We found bangkok to be a little too big, spread out, and overwhelming. It was difficult to get around, and the hostel we stayed at was pretty far away from anything. Getting to see kevin was great, and we also got to eat some great thai food, both at kevins and at a small restaurant next to the main rail station. There we had cha-rom (i think that's right) that were fried and amazing. Probably my favorite food that I've had thus far in Asia. The place was so good that we went back for a second meal before our bus ride out of bangkok last night.
A few random observations/thoughts:
-we didn't feel all that inclined to rush to all of the touristy things as we were just adjusting to thailand (much, much different from hong kong, and obviously a far cry from california) since we will be back through bangkok towards the end of our journey after we make a loop through northern thailand, laos, vietnam, and cambodia.
-Nice, modern buildings are mixed in with completely run down, falling apart buildings. This seems to hold true for houses, skyscrapers, businesses, etc. It wasn't like in the US where there is generally a 'nice' part of town and a 'not-so-nice' part of town. Just all mixed together here
-the walk to our hostel was SKETCHY. On our first night back at the hostel after eating some mediocre thai food court food a a nearby mall, we witnessed a man getting semi-mugged by a motorcycle taxi driver. Apparently, the taxi driver said the ride would cost 50 baht, and the passenger (like a 50yr old dude staying at the same hostel we were staying at) understood the fare to be 15baht. The passenger refused to pay 50, and every time he tried to walk away the driver would grab him and pull him back to the motorbike. Once, he even threw him on the bike and tried to drive off while holding the guy on the back--both sad and absolutely hilarious at the same time. The driver also punched (or what we refer to as a slap in america) the guy in the chest a few times...finally some local thai people saw the commotion and came over to calm the taxi driver down and begged him to leave the man alone. I'm not sure what the final economic outcome was, but it was definitely an entertaining scene
-For those that know kevin, he's doing really well. Moving to thailand was obviously the right choice for him as it looks like he has his act together--goes to a great university and lives in a cool place with his mom, who was awesome and very hospitable. It was great to see the old kstew
-Khao san road was awesome--kevin brought us here even though he doesnt really like the place since it's pretty much a touristy backpacker area of town...so its understandable why a local would rather party somewhere else. But it was really cool--jam packed with tourists, backpackers, stands, stores, clubs, bars, restaurants, tuk-tuks, etc. We ate a touristy restaurant, which had mediocre food but awesome beer towers which more than made up for what it lacked in food quality. From here, we shopped around a little, or rather, emily shopped around a little while me and kevin bs'd and tagged along, and then we went to a small hookah lounge off he main drag that kevin's friend owned. It was a really cool place...you sit on the floor on giant pillows, cool decor, dim lighting, etc...definitely more of a local dive.
-We were ready to move onto chiang mai sooner than we had originally planned. Bangkok was just a little too massive, especially when we had just come from hong kong, which is also overwhelmingly huge. We took an overnight, 10hour bus ride to chiang mai, which was actually not too uncomfortable, and arrived at 6am. First impressions of chiang mai: THIS is what we came to thailand for. It seems quaint but busy, filled with backpackers yet there is still a local vibe, and it seems that there will be plenty to do, especially on the more nature, outdoorsy side of things, which i prefer to the giant city feel. We walked around a little earlier, saw some really cool temples, got sprayed with pesticides, ran, and then checked out a HUGE market selling everything from living frogs to spoiled beef to baht on a stick. We're staying at a place called julie's guesthouse which was recommended by everyone, and so far it seems like a great place.
-motorbikes everywhere
More soon, hopefully with pictures.
