Midnight shopping and other crazy stuff

It was nearly midnight when we threw in the towel and made our way back to the hotel from the night market. Business there was still brisk, as it was at all of the shops and even malls that we passed on the way back. This city is crazy nuts.

Deb left early this morning to go give her presentation at a hospital here in Hong Kong. The rest of us got moving around 9:30. Leanne's tummy is feeling better, Kaley's throat is improving, and my chicken pox (as I've been referring to my bug bites) don't seem to be spreading any farther. Excellent.

After a rather strange breakfast here at the hotel which included fried fish and pork dumplings, we made our way outside. We're staying at the Salisbury YMCA which is right near the harbor in the Kowloon section of Hong Kong. It is a great and reasonbly priced facility, in comparison with the rest of Hong Kong. You have to book months in advance to get a room. It's very clean. Anyway, before we went outside I asked one of the security guys where the subway was. He seemed to understand and gave me some directions. Couldn't find it. Asked someone else. Very specific directions in pretty good English. Couldn't find it. Finally after about half an hour had past (and we were still circling our hotel) we saw a sign for "subway." Hooray! Nope. Here in Hong Kong a subway is an underground tunnel that allows you to cross the street. A lot of the streets have railings making it impossible for pedestrians to cross except at certain places, like these underground tunnels. Now that it made sense why we had been misdirected (with such perfect directions) we switched tactics and asked someone where the MTR train was. Eureka!

As the intrepid tour guide for the day, I had put together an itinerary that I thought would provide us with some fun photos stops and opportunities to see different areas of the city. Our first stop took us into one of the older sections of Hong Kong where we walked about 8 blocks to a flower market and a bird market. The flowers were absolutely gorgeous and cheap. Too bad we can't bring any home. The bird market was a trip. Mostly men, some of whom were shop keepers and others who had just brought their birds in cages to sit around in the market. Back in Pittsburgh it would be similar to a car cruise where people bring their old cars to a public place to sit around in lawn chairs and have people stop by to check out their vehicles. Here, it was birds. There were LOTS of beautiful birds in all sizes in cages and bird supplies I've never even imagined. You could also buy moving plastic bags of grass and crickets. Yummy. In Cambodia that would have been people food, but here it was bird food I guess.

Unfortunately, dragging Kaley and Leanne through these markets was not much fun. Leanne was just tired, and Kaley of course didn't like the crickets. Or the heat. Or the walking. If you will forgive an "old fart" rambling for a few moments, I have noticed that the younger generation seems to be so overstimulated by technology that just looking at beautiful things for the sake of looking at them seems to be boring. I think they're so used to walking around phones in hand, constantly supplementing what they are doing by texting their friends, that they've gone through painful withdrawl during this trip. Back home they may have better tolerated going to the bird market with mom because they could multi-task and text with friends at the same time. But without that added activity, things like the bird market are just plain boring. Oh well... I've tried.

As we walked along we all agreed that the smells in Hong Kong are to our surprise way stinkier than anything we have experienced thus far. I don't know for sure what these people are cooking in their little restaurants, but it smells really bad. In the older section of town where the bird market was, we didn't see any signs of familiar food, or any places I would have felt comfortable eating. We walked quite a ways back to an area where there was a street market and began to see McDonalds every few blocks again. What a relief. :-) Yep, we had McDonalds for lunch. The french fries tasted just like back home. Now the black sesame seed sundae, however, we didn't try. In the harbor section of the city, there is a starbucks about every 10 feet, too. Besides that, we haven't seen any western fast food. We also had one heck of a time finding any ice cream when that became the evening craving. While this is one of the more english speaking, technologically advanced cities we have visited, at least in the downtown area we haven't seen the western influence on commercializiation like we saw in Bangkok. I will say that the McDonalds and Starbucks were all packed, and not by westerners. Tonight we ate in an italian restaurant for a change of pace and it was also packed. Can't help but wonder if as our fast food and dining styles filter into places like Hong Kong if more Asian people will also wrestle with weight problems and the health issues that we face in the U.S.

After the uninteresting bird and flower markets, we hit a couple of street markets that were of interest to the girls. There were lots of baby clothes, linens (including towels that said "monogram towel" all over them), t-shirts of various makes with messed up english phrases on them, etc. The girls went in a number of shops that are "factory outlets" where clothes don't have labels but the stuff will probably end up in shops like Forever 21 where they like to shop in the U.S. They both picked up a couple of shirts or dresses for around $4 a piece.

After some down time back at the hotel and reconnecting with Deb who had a good but long day at the hospital, we ate Italian at a restaurant not far from the hotel. I had looked at the map to plot our route and led us right through a building/plaza area called the Chun King Mansions. I knew that it was home to a lot of hostels and was supposed to be a seedy area but that was an understatement. It was creepy. After leaving the restaurant we took the long way around. We walked down to the harbor front where we watched the 8 pm light show. The city is divided by a harbor. We are on the Kowloon side and HK Island is on the other side. Every night there is a music/light show that is most viewable from our side of the harbor so that was nice. It is well choreographed with about 20 large buildings on the other side using lasers and lights for the show. There was a bit of cloudy fog that made viewing a little less than perfect tonight, but still it was fun.

From here we walked up Nathan Street quite a few blocks, doing some window shopping at pretty expensive stores. Again, we're struck by the number of people seeming to be dropping huge amounts of money on high ticket fashion items. This while on the local news we've been hearing about how bad economic conditions are throughout Asia, just like back home. Hard to make sense out of the money being spent on luxury items if this is the case. We hopped a cab to the night market where the girls were successful in purchasing the quality of handbags that they had been hoping for. To our surprise, the handbag market here in Hong Kong is not nearly as big as in Bangkok, Saigon, etc. Even the fake rolex guys don't sell right on the street. They hold up pages of photos to get your attention as you walk along and then they take you to a quiet location behind the market stalls to show you their goods and make the sale. It's all a little creepy and we were glad to end the evening and take a cab back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, our last day in Asia, will be a sightseeing day. Hopefully it will be a fun day, but I suspect that the girls will find it a little dull. Since we had to fly through Hong Kong I really wanted to have an opportunity to check out this amazing city, but in hindsight maybe we should have headed on home. It's hard to re-enter a place that is a lot like NYC after spending time in a place like Cambodia. The lights, the people, the money being spent, and the whole sh-bang just seems overwelming. But then again, three years from now when we're watching a movie somewhere and there is a scene shot on the streets of Hong Kong, we will have memories and be able to think, "Hey - I've been there." And there's always something fun about that, even when while you're there you're not sure if you want to be.