Heavy Drinking + Early Morning Tours = Awful Combination

It is embarrassing how seldom I update this blog, and I promise I will try and do a better job. You must realize, though, that I spend less than 30% of my time in my room at my computer, so please do not be too upset. But don't fret either. I have not forgotten about any of you.

The amount of information and experience I have consumed since my last post is a bit overwhelming. That Thursday night I mentioned in my last post, where I said I would try and find that poker spot, actually turned out to be a very relaxing night. Cornelius, another exchange student from Austria, and I walked around LKF (Lan Kwai Fong) and Soho (the upscale version of LKF) for a little over an hour in search of the club, only to feel silly to say the least when we realized there was a phone number on the club flier. So after calling it and getting to the place in about 5 minutes (the club actually was tucked away in an alley that would have been near-impossible to find), we found the poker room. There were about 5 tables set up, and the deal is you just come and play poker for free. No buy-in, no money involved. They just give you chips and you play and you get free finger-foods and half-priced drinks. So we signed our names up for the following week since all the seats were already taken. What was most impressive to me was how the sounds roaming the entire club, I'm talking every single table, consisted of talk in French. It was just a huge crowd of men and women conversing in French after a Thursday full of business work. It seemed like the French community in Hong Kong reunited there every Thursday. Cornelius and I stuck around and then met up with some friends for dinner. After we just walked around LKF and I called it a day because I wanted to get up early the next day and do some serious walking around the island.