Hope all is well in CA.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Chiang Mai tonight
We've spent two days in Bangkok and this place is pretty wild...definitely unlike anywhere I've ever been. The only place even sort of comparable for me is San Jose, Costa Rica, and that's really not a good comparison at all. The first day that we got here it took us over two hours to get to our hostel, as the language barrier was immediately obvious. We couldn't explain to the cab driver where to go both because he didn't speak english and because we really didn't know where the heck we were going. Our hostel was a really nice building, only about a month old, but it was in the cuts of a really interesting hood to say the least. More on that later. Yesterday we hung out with Kevin, an old friend from back home who goes to school out here at MUIC (international university)...we checked out his campus and some parts of 'real' thailand in the day, hung out at his restaurant/gas station/house (he lives at a restaurant/gas station that his mom owns--it's pretty sweet), and then went to check out the khao san road night scene which was awesome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaosan_Road). More on that later too. Today we had kind of a down day to rejuvenate for our next leg--woke up late and hung out at kevin's--and now we're off to the bus station to take a 12hour night bus to chiang mai for the songkran festival (thai new years)...I'll post more soon with pictures.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Made it to Bangkok
...and wow, this place is different. Took us a couple of hours to find the hostel, but it should be an awesome time. I'll post more tomorrow
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Off to bangkok tomorrow
Hong Kong has been amazing. It feels like we've been here for a month when really it's only been 5 days. I think we've covered alot of ground and gotten a pretty good idea of life in hongkong from both a touristy and local perspective. Hopefully it proves to be a good transition from the san luis obispo bubble that we live in to the real southeast asia that we'll begin to experience tomorrow.
Today we got off to kind of a late start, and I was finally able to sleep in past 630am (when the sun comes up) due to the fact that the room that we were in last night was a freaking cave. Really, a cave. No windows. 8' x 6'. But, a good night of sleep, so no complaints there. Tonight we moved to a new room with a PRIVATE bathroom, a door on the shower, and I get to sleep in a full-size bed = luxury. Anyways, about the day. It started with a trip to asian fast food which turned into a trip to burger king. At the first place, I can't recall the name, I ordered an American Sausage Breakfast. Sounds decent right? A piece of sausage, some eggs, and some toast, and I can say I tried to eat at an Asian place. WRONG. An American Sausage Breakfast consists of freaking two hot dogs, a paper thin piece of beef, and a huge piece of white toast. You had to be there to believe it; clearly their menu maker has never been to america. I'll post a picture at the end. So, burger king it was, and a sausage crossanwich really hit the spot.
From there we were off to the Big Buddah statue (a big tourist attraction aroud here), which is in tung chung (spelling?) way up in the hills near a monestary and a fishing village. We waited in line for a bit to board the gondola/cable car/disneyland ride/whatever you call it that took us over a bay and up a huge mountain. It was about a 30minute ride and the scenery was incredible. Definitely didn't feel like we were in the most vertical city in the world anymore...there were a few skyscrapers, but mainly just green, lush mountains and sparkling blue ocean. On the ride up we met a guy from Dublin name Andy...sidenote, the name Andy is apparently a very common theme in this trip--one of the main people emily got info from for the trip is named Andy, the German guy that we roomed with two nights ago was Andy, and this guy was Andy. And, there has really only been one other guy we talked to on this trip (the guy from texas i mentioned in the last post), and although i missed his name, he was wearing the same shoes as me and had the same camera...pretty weird coincidences. Anyway, Andy from Dublin--super cool dude, worked as a lawyer in a big bank there...got to talk a little about the financial crisis in Ireland, which is even messier than ours if that's even possible, but he felt like things were looking up. Hmm the way AIB and IRE have been trading suggest otherwise, but gotta love the optimism. Anyways, he stuck with us for the afternoon and it was cool to have him along. The Big Buddah--wow, big buddah is the understatement of the century. It's like 400feet tall, maybe taller. HUGE. I couldn't believe it...you can see it for miles as long as youre at a high enough elevation that the moutains don't block your view. You have to climb about 25 flights of stairs to get up to it, but the views of the surrouding mountains are pretty breathtaking once youre up there. We got some cool photos, checked out the monestary, and that's really all there was to do up there. But getting to see the Buddah was completely worth it. We also saw a few monks, and I was able to snap a quick photo of Emily standing in front of one. Super cool pic, and yes I will be photoshopping myself into that one.
