an appetite for an even bigger dinner. I took the MTR over to Central and just started walking up. For the unacquainted, Hong Kong is very very hilly. From the harbor on Hong Kong Island, you can sort of either walk along the direction of the water, or up a hill as you go inland. I wound up at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens. It was pleasant surprise. The gardens weren't so much gardens in the traditional sense as patches of land left alone to flourish as it would otherwise had humans not been so unkind as to build a city. Hong Kong is unbelievably lush and the gardens were cool, green, subtropical, beautiful. The zoo, or rather large, clean, fully furnished cages scattered throughout the lushness of the gardens, was a pleasant surprise as well. I'm not sure if I've written about Chinese zoos (I'm pretty sure I have) but I'll summarize: depressing. The cages are small and dirty, the animals uncared for, and the whole point of going to a zoo is to see how many doritos you can get the monkeys to eat or how much 7-Up you can pour down the throat of a polar bear. Activities that in California would get you at least booed and hissed out by surrounding crowds, at the most deported from the premises, are normal. You might expect this of children, but it is even more disturbing when the mothers are right there with them, encouraging the festivities. I don't mean to spread lies about all Chinese zoos, so perhaps I should back track of a little. Big cities like Beijing and Hong Kong are pretty magnificent, Kunming is mediocre, but from what I've seen (of Jishou) and heard from other travelers, the smaller middle of no where cities should be banned from building zoos.

Anyway, that was a rather long detour. So I saw the zoo and moved on, walking for several more hours before realizing that my stomach wasn't getting empty and hungry like I planned, but progressively more and more volatile. I finally gave up and made a dash for the hotel, a 30 minute taxi ride away at that point. I wasn't in my hotel room 30 seconds when the consequences of food poisoning hit - I won't go into more detail. And that pretty much summed up the rest of the two days I had to myself in Hong Kong. I didn't leave the bedroom until the following night around 7:00 to get some dinner in the hotel - a failed mission, but as least I tried. The stomach wasn't quite ready to accept substance, so I wound up sipping a smoothie and moving the leaves of an otherwise delicious looking salad around on the plate to make it look like I had eaten more. Why is that? I was alone. No parents to make me finish my dish, and yet I still feel the need to push the food around to strategically hide how much I didn't eat. I even drank a little coffee, trying to overcome the sleeping pills I was given (along with 4 other medications - one for vomiting, one for dizziness, one for nausea, one for killing pain) so that I could take the train to the airport and meet my mother. I had great plans of making a sign with her name spelled incorrectly. It would have been great. Would have, had her flight not gotten in half an hour before I expected and had she not zoomed through customs and left the airport not 10 minutes before I arrived. Now that was depressing. Instead of joining her in taking advantage of the hotel's airport pickup, I had to take the lonely train late at night all the way back from the airport, a 45 minute long journey. Comical in retrospect. I suppose.

And now Mom is in China! I hadn't seen her in months, around Christmas time. It isn't like I don't email and talk with her about every other day, but was really good to see her again. We spent Sunday walking around Hong Kong, stopping in at Marianne's to look at jewelry and have a late dim sum lunch with her, walking back to the zoo. It was, unfortunately, very very humid that day and my mother is the type that melts away to nothing in humidity (where'd she go???), so we sought refuge in our hotel. My desire to great western food was finally met that night at Spoons, a great restaurant in the hotel across the street from ours. We dined with my boss Michelle who lives in Hong Kong and it was great fun.

On Monday, we flew together to Kunming, land where my Chinese skills finally came in handy and I could show off. We spend Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning walking all around the city, going to the Bird and Flower market, Green Lake, foreigner street, the market place behind my apartment, the zoo, a Buddhist temple, meeting my friends, eating hot pot and dumplings and Chinese food, and my favorite: having lunch with my two coworkers. Here are some pictures:

A monkey cage at the Hong Kong Zoo ("Soda, soda, banana!").


A sign warning of the dangers of proximity to birds in the zoo and gardens. Avian flu is still here, for those of you who have forgotten about it.


Mom at hot pot. I tried to order a broth that wasn't too spicy, but as with most dishes in Yunnan, there was still quite a kick to it.


The Bird and Flower market - you can buy everything including birds, flowers, fish, tea, foods, wall hangings, jewelry, and jade, guns that are actually lighters, and Indian goods. Not nearly as amazing as the markets in Beijing, especially the weekend market, but still has its charm.


Choices galore! Would help if I could read Chinese.


A pet store?? You are looking at ducklings, rodents, silk worms, turtles, and an unidentifiable black bug.


I always see the funkiest fish at the market. These guys have black, bulging eyes. The other ones I love are all white/transparent except for the brain (which is really small - "Oh look a castle! ..... Oh look a castle! ..... Oh look a castle!")


This is a view from the famous Green Lake. The tall building in the background is my apartment building.


Me next to the Green Lake.


Next to the Green Lake, Mom and I stumbled upon a huge class of elementary school children dancing in unison to bad American music. We even took videos! I think it was their form of PE or something.


The Buddhist temple next to the zoo. You can't see it in this picture, but the water is teaming with gold fish and turtles.


This is the market place behind my apartment that I've referred to so many times - it's where I buy everything from fruit and veggies to meat and rice and steamed jiaoste and noodles.


Another picture of my market place.


Me? Work? What?