As early as I planned on getting up, I didn't actually make it out of my dorm room until about 11, I think. I took the bus into Wan Chai and hustled my way over to the waterfront where I saw what's called the Noonday Gun. Right on the edge of the bay, surrounded by skyscrapers on one end and fishing boats and steamboats on the other, rests an old gun (although it's more like a mini-cannon) from the way-early 1900s, and every day this gun is fired by an officer in between the sounding of a bell. There are many rumors as to why this tradition continues, but nonetheless, it is still pretty cool to see. I ran up to this gated small courtyard just in time to see the officer walk over to a bell, ring it, walk up to the cannon, pull the trigger, (to which I jumped at, startled by the unexpected boom of the cannon), then walk back over to the bell and ring it to end the ceremony. I made a video of it that I'll try and post. It was pretty cool. After taking some pictures of the cannon, and one with the officer who fired the gun, I took the MTR one stop over to a small local temple (my first one since arrival). It was a Tin Hau temple. Tin Hau is the sea goddess, the "patroness of seafarers", and so this temple is dedicated to her. It was very small, but just walking in for the first time, completely untouched by tourists and scattered with locals eating lunch, meditating, praying, made the whole experience much more meaningful. It was a side of China that I had only heard about, but seeing it up close is completely different. The roof carvings are clearly rusting, but really the most marvelous thing about the temple was the overwhelming aroma of incense. You think one stick in your bedroom, living room, or bathroom is enough?!? Try hundreds of sticks stuck in pots of sand sparkled all over a room, not to mention with a few dozen thick coils that last for days on end! It's amazing (and just a bit ironic) how enormous banners are posted up near the entrance that declare smoking not allowed, yet the entire temple is covered by one enormous cloud of smoke given off by the incense. The whole place was, for lack of a more descriptive word, magical. Tables and pillars lined the inside with smaller shrines to the left and right, all leading up to one big altar hailing the omniscient Tin Hau. What I also found to be really incredible was how quiet the temple and tiny garden were, compared to the blaring lights and noises of the city. It was only about 500 meters away from the MTR station, and just tilting your head upwards gave way to gigantic residential complexes, just a steep staircase away. Yet the aura and mysticism and silence still managed to surround the temple and remain contained within its boundaries (both physical and imaginary). The pictures should give you a sense of what it was like, but really, it's something you need to experience. Especially a small local one like that. I stayed there and met up with Aaron, my other Jew-friend who goes to UC Davis and is also in AEPi, and after spending a few more minutes there, we walked out and grabbed some lunch at a local food stall. (More to come on the food situation here!) We then walked through Causeway Bay, past Wan Chai, and into Central (which sounds like a lot and looks far on a map, but really, everything in Hong Kong is exaggerated - it is actually super small and you can get anywhere in at most 20-30 min. of walking). We walked out to this pier-type platform where there's a 6 meter-tall statue of a Golden Bauhinia, which is the symbol of Hong Kong. It wasn't much to see but still...It's basically just a fake gold statue of this flower that marks Hong Kong's return to Chinese control after British rule in 1997, establishing the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region). Every morning at 7:50 there is a flag-raising ceremony conducted by the Hong Kong police, and on the 1st, 11th, and 21st of each month 5 min. before there's a pipe band. I told myself one day I'm here I have to go see that. This past 21st was not that day though. Possibly Feb. 1st. We shall see. Aaron and I spent most of the time wandering aimlessly around the city, having great discussions from life goals to life in Hong Kong to life after college. As dusk approached, we walked to another temple - the Man Mo Temple. This is located right next to LKF and Soho, and is a temple dedicated to a civil god called Man Cheung and a more popular military god named Kwan Yu (who ironically is also the patron god of restaurants, pawn shops, the police force, and secret societs like the Triads). This had a very similar feel to the Tin Hau temple - the intense smell of incense, the odd silence, the random locals running around performing various private personal rituals. I preferred the Tin Hau temple, but that may also have been because I was pretty exhausted and we walked in about 10 min. before closing time, so we didn't really get to see and experience much of it. We parted ways and I took a nap before getting ready for the big night - the Foreign Exchange party. Dress was formal, so all the guys got into shirts and ties. Basically, one guy rented out this club called Paparazzi and was the DJ, and it was open bar from 10:30 to 1:30. So we got there and it wasn't long before we all were in a "happy place", on the dance floor, and just having a great time in general. Time was measured by the intervals when the bartenders would pour alcohol in a gutter that ran around the bar and light it on fire, making crowds oooh and aaah and forcing hands to coil back to prevent further unnecessary harm while drunk. After 1:30, the open bar suddenly turned into a cash bar, which basically pushed everyone out the door into the streets, heading towards 7-11. That is another thing that I must mention right now. There are absolutely no open container/public drinking laws in Hong Kong. Every night basically is preceded by a trip to 7-11 to pick up cheap beer (they have great deals where you can buy two 32 oz. beers for like HK$20, which is like US$1.5 per beer), or some wine. So we went to 7-11, continued our fiasco, and eventually made our way to a place called The Flying Pan, a 24-hour breakfast restaurant. It was pretty much heaven. Ordering the biggest platter with Vivian must have been a sight not only because it was basically just us two eating, but because we simply inhaled the 7 pieces of toast, 4 eggs, several pancakes, several cups of fruit, 5 strips of bacon, two glasses of orange juice, and whatever else was on that plate that I can't remember, in a span of maybe 15 minutes. Needless to say, it was a great day, unbelievable night, and the last thing I remember is staring at my watch as I collapsed with absolutely no energy left. The hands read 5:30 am.

