Hong Kong

 There are very many people in the world. Most of them are in Hong Kong. This, anyway, was my takeaway from my first experience of the place. Moreover, one finds that most of them are walking in the opposing direction from oneself on any given outing. 

All kidding aside ... I found the city quite engaging and pleasant.

But wait, let me start from the beginning. 

A couple weeks ago, we (Evelyn and I) departed from Denpasar, Bali, bound for Hong Kong by way of Singapore. It seems that a direct flight is very expensive, so we had to stop in Singapore, stay the night in the airport, and then catch a morning flight to Hong Kong. 

Evelyn arranged all the details of our trip, while I just did what I was told. To the best of my ability. We immediately faced a glitch in the plan. It was her understanding that there are sleeping chairs at the Singapore airport (not chairs that sleep, mind you, but chairs in which a person can sleep). And there are. Trouble was, they were all occupied by sleeping people. 

So we slept on the floor. Evelyn made a little bed for me (bless her well-intentioned heart) with a thin blanket and some balled up clothes for a pillow, but sleep, for the most part, eluded me. I remember sleeping on the ground as a young man, out camping for instance, but an old man's broken body does not do so well on a hard surface. I spent much of the night wandering about, ordering coffee, smoking in the suffocating smoking lounge, returning from time to time to the nest to give it another try. I did finally go to sleep some time in the middle of the night, only to be awakened by a security  guard who for some reason needed to see my passport and airline ticket at 4 a.m. 

After that, I was done. Rough and ready to catch my flight to Hong Kong. In only five hours.

Arriving there, and emerging at last from the maze-like airport, we found ourselves emersed in chilly air, 13 c, and oh how pleasant this was for me, after fifteen years in the sweltering tropics. Just like home! And by that, I mean Portland. And as for my companion, she had never in her life felt anything like 13 c. Talk about exotic! 

She had scheduled the first part of our stay in a little travel hotel operated by the Salvation Army (for some reason). The room was cozy, up on the 9th floor, and free breakfast was available, but the curious thing was that although the room had air-conditioning, it had no heat. And the bed arrangement was two separate single beds, one on each side of the room, so there was no body heat to be had either, other than one's own. Nonetheless, it was fine anyway, at least for me. I'm already used to sleeping with the AC on the lowest temperate setting back in Bali. 

My first challenge--everything else having been done for me, to include hotel arrangements, bus schedules, train schedules, scheduled destinations and activities--was to find a place where one could smoke. Smoking, you see, is not popular in Hong Kong and is pretty tightly restricted to designated locations, as is the case in Singapore as well. So I walked down the street in that wonderful bracing chilly air (now 12 c) and happened upon a fellow smoker lurking in an alleyway. It's not that you can't smoke, he told me. You can smoke pretty much anywhere, as long as it is outside and nowhere near a no smoking sign. The only thing is that the habit is frowned upon and so people tend to slip into alleys or behind walls or whatever. And so we had our little smoker's conversation in broken English, no Chinese of course. As with Bali, many of the people in Hong Kong are able to speak a simple form of English.

Over the next few days, we visited the city center, the "Peak" above the city, which in the evening is colorfully lit all along the riverside and features parades of brilliantly lit boats. We travelled to Hong Kong island, took a cable car over the hills in order to see "the Big Buddha" (well, Evelyn saw it, not I, given that you need to climb about a hundred stairs to get there). I just hung around in "the traditional village, which is just kind of like an outdoor mall really, had a coffee, ate some caramel corn and looked for official smoking places. Smoking is especially prohibited at tourist sites, but there is always a wall somewhere to hide behind, which I found along with a half dozen Russians. 

Next we went to another traditional village, this one actually authentically traditional. It was called Tai O, a little fishing village with narrow little streets lined with (what else) fish products of all sorts. I found it quite charming, picturesque. 

In the evening, we roamed the city again, or a very small part of it, actually, and came upon a dessert restaurant selling only pudding. But delicious pudding it was! I had the warm egg pudding and have been looking for another like ever since, although to no avail. Evelyn had some kind of black bean pudding. 

On the last day, we had to change hotels, as ours at the Salvation Army was booked. Our room at this new hotel was tiny indeed, and the bathroom, including shower, was about the size of a closet. A small closet. Really brought home the meaning of "water closet". 

"How can it be?" I asked Evelyn. 

"Why? What? What's wrong with it?"

"You mean, aside from everything?" 

Ah well, but we made do. Millions of people are starving in China, my parents used to say when we did not like our food. Millions, apparently, are also showering in closets. 

Our trip ended with another stopover, this time in Vietnam. Once again, Evelyn said there were to have been little sleeping rooms. Once again, there weren't, and we slept on the floor. Well, not on the floor, but on the row of plastic chairs, on which Evelyn prepared for me a bed of bundled up clothes and a makeshift pillow. I should say that Evelyn slept, while I, for the most part, explored the hushed hallways of the rather decrepit Ho Chi Minh City airport. And drank coffee. Time enough to sleep on the plane home anyway. 

(Naturally, we took a whole lot of photos on our trip and I wish I could post some here, but my laptop has stopped cooperating with my phone. No clue why. It used to work just fine).