After this, we hopped on the metro and made our way back to our side of kowloon. With laundry and some other things to be done before leaving for Thailand tomorrow, that was pretty much it for today....or that's what I thought. Turns out, I didn't bring any laundry detergent. And so my first struggle of this trip began. I set out in this insanely crowded city to find the nearest drug store to buy some laundry soap. Simple, right? dead wrong. I literally went to 7 different drug stores, and not a single one sold laundry soap AND not a single employee in any of them spoke english to direct me where to go. I wondered for about 2hours trying to find soap, and damnit I was so frustrated...you know how i get. FINALLY, I foud a hole in the wall pharmacy where one dude spoke a tiny bit of english. Enough to tell me to go into the GIANT mall on argyle street and go to the supermarket. Once I found the mall, I had a new problem. The directory was in cantanese, the mall was 4stories high, and again, no one spoke english. Wondered around for 30more minutes, and finally found an info desk where a nice lady spoke english and pointed me in the right direction. Found the supermarket, which carried no small containers of laundry soap, so i bought a freaking bar of laundry soap (could have just bought a damn bar of soap at the drug store), some ziplock bags, some granola bars, and was finally done with this journey. I found my way back towards our hostel, defintely absolutely for sure stopped at circle K (Yes they have those here) for two tall cans of beer which i felt i had earned, and went back to the Ah-Shan. I guess I was sort of proud of myself for staying relatively calm..I'll take the small victory.
Random thoughts and observations of today and the last few days an hong kong:
-busses and cars here drive insane and insanely close together, and do not stop for pedestrians. NYC on steroids in that respect
-fast food places here, like mcdonals, pizza hut, kfc, burger king, are all incredibly nice and well decorated. they would be the equivalent of a NICE place to eat in the U.S.....pretty weird
-HongKong-ians (I don't actually know what they call themselves), are just like any other race or nationality. Some are nice, mean, happy, sad, tall (ok, maybe not that), short, fat, skinny, ugly, beautiful, etc. I guess this should've been obvious, but it's easy to generalize what an entire race is like when you haven't really been exposed to the culture first-hand. Kind of a cool experience so far in that regard
-Emily likes to sleep alot, I like to sleep a little. We'll see how that ends up
-I'm really glad I brought a silk sack--like a sleeping bag, but just thin silk--to sleep in. Definitely gives me some peace of mind when sleeping in a random hostel bed on the 14th floor of a rundown hong kong building
-glad that i got to hang out with emily's family...it was super cool to get a local experience. hopefully i can get meet up with kstew in bangkok and get the same thing there
-it's really hard to find anything but a really light beer here. all of the asian beers taste like keystone, and all of the american/european beers they sell are light. what i would do for a fat tire, or a 1554, or a new castle, ...etc
Ok, I could list random thoughts for hours, thats enough. Hong Kong, it's been real. Bangkok, see you soon. Here are some pictures:
light asian beer
light show
american sausage breakfast
big buddah
karate kick
hge graveyard
view on way up to big buddah
Today we got off to kind of a late start, and I was finally able to sleep in past 630am (when the sun comes up) due to the fact that the room that we were in last night was a freaking cave. Really, a cave. No windows. 8' x 6'. But, a good night of sleep, so no complaints there. Tonight we moved to a new room with a PRIVATE bathroom, a door on the shower, and I get to sleep in a full-size bed = luxury. Anyways, about the day. It started with a trip to asian fast food which turned into a trip to burger king. At the first place, I can't recall the name, I ordered an American Sausage Breakfast. Sounds decent right? A piece of sausage, some eggs, and some toast, and I can say I tried to eat at an Asian place. WRONG. An American Sausage Breakfast consists of freaking two hot dogs, a paper thin piece of beef, and a huge piece of white toast. You had to be there to believe it; clearly their menu maker has never been to america. I'll post a picture at the end. So, burger king it was, and a sausage crossanwich really hit the spot.