The first thing I remember the next day is the same sight. This time, the hands read 8:45. With that much sleep, I had to make my way to the library to meet the tour group, that left at 9 am. Imagine about 40-50 young adults (or young zombies rather) hazily walking onto a bus, everyone basically wearing a hoodie sweatshirt with the hood over each person's head, stumbling around everywhere, mumbling. Basically your typical, run-of-the-mill hangover. Except nobody got more than 4 hours of sleep the night before. That day's tour was of Kowloon and the New Territories (NT). We first bussed over to the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden and Flower Market. This was actually pretty interesting, despite how absolutely god-awful we all felt. The street was lined with locals holding their cages, actually showing off their birds. They all chirped and sang, wanting attention from all of the on-lookers. Some of them were very beautiful. There were some gorgeous green-colored and blackbirds. The highlight was seeing this one guy holding a cage with a beautiful bird sing its way around the cage, while he sipped beer from a straw out of a can. Then he would turn to us and open up his missing-teeth-mouth and say in broken English, "So many beautiful girls I have never seen before." What a guy! I stumbled my way around the market, just in awe of all the shops with cages and cages full of birds, then the shops moved on to bags and bags of crickets, maggets, and all other sorts of insects ready to purchase, all bagged in clear plastic bags. It was pretty cool. Our next stop was a ways out in the NT to the Wetland Park. This was not as cool as it sounded, but what was amazing was how deathly silent it was, and how amazingly clear the air and sky was. Only a 45-minute drive away, and the sun was burning down on us, with blue sky above us, spotted with white clouds. It was so drastic, I could taste the freshness of the air. We walked around, saw the empty fields, completely lacking any nature whatsoever (not even birds) and just behind us towered residential/commercial skyscrapers, all looking the same, identical, row after row after row. It rose a lot of questions, as you could imagine, the stark contrast between nature and industrialization/commercialization. But it was still nice to be hanging out in good weather. After lunch there, we drove back to Kowloon to another temple - the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. This was actually three temples in one area - Taoist (the largest), Buddhist, and Confucianist. It was completely packed, but the good thing it was mostly with locals who were all there to pray. I pushed my way through the clouds of smoke that rose from all the sticks and coils of incense to get to somewhere near the front. Our tour guide told us that this was a popular place where people came to get their fortune told. You're supposed to pick up a cylinder full of sticks that are numbered and have different characters on them and what you do is make a wish, then shake the cylinder and keep shaking until one stick falls out. If more than one falls out then the wish is disqualified and you have to start all over again. When one stick falls out, you look at the number and take it to the fortune teller and the teller then determines whether your wish will come true or what your fortune is based on the number that came out and all other circumstantial evidence (birthday, year you were born in, life status?, etc.). I performed the ritual, got my number, but decided not to go to the fortune teller. Instead I roamed around the vast garden space they had. Streams surrounded walkways and paths, and there were little rock formations where you could sit down and just take everything in, meditate, whatever you felt like. So I just took a seat, and did just that. I think it was at that moment that it hit me - that I was actually in another country, halfway around the world (literally), where the philosophy and belief system is just so different from anything I've ever experienced. Seeing people walk around slowly, pacing the garden, or with their families, enjoying their lunch in this temple - it was all pretty incredible to say the least. I think I'm going back to see what it's like during the Chinese New Year, when it's really busy. I can't wait to check out the real temples and monasteries on the mainland. We then made our way to the Chi Lin Nunnery, a huge Buddhist complex with lotus ponds, beautiful gardens full of all types of plants, and nuns giving offerings. It was very beautiful and definitely worth the visit. Lastly, we spent the last 30-40 minutes of the tour at the Hong Kong Museum of History, which was interesting, but something I wouldn't go back to see. I feel like I could get all that information elsewhere and the exhibits weren't that intriguing, really. It really paled in comparison to the Smithsonian museums. When we returned home, I passed out for a quick nap and then met up with some friends to go see American Gangster (in English but with Chinese subtitles). Interesting fact: movie theaters here have assigned seats, but even more odd is that they charged more for this movie because it was extra long! Never heard of charging a movie based on its length, but then again, this is Hong Kong.

