HK

A week long trip to Hong Kong during Chinese New Year.

The captain of Singapore Airlines' 747-400, just before the departure back to Singapore, made the obligatory announcement: "...and the temperature on the destination is comfortable 24 degrees Celsius". Hearing this, my face muscles slowly but surely stretched the lips across the face.

HK was cold. Especially cold for a person (yours truly) who hasn't seen temperature below some mid-to-high teens in almost two plus years - guess the coldest I had it since leaving Melbourne in July 2006 was while climbing Mt Kinablau. Temperature in the first few days barely reached 10 degrees. Unsurprisingly, as I've mentioned the cold/flue struggle that's been raging on since the end of the last year, I spend one day in bed with high fever - lucky it wasn't more. This was unusual cold weather even for the locals. It was caused by the snow storms that were ranging up north in the main land China at that time, and bringing cold front down to HK.

Cold aside, HK experience was great:

City, unlike my current address, is full of unique personality. Just on the way from the airport, looking thought the bus window, the forest of skyscrapers amongst the hills was providing unquestionable site - must be the influence of TV (-what else?).

Finding a dorm for SGD12 was pleasant surprise as I was prepared to pay $50 for a cheep accommodation. The only knock I have for the place is that the blankets they provide are really thin. Even though I managed to sweet talk - needed sweet talk as the place was full for the New Year celebration and most people were asking for extra blankets - cleaning lady to get me an extra blanket. Luckily friend's father borrowed me his big skiing jacket during the stay. The jacked doubled as a duvet - thanks Uncle Chong.

One night in the dorm, before falling a sleep I had a chat with an American fellow - forgot his name - an impressive and inspirational character. He spent last year and a half in a Beijing and Taipei, and is currently studying Chinese Classical Literature at a university in Taipei - the study is in Mandarin! The guy speaks very impressive Mandarin - when I walked in the room he was on the phone dribbling away as any, from my point of view, native Chinese speaking person would. He is currently learning to read/write!!! I always felt that I'd be able to learn conversational Mandarin, but never did I think that anyone (in their sanity :) would attempt reading/writing. He did say, as one might expect, that it took lots of effort to learn as much as he did in a year and a half. Another respectful thing is that the guy's aim is to further study international policy/relations in order to work in China on environmental issues. I can only sincerely say: Good Luck!

Another interesting thing about staying at that old building filled with cheep accommodation in Tsim Sha Tsui was seeing the number of international people that work there. I just did not expect to see so many people from Africa, and especially not from sub-continent. On few occasions, coming back to the hostel late at night, I had old Chinese man whispering into my ear "young girls" and a young guy from sub-content saying "hashish". For HCMC, Bangkok, or Goa I expected that, but not for HK.

I have to thank my friends for showing me HK from their perspective. With Roza and her family I got to experience local celebration during the Chinese New Year - food, food and some more nice food, together with worm hospitality and 'red envelops' (pocket money). With Raymond I got to walk to streets of the HK Island during the day time (Roza did the night tour :), and have one of our usual endless conversations for the 1st time after some two years.

As it's becoming custom to all the travels I did since my big oversees experience has started, there's always reasons to go back. This time:
Alvin, the original Pokai, better weather,
and Macau...!