From there we were off to the Big Buddah statue (a big tourist attraction aroud here), which is in tung chung (spelling?) way up in the hills near a monestary and a fishing village. We waited in line for a bit to board the gondola/cable car/disneyland ride/whatever you call it that took us over a bay and up a huge mountain. It was about a 30minute ride and the scenery was incredible. Definitely didn't feel like we were in the most vertical city in the world anymore...there were a few skyscrapers, but mainly just green, lush mountains and sparkling blue ocean. On the ride up we met a guy from Dublin name Andy...sidenote, the name Andy is apparently a very common theme in this trip--one of the main people emily got info from for the trip is named Andy, the German guy that we roomed with two nights ago was Andy, and this guy was Andy. And, there has really only been one other guy we talked to on this trip (the guy from texas i mentioned in the last post), and although i missed his name, he was wearing the same shoes as me and had the same camera...pretty weird coincidences. Anyway, Andy from Dublin--super cool dude, worked as a lawyer in a big bank there...got to talk a little about the financial crisis in Ireland, which is even messier than ours if that's even possible, but he felt like things were looking up. Hmm the way AIB and IRE have been trading suggest otherwise, but gotta love the optimism. Anyways, he stuck with us for the afternoon and it was cool to have him along. The Big Buddah--wow, big buddah is the understatement of the century. It's like 400feet tall, maybe taller. HUGE. I couldn't believe it...you can see it for miles as long as youre at a high enough elevation that the moutains don't block your view. You have to climb about 25 flights of stairs to get up to it, but the views of the surrouding mountains are pretty breathtaking once youre up there. We got some cool photos, checked out the monestary, and that's really all there was to do up there. But getting to see the Buddah was completely worth it. We also saw a few monks, and I was able to snap a quick photo of Emily standing in front of one. Super cool pic, and yes I will be photoshopping myself into that one.
After this, we hopped on the metro and made our way back to our side of kowloon. With laundry and some other things to be done before leaving for Thailand tomorrow, that was pretty much it for today....or that's what I thought. Turns out, I didn't bring any laundry detergent. And so my first struggle of this trip began. I set out in this insanely crowded city to find the nearest drug store to buy some laundry soap. Simple, right? dead wrong. I literally went to 7 different drug stores, and not a single one sold laundry soap AND not a single employee in any of them spoke english to direct me where to go. I wondered for about 2hours trying to find soap, and damnit I was so frustrated...you know how i get. FINALLY, I foud a hole in the wall pharmacy where one dude spoke a tiny bit of english. Enough to tell me to go into the GIANT mall on argyle street and go to the supermarket. Once I found the mall, I had a new problem. The directory was in cantanese, the mall was 4stories high, and again, no one spoke english. Wondered around for 30more minutes, and finally found an info desk where a nice lady spoke english and pointed me in the right direction. Found the supermarket, which carried no small containers of laundry soap, so i bought a freaking bar of laundry soap (could have just bought a damn bar of soap at the drug store), some ziplock bags, some granola bars, and was finally done with this journey. I found my way back towards our hostel, defintely absolutely for sure stopped at circle K (Yes they have those here) for two tall cans of beer which i felt i had earned, and went back to the Ah-Shan. I guess I was sort of proud of myself for staying relatively calm..I'll take the small victory.
Random thoughts and observations of today and the last few days an hong kong:
-busses and cars here drive insane and insanely close together, and do not stop for pedestrians. NYC on steroids in that respect
-fast food places here, like mcdonals, pizza hut, kfc, burger king, are all incredibly nice and well decorated. they would be the equivalent of a NICE place to eat in the U.S.....pretty weird
-HongKong-ians (I don't actually know what they call themselves), are just like any other race or nationality. Some are nice, mean, happy, sad, tall (ok, maybe not that), short, fat, skinny, ugly, beautiful, etc. I guess this should've been obvious, but it's easy to generalize what an entire race is like when you haven't really been exposed to the culture first-hand. Kind of a cool experience so far in that regard
-Emily likes to sleep alot, I like to sleep a little. We'll see how that ends up
-I'm really glad I brought a silk sack--like a sleeping bag, but just thin silk--to sleep in. Definitely gives me some peace of mind when sleeping in a random hostel bed on the 14th floor of a rundown hong kong building
-glad that i got to hang out with emily's family...it was super cool to get a local experience. hopefully i can get meet up with kstew in bangkok and get the same thing there
-it's really hard to find anything but a really light beer here. all of the asian beers taste like keystone, and all of the american/european beers they sell are light. what i would do for a fat tire, or a 1554, or a new castle, ...etc
Ok, I could list random thoughts for hours, thats enough. Hong Kong, it's been real. Bangkok, see you soon. Here are some pictures:
light asian beer
Monday, April 4, 2011
HK cont'd from last post/day 3
...from last post. The view from "The Peak" was really amazing. You could see the entire HK skyline lit up, and it was quiet and breezy...tons of people fighting for the best picture spots (tourists everywhere...it was interesting to hear so many different languages and accents all around). Some pictures below.