I woke up at the same time on Sunday for the tour of only Hong Kong Island. We first went to eat breakfast at a place and had a traditional breakfast I think: sweet bread and an egg custard-type. We then went south to Aberdeen to take a ride on a sampan boat around the bay there. Not that interesting to be honest, but not terrible. We just went around the tiny port, saw the enormous buildings around us, and went back to the bus. We then went to Repulse Bay (where Olivia and her family took me out to dinner) and walked along the beach. It was absolutely gorgeous weather (80 degrees and clear skies) - again just an indication of how bad the pollution is in the city. We strolled along the beach, went to the Chinese garden, just hung out, letting the randomness of the day fill up our conversations. We spent more time nearby in Stanley, at the Stanley Market. Basically this was just a bunch of tourist shopping, with lots of clothing stores probably cheaper than other places. We had lunch, walked around, and let the day pass us by. We ended up at the Museum of Coastal Defense, which if you're really into military strategy and war, would be a really cool place to visit. Otherwise, the only good thing about this place is the views it gave from its peaks, since the building actually was a former defense base during colonial times. We only spent about 30 minutes there before heading back home. For dinner, a group of us got together to have a home cooked meal (although Simon, another exchange student from NY, did most of the cooking). The rest of us did the shopping. We ate pasta with fresh sauce, salad, topped off with a few bottles of wine. Omar, an exchange student from LA, and I suddenly had the urge to stay up and watch the playoff football games, and managed to convince the rest of the gang to come out with us and have a few drinks while we waited for the game to come on. We figured they would be at 1 and 4 pm EST (so that would be 2 and 5 am HK time - early enough for us to watch the first game, since neither of us had class on Monday). Only when I went back home to confirm this did I find out the games were actually
at 3:30 and 6:30 pm EST, meaning they were at 4:30 and 7:30 am HK time. When I found this out, I called them up saying that was too late and I couldn't go out with them. After lots of talking and guilt-tripping, I was practically forced to come out since it was my idea in the first place to go out to LKF. So I told them I'd wait at the bus stop in front of my hall and just get on the same one they did (they were at another hall up the street). They called me and told me what bus they were on, so I knew what to look out for. As the bus strolls down the street, I waved my hand, signaling it to pull over, only to see the bus ignore me, and the whole crew wave at me, screaming at the bus driver to stop. Of course the bus kept on going, leaving me all alone while everyone headed on down. I couldn't believe it. Everyone offered to get off and walk back to me so we could all go, but I said that was stupid and I would just meet them out, since they did really want me to go out and who am I to disappoint them? After waiting 20 minutes, another bus came and I made it to LKF, where they had several beers waiting for me to guzzle down. We all headed to this tiny amphitheater located a block off the main street, and then more people showed up. It actually turned out to be a great night - just about 20 of us hanging out, having random, fun, intriguing conversations while 7-11 (now dubbed Club 7) provided us with the cheap booze we always wanted and the laws provided us with the public drinking we always dreamed of back in the States. I didn't get back home until around 3, missing the football games, but making up for it with great company and great memories!

What's more is that I woke up by 10 and was able to watch the last 7 minutes of the Giants-Packers game in my hall (dubbed over with Chinese commentary of course). Disappointing way to end the season, Favre, but oh well. I'm in Hong Kong - that's not going to put a damper on things for too long. The rest of this week has flown by at warp speed. It has consisted mostly of figuring out what I'm doing for the Chinese New Year, and getting my class schedule in order. For the former, I decided that I really wanted to stick around Hong Kong and see the parades and fireworks and all other events planned here, but I also want to take advantage of the days we have off (and my lack of classes on Fridays or Mondays). So Aaron and I went travel-agency-shopping both on the streets and online and we managed to find a pretty cheap flight to Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) for a week. The great thing is that I'm only missing two days of school, but thanks to my class schedule (not having Fri. or Mon. classes), I am getting an extra 4 days of travel. We are both psyched out of our minds, and it's now up to us to figure out exactly what we want to do for the week we are there. As for my classes, I have been approved to switch from the Arts Faculty (which contains basically the history, languages, philosophy, and fine arts departments) to the Social Sciences Faculty (politics, public administration departments, etc.), so I can take more interesting politics classes. I am signed up for Hong Kong Politics, China and the World, Chinese Metaphysics, Economic History of China, and Putonghua I (that's basically Mandarin 1 for those who don't know what Putonghua is). My favorites as of now are Chinese metaphysics and the mandarin, because I'm definitely learning the most in both of those. The metaphysics class is super interesting. It's basically a twice-a-week one-hour lecture/discussion on oriental philosophies about time, space, causal relationships, and different beliefs in the world, going beyond the basic physics of it. I'm very excited to learn more about it. Like I said before though, the best part about all of it is that I do not have classes on Monday or Friday, so I have a 4-day weekend every weekend, allotting more time for me to catch up on school work or more likely to travel to places nearby on the mainland (example: if I left Thursday night, I could take an overnight train to Shanghai, be there by Friday morning, and spend the whole weekend there), or Taiwan, or other southeast Asian countries. What is absolutely necessary to emphasize though is how incredibly lucky I am to be in a hall located on campus! It's like living in Old Dorms at UVA all over again, whereas most people live in Hereford. They have to take a 5-10-minute bus ride just to get to campus. It's a 2-minute walk for me just to get to my classroom. There's nothing like rolling out of bed 10 minutes before class starts after a late night, and getting to class on time, knowing full well that everyone else in Sassoon Road halls have to wake up at least 30 minutes before me to get to class on time - and that's if they really rush!

