Bike Free in Hong Kong

We said our blog was finished, but so many people wrote and asked us to continue our travel tales, we decided to do an occasional entry.

After spending a month in Odessa, Ukraine resting, shipping our bikes back home, working out logistics for the next five months in China, and seeing how Ukrainians do things (wow!), we headed to Hong Kong to get our Chinese Visas. We've been here a week doing the visa dance (hopefully we're making headway), and really enjoying this bustling city-state.


 

Neon City Lights of Downtown Hong Kong



Hong Kong is truly an amazing place. It might be the most organized, best run, cleanest, most exciting, and diverse metropolitan place we've ever been. And all of its positive attributes are magnified ten fold with our having just come from Eastern Europe. We arrived here and were walking through the airport saying “wow, look how clean it all is.” And “wow, look at everyone smiling.” The sights and sounds and smells are simply amazing. Things like an entire island filled with modern high rise buildings that make Manhattan look downright provincial. A city with a seemingly brand new bus and subway system, all clean, all air conditioned, and all extremely efficient. Blocks and blocks of fancy designer shops that have a man in a suit at the entrance, only allowing a certain number of people in at a time, and a line outside waiting for permission to enter. This is juxtaposed with those same modern skyscrapers having scaffolding made out of bamboo. OK, bamboo might be strong, but it is built 75 stories into the air! And I wouldn't be worried about the bamboo, but the lashings that hold all these sticks together looks like its just twine!



Masses of people eating bowls of noodles

 

Five blocks away from the Guicci and Armani stores are the traditional markets. These are streets that have nearly every square inch crammed full of little booths selling everything from Chairman Mao little red books and traditional Chinese shirts and fans, to watches and cds and everything in between. A typical interaction at a stall would go as follows:

Amy: she picks up a bracelet to look at

Hawker: “Very beautiful on you, only $180” Hong Kong Dollar, about $30 US Dollar

Amy: “ok thanks”

Hawker: “ how much you pay?”

Amy: now leaving..”I was just looking”

Hawker: “for you, only $130”

Amy: now just walking away slowly

Hawker: “ok, ok, $50”

Amy: getting farther away, and almost out of sight

Hawker.” ok ok $7, you take $7”

It's hilarious. And fun. Yeah, we bought some stuff, feeling proud at how we were able to talk them down. And they're thinking “can you believe those Americans paid $20 for that painting?” Brian also got a pair of pants that were tailored on the spot with the hawker's portable sewing machine. It's a hoot. And claustrophobic. It is just a sea of Chinese people here. But they are so nice, polite, healthy looking, and slow. Really, really slow walkers. We're in a booming and bustling city, except without the bustle. If we're walking down the street, it feels like we're at a grandmother's convention. People in Fargo, North Dakota move quicker. Amy thinks it is because it is so hot (really, really hot and humid) that they walk slow enough that they don't break a sweat. It's as good a guess as any. We're on vacation, with no place to go and walking along (barely moving) and thinking “goodness gracious, how could anyone move this slow.” It's amusing, very nice, and quite idiosyncratic.



Where's Amy??

And of course, there is the food. It starts with the smells. There are so many little restaurants, all open to the outside with the huge variety of smells coming blasting out of each shop, all mixing together, and making a smell that is uniquely Hong Kong. Some cities smell like garbage or sewage, some smell like car exhaust, Hong Kong smells like Chinese food. The décor of the restaurants is as drab as the food is spectacular; homemade noodles and soups, and meats, some recognizable and some not. It's almost like “where do we start.” Every day we go to a new noodle shop, which is not hard with at least 15 per block. There are fresh buns filled with coconut or shredded pork. There are ducks, geese, pigeons, bbq spareribs, and intestines hanging in the windows, which are all steamy from the pots of brown bubbling liquid on the other side. There are people, heads bowed down, shoveling rice into their mouths with chopsticks. It is a sight to behold and is simply fantastic. And since this was a British colony until 1997, nearly everything is bilingual, so we don't have to get the pork livers in our big bowl of noodles if we don't want to. However, as much as we've liked the food, our bellies have had a little bit of an adjustment. It is gurgle city down there. Lets just say that the peanut butter sandwich we had today was a blessing. And, it's the first peanut butter we've been able to find since we arrived in Europe in April! Hong Kong has the most foreign tastes we have found, and yet the most access to western food when we want it.



Enjoying the first of many plates of noodles and milk tea



We're keeping our fingers crossed that we get our Chinese visas tomorrow, and are granted permission to enter mainland China. It's easy to enter as a tourist, not so easy to enter to work. We're already late for our school training, but as our boss said about the visa rigamarole “welcome to China.” We've been told from others that just came from mainland China that it is nothing like Hong Kong. We'll soon see. If you are ever flying to Australia or New Zealand and can make a stop over in Hong Kong, do it. A day or two spent here is definitely worth doing. (And that is coming from two country bumpkins who live in a town of 500 people!)



Stunning High-Rise Island of Hong Kong