After the peak we decided to go out for our first beers in HK (sad, I know) in Lan Kwai Fong, which is pretty much the only area of HK to go out...not many bars anywhere else. Here, there are several streets of bars and clubs, and it was pretty crowded with locals and tourists alike (even on a sunday night). Going on little sleep, alot of jet lag, and no dinner, a couple of beers = drunk. We really just planned on sitting down for a mellow beer or two, but wow, i've never felt so buzzed off of 3 beers. I settled for Tsing Tao, which is a semi-local chinese beer, and it was pretty shitty--think coors light. We had a great time people watching and taking in the hk bar scene, and then found our way back to Ah-Shan and called it a night. Sidenote: we had to move rooms in ah-shan hostel, from the 14th to 8th floor, and wow, what a huge pain in the ass the 8th floor is. To get from the 8th floor to the 14th, which is where the reception area and computers are, you have to go all the way down to the ground floor, which takes about 10min after waiting for the slow elevator (speed is seemingly not a priority in hongkong anywhere), and then go all the way back up the 14th floor. GREAT engineering--could've used some poly help on that one.
Today was our third full day here, and although crappy weather put a bit of a damper on the day, it turned out to be almost as fun as the first two. We got kind of a late start, paid the hostel for the next two nights, and then were off to lunch at Harbour city, the same mall as yesterday. We tried to flag down a cab, and the first cab we got in didn't know what harbour city was. Wtf? It'd be like flagging down a cab downtown SF that didn't know where union square was. The dude had to have been drunk. Anyways, we made it to harbour city via a 2nd cab, and ate some crazy taiwanese dumplings that turned out to be really good. We walked around the mall a bit, and then decided on going to the Stanley Market--a pretty famous touristy market--for the afternoon. Sidenote: Emily thought Stanley was a hotel when her mom said we should check it out, and had been asking around the past few days for the stanley and people kept looking at us like we were idiots from america...turns out, we are. Stanley is a market. Hah, sorry Emily.
We took a ferry to a bus to another bus and were on our way. To get there, we had to take an epic trip on a super narrow road up a moutain overlooking the ocean. I swear we almost drove off the cliff four times, ran over 3 people, and tapped at least 5 cars. We both feared for our lives the entire time. The bus drivers here have zero sense of space, and think that their double decker busses can fit in a mobile home carport. Anyways, we made it, and the market was basically what you'd expect of a touristy market in a foreign country--alot of jewelry, sculptures, scarves, t-shirts, etc...kind of cool, but the drive up was really the coolest part. The bay view was awesome--an island off in the distance, some huge boats, cliffs on one side of the road and really green moutains on the other. We passed by the most giant cemetery I've ever seen with the most elaborate grave stones ever---there must've been 10,000 of them, if not more. We were starving by the end of this trek, and settled for some horrible pizza because there was really nothing else---terrible tourists, i know. It was so bad that emily put tabasco sauce on it...not sure if that made it better or worse, but at least it gave it some taste.