I am getting adjusted to life in Hong Kong very fast. It's really not that difficult. The motto on the streets is ultimately shove or be shoved. You have to be very aggressive, or you won't get anywhere. Another thing that just blows my mind is how unbelievably lazy Hong Kongers are. They will wait a good 5-10 minutes for an elevator to go up 1 or 2 flights of stairs when walking that would take less than 2 minutes - woah, watch out, how dare you even think about exerting unnecessary energy. Escalators are like McDonald's or Starbucks' - they exist around every corner, in every building, and I'm sure if I went there, in every home. I kid you not - people take escalators in malls that bring them literally 10 feet up, rather than walk the stairs. It's funny too because the number of rising escalators doesn't even skim the surface of the number of descending escalators - that's what stairs are for, duh! It's pretty ridiculous.

Other major activities I've participated in here in Hong Kong have been my first High Table Dinner, applying for my HK ID card, and dinner with the Warden and the rest of the new exchange students in my hall. First, the High Table Dinner. That was quite an experience. When I first heard about it, I thought it was every night. It is a hall function that is mandatory for all the students in that hall. It is very formal - guys are to wear suits and ties, girls dresses, and if you do not attend, you get no refund. I also heard that since living in the halls at HKU is pretty competitive, each hall gives out points for every function (including like floor meetings, and high table dinners, etc.) and at the end of the year everyone is ranked, and the people with the least amount of points are kicked, or voted, out of the hall. It's something crazy like that. So basically everybody goes. We had our dinner at a restaurant called the Star Seafood Restaurant, about a 10 min. walk, in Kennedy Town. Frankie and Omar, two other exchange students, are also in my hall but because they are on the first floor, and I'm on the fifth, we couldn't sit together (the tables were arranged for floors to sit with others, and we weren't with them). So I hung around mostly with my roommate and some others on my floor and we sat down at a table with a bunch of girls from the fourth floor. I felt a little uncomfortable, since everyone around me was speaking Chinese, but everyone seemed really friendly and eventually the conversation turned to Universities in the US because some of the guys were thinking of going there as an exchange student (they were deciding between Michigan and Illinois). In the meantime, small plates of appetizers were brought out on the lazy Suzy in front of us, and everyone around just picked at it and brought small chopstick-portions to their own individual plate. If I remember correctly, there were a few plates of jellyfish and some salad-type dish. Then when we waited for the main course, one of the girls suggested we play an icebreaker game, for me mostly I guess since everybody seemed to already know each other. So everyone went around the table saying their name, major, and where they came from (most of them were actually from the mainland). Then when it got to me, I went and everyone just bombarded me with all sorts of questions about America and how I'm liking life in Hong Kong. It was pretty fun. Then the main courses came. Wow - Chinese really know how to eat. We got everything from corn/fish soup to chicken with cashews to fish to squid to shrimp balls to a chicken served with all its limbs (including the head facing right toward me). There were noodle dishes, pork dishes, some vegetables, lots of seafood, and for desert we were served this sweet bean-type soup dish and fried bread with that type of sweet bean inside it. It was all very interesting. Once the meal was over there was a big raffle where I believe the leaders of the Hall got up on a stage and drew ping pong balls from a box that had I think hall floor numbers then room numbers, and then the winners would come up and get their prize. But it was just amazing at how loud everyone was - all the girls would scream and shout when their friends won and all the guys would "woof woof" when their friend won. It was pretty nuts! Something I forgot to mention was before the meal: all the leaders of the Hall got up in front and instructed everyone to sing the Hall Song. That was probably one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. There was no count down, and so it was all timed by everyone inhaling one time deeply and then beginning. Everyone breathing in at once deeply actually made a big sound and then everyone broke into their broken-English hall song. It was a little scary - but then again, if one of them came to UVA and heard us sing the Good Ol' Song, one can only imagine what they'd think. After dinner, Frankie, Omar, and I decided to stay in our suits because it was the birthday of one of the exchange students in our hall and she had rented out a table at a fancy club, so we all stayed dressed up and went out to LKF for another late. Didn't get home until 3 am.

The next day I had to wake up super early to get to my appointment for my HK ID card on time. It was in Wan Chai at the Immigration Department, so I took the bus in and was able to cut the whole line because I made an appointment online. I took a number, waited for it to be called, then a lady looked at the application I filled out earlier and took my thumb prints and picture. Then they gave me another number so I had to wait again, and when I was finally called, I went to another booth where my thumb prints were taken again! Then I was given a temporary HK ID card (which is the size of a regular sheet of paper, it's pretty ridiculous) and told I could pick up my permanent one on Feb. 12 or after. I'll get it once I get back from my trip to Vietnam. Later, I met up with Aaron and we walked to the Vietnamese Consulate to apply for our visa for Vietnam. It's only HK$300 (about US$35) for single-entry, and it's ready in 4 business days - not bad. But they keep your passport, which is kind of unsettling, but everybody I've talked to said it's fine, so I'm not that worried. The two of us then met up with a group of friends for half-off sushi. This turned out to be a terrible idea though because Frankie, Omar, and I realized walking back that we had a dinner with the Warden of our Hall and the rest of the new exchange students.

The Warden ended up taking us to a place called Golden Shanghai Cuisine, a very upscale restaurant with unbelievable food. So even though I didn't need to eat more, I wasn't going to turn down free food - especially free good Shanghainese food. We had some unbelievable stuff, both real Shanghai food (chicken covered in and cooked with chilies, roasted chicken, noodles, jellyfish, shrimp dumplings, pork wonton) and some Western Chinese food (sweet and sour chicken). For desert, fresh chilled pineapple and watermelon (soooo amazing) and fried ice cream - apparently this is a very traditional desert dish. I could barely walk, let alone think about food after all that. I didn't even list all the dishes we had, which I think totaled to around 15 - no joke! I spent that night (a Friday night mind you) reading (I started a new book - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and so far it's very interesting) and doing laundry, due to the lack of energy after such a meal.

Today, Omar, Vivienne, and I walked around Tsim Sha Tsui and went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art after a really good Indian lunch at a place called Chung King Mansions, where you get mauled on the street by people trying to sell you everything from food to watches to suits. The art museum was actually very cool. There was a Chinese Fine Art Gallery (which consisted of paintings from the late 19th century and the entire 20th century), a Chinese Antiquities Gallery (basically all pottery reaching all the way back to the Neolithic Period - the coolest artifact was a pot from that period with the Buddhist peace symbol on it, the same symbol that Hitler switched around to represent the Nazi party), and a Contemporary Hong Kong Art Gallery, which was cool but not nearly as interesting as the former two. What was very impressive was how well-preserved all the pots and artifacts from the Antiquities Gallery - and that's only a fraction of the history that wasn't destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Then we met up with some other friends and walked all the way to Mong Kok (which doesn't sound far just saying that, but that's 3 MTR stops away). It was pretty cool. We walked around a market called the Lady's Market. This is the place to get really really good knock-offs. This was also the very first time I felt like I really experienced China, and the reason for this was because of the throngs and masses of people everywhere! This was also during rush-hour time (5:30/6 pm on a Saturday evening), but still - that's what China is like. It's just overwhelmingly crowded with people. I really don't think this could compare to places like NYC or LA. Probably Mexico City. And Hong Kong doesn't even touch mainland, like Beijing. I was just enjoying it for the first time, but I certainly don't feel like going back there every day. I really had a blast though just walking everywhere in crowds, with hundreds and hundreds of people on all ends.

Tonight, we're having a rooftop pre-game party before going out, and tomorrow I think we're going to try to go to City Hall for the dim sum, before doing who knows what. Once the weather gets better (it's been so gray and raining a lot recently) before going to some other islands or doing some outdoor treks, hikes, camping, or whatever. Then it's time to get started on school reading, which of course I am far behind in, but don't worry mom and dad, I'll get it done.

Miss you all...but I'm surviving - not to worry!