We left the stanley plaza area and made our way back down to the main harbor for the "famous" hong kong light show. The tops of all of the skyscrapers have elaborate lights shooting up into the sky while loud music plays that souds like something you'd hear on an underwater disney ride. But it was still pretty sweet, and the skyline at night is great from every angle. Google hong kong light show, or laser show, and then throw on it's a small world after all, and you'll get a virtual experience. We met a couple from dallas while watching it, chatted for a bit, made fun of asian husbands taking hundreds of pictures of their asian wives posing, took a few pictures of emily posing like the asian wives, and then were off to harbour city mall food court for some quick dinner. I had curry-in-a-hurry, yes that's really the name, thought of amrit, and then we hopped on the bus back to the hostel and called it a day. Still jet-lagged and exhausted, but really enjoying hong kong. Tomorrow is our last full day here before we're off to Thailand. Here's a pic from the peak last night...I'll post more later--they take too damn long on this computer.
After the peak we decided to go out for our first beers in HK (sad, I know) in Lan Kwai Fong, which is pretty much the only area of HK to go out...not many bars anywhere else. Here, there are several streets of bars and clubs, and it was pretty crowded with locals and tourists alike (even on a sunday night). Going on little sleep, alot of jet lag, and no dinner, a couple of beers = drunk. We really just planned on sitting down for a mellow beer or two, but wow, i've never felt so buzzed off of 3 beers. I settled for Tsing Tao, which is a semi-local chinese beer, and it was pretty shitty--think coors light. We had a great time people watching and taking in the hk bar scene, and then found our way back to Ah-Shan and called it a night. Sidenote: we had to move rooms in ah-shan hostel, from the 14th to 8th floor, and wow, what a huge pain in the ass the 8th floor is. To get from the 8th floor to the 14th, which is where the reception area and computers are, you have to go all the way down to the ground floor, which takes about 10min after waiting for the slow elevator (speed is seemingly not a priority in hongkong anywhere), and then go all the way back up the 14th floor. GREAT engineering--could've used some poly help on that one.
Today was our third full day here, and although crappy weather put a bit of a damper on the day, it turned out to be almost as fun as the first two. We got kind of a late start, paid the hostel for the next two nights, and then were off to lunch at Harbour city, the same mall as yesterday. We tried to flag down a cab, and the first cab we got in didn't know what harbour city was. Wtf? It'd be like flagging down a cab downtown SF that didn't know where union square was. The dude had to have been drunk. Anyways, we made it to harbour city via a 2nd cab, and ate some crazy taiwanese dumplings that turned out to be really good. We walked around the mall a bit, and then decided on going to the Stanley Market--a pretty famous touristy market--for the afternoon. Sidenote: Emily thought Stanley was a hotel when her mom said we should check it out, and had been asking around the past few days for the stanley and people kept looking at us like we were idiots from america...turns out, we are. Stanley is a market. Hah, sorry Emily.
We took a ferry to a bus to another bus and were on our way. To get there, we had to take an epic trip on a super narrow road up a moutain overlooking the ocean. I swear we almost drove off the cliff four times, ran over 3 people, and tapped at least 5 cars. We both feared for our lives the entire time. The bus drivers here have zero sense of space, and think that their double decker busses can fit in a mobile home carport. Anyways, we made it, and the market was basically what you'd expect of a touristy market in a foreign country--alot of jewelry, sculptures, scarves, t-shirts, etc...kind of cool, but the drive up was really the coolest part. The bay view was awesome--an island off in the distance, some huge boats, cliffs on one side of the road and really green moutains on the other. We passed by the most giant cemetery I've ever seen with the most elaborate grave stones ever---there must've been 10,000 of them, if not more. We were starving by the end of this trek, and settled for some horrible pizza because there was really nothing else---terrible tourists, i know. It was so bad that emily put tabasco sauce on it...not sure if that made it better or worse, but at least it gave it some taste.
We left the stanley plaza area and made our way back down to the main harbor for the "famous" hong kong light show. The tops of all of the skyscrapers have elaborate lights shooting up into the sky while loud music plays that souds like something you'd hear on an underwater disney ride. But it was still pretty sweet, and the skyline at night is great from every angle. Google hong kong light show, or laser show, and then throw on it's a small world after all, and you'll get a virtual experience. We met a couple from dallas while watching it, chatted for a bit, made fun of asian husbands taking hundreds of pictures of their asian wives posing, took a few pictures of emily posing like the asian wives, and then were off to harbour city mall food court for some quick dinner. I had curry-in-a-hurry, yes that's really the name, thought of amrit, and then we hopped on the bus back to the hostel and called it a day. Still jet-lagged and exhausted, but really enjoying hong kong. Tomorrow is our last full day here before we're off to Thailand. Here's a pic from the peak last night...I'll post more later--they take too damn long on this computer.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
HK Day 3
Today will be my third full day in Hong Kong, and day 2 was just as good as day 1. The weather the past few days has been perfect--mid 70s with pretty mild humidity. Unfortunately, I woke this morning to the person in the room next door hammering a nail or something into the wall (wtf?), and you guessed it, rain. But oh well, I guess a little rain in the spring in HK is too be expected.
Yesterday was a blast. I woke up, did a little prison workout in the 4x4 space that I had, and then got ready for the day. In the morning we walked down Nathan street again--the main drag near where we are staying in Kowloon, and did some window shopping. Usually, I'm not much of a window shopper, but it's actually pretty fun to see some of the weird stuff they sell here and to see the HK version of western fashion. Case in point: One of the main brands we saw was "O Yeah!", and wow, they make some hideous sh*t. This became an ongoing joke the rest of the day, saying o yeah wherever we could fit it in. I'll post some pictures of their sweet apparel lineup later. We walked by the cage court again and there were about 8 guys running full court--Asian street ball at its finest. I really wish I didn't have a bum ankle so I could get out there and be caucasian shaq. There was this crazy traditional chinese pharmacy (probably not crazy to them) that sold a ton of natural remedies--like stuff you eat in big glass jars...I can't really explain it, but google image hong kong pharmacy and you'll get the idea.
After we walked around all morning, we met Emily's family that lives in hongkong for some dim-sum at harbour city mall. Apparently it's the most famous mall in HK, and it was easy to see why. It was 4 stories, over 700 stores, high end restaurants, designer stores, etc...really sick. The dim-sum place we ate at was really good as well. I've only had dim-sum a few times before and have generally found it to be kind of slimy and not something I'd volunteer to eat. This was a completely different story. Bbq pork rolls that were slightly sweet, a ton of shrimp/noodle dishes, fried noodles, spounge cake, jasmine tea, and more--it was great. Her family was really welcoming, her old aunt was hilarious, and it was great to get to talk to and be shown around by locals. They were all dumbfounded by how tall I was (they were about 5' flat), it was pretty funny--I was probably the tallest dude in the 700 store mall. I was talking to her cousin about standard of living here..salary, rent, things like that--it was pretty interesting. She said that the avg salary is only about 140k per year in HKD (it's about 7.8 hkd to 1 usd, you do the math), but the tax rate on that is only 5-15%. Imagine that, a place where you get to keep most of the dough you work hard for!
After lunch they showed us around the mall, which was great, and then we walked around the area surrouding the mall which was insanely CROWDED with tourists, locals, and salesmen alike. You can't walk 5 feet without an indian guy with a thick indian accent coming up trying to sell you something, and if you stop in the flow of sidewalk traffic you will surely be run over. Her fam walked us over to the ferry that crosses the bay---a short but incredibly scenic trip--and then we bussed it over to the base of this mountain that you can go to the top of to get the most incredible and famous view of Hong Kong, known here as "the peak". You're supposed to take a tram up to the top, but there was an insane line (I'd guess 3hours long...we had actually seen the crowd the day before and had no idea why there were 5000 people waiting in line like a new harry potter movie had just been released or something), so we splurged and took a cab for 50HKD. The view from the top was absolutely incredible....
gotta go convert some USD to HKD to pay for the hostel by 11am, i'll post again later with some awesome pictures.
Sorry this post was all over the place, it was pretty rushed. Here's a link to emily's blog for a different take: empowertravel.tumblr.com
GO BUTLER!!!
Yesterday was a blast. I woke up, did a little prison workout in the 4x4 space that I had, and then got ready for the day. In the morning we walked down Nathan street again--the main drag near where we are staying in Kowloon, and did some window shopping. Usually, I'm not much of a window shopper, but it's actually pretty fun to see some of the weird stuff they sell here and to see the HK version of western fashion. Case in point: One of the main brands we saw was "O Yeah!", and wow, they make some hideous sh*t. This became an ongoing joke the rest of the day, saying o yeah wherever we could fit it in. I'll post some pictures of their sweet apparel lineup later. We walked by the cage court again and there were about 8 guys running full court--Asian street ball at its finest. I really wish I didn't have a bum ankle so I could get out there and be caucasian shaq. There was this crazy traditional chinese pharmacy (probably not crazy to them) that sold a ton of natural remedies--like stuff you eat in big glass jars...I can't really explain it, but google image hong kong pharmacy and you'll get the idea.
After we walked around all morning, we met Emily's family that lives in hongkong for some dim-sum at harbour city mall. Apparently it's the most famous mall in HK, and it was easy to see why. It was 4 stories, over 700 stores, high end restaurants, designer stores, etc...really sick. The dim-sum place we ate at was really good as well. I've only had dim-sum a few times before and have generally found it to be kind of slimy and not something I'd volunteer to eat. This was a completely different story. Bbq pork rolls that were slightly sweet, a ton of shrimp/noodle dishes, fried noodles, spounge cake, jasmine tea, and more--it was great. Her family was really welcoming, her old aunt was hilarious, and it was great to get to talk to and be shown around by locals. They were all dumbfounded by how tall I was (they were about 5' flat), it was pretty funny--I was probably the tallest dude in the 700 store mall. I was talking to her cousin about standard of living here..salary, rent, things like that--it was pretty interesting. She said that the avg salary is only about 140k per year in HKD (it's about 7.8 hkd to 1 usd, you do the math), but the tax rate on that is only 5-15%. Imagine that, a place where you get to keep most of the dough you work hard for!
After lunch they showed us around the mall, which was great, and then we walked around the area surrouding the mall which was insanely CROWDED with tourists, locals, and salesmen alike. You can't walk 5 feet without an indian guy with a thick indian accent coming up trying to sell you something, and if you stop in the flow of sidewalk traffic you will surely be run over. Her fam walked us over to the ferry that crosses the bay---a short but incredibly scenic trip--and then we bussed it over to the base of this mountain that you can go to the top of to get the most incredible and famous view of Hong Kong, known here as "the peak". You're supposed to take a tram up to the top, but there was an insane line (I'd guess 3hours long...we had actually seen the crowd the day before and had no idea why there were 5000 people waiting in line like a new harry potter movie had just been released or something), so we splurged and took a cab for 50HKD. The view from the top was absolutely incredible....
gotta go convert some USD to HKD to pay for the hostel by 11am, i'll post again later with some awesome pictures.
Sorry this post was all over the place, it was pretty rushed. Here's a link to emily's blog for a different take: empowertravel.tumblr.com
GO BUTLER!!!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Day 1
We've been in Hong Kong for almost 24 hours now, and wow, this city is effing wild...I don't know exactly how I'd describe it. There's an older more run down part (where our hostel is), and a really sick, new modern part down by the bay and around Hong Kong park that is more of what I imagined it to be like. I guess some of it reminds me of an (eastern) NYC, but that comparison doesn't really do this place justice--definitely a really unique and awesome place.
We got in late last night after a sweet 14 hour flight, where we met some pretty interesting people. We then spent a good two hours trying to find our hostel in the insane crowd of (small asian) people that is hong kong on a friday night (think manhattan, but all asians). The good news was that I'm approximately three feet taller than the next tallest person in this city which proved to be pretty helpful in finding this place...we're on the 14th floor of a shantytown type building, mixed with some run down apartments, hostel rooms, and god knows what else. It's a far cry from the upper middle class lifestyle we're used to, but it's actually pretty damn sweet. The hostel is clean (by the way, it's called the Ah-Shan hostel...um do you mean as-ian?), and the lady that runs the place is awesome--a funny/sort of goofy and hardworking little asian lady probably in her 30's.
Today we spent the day getting used to the city--in the morning we explored the area around our hostel and in the afternoon explored the more modern, and pretty incredible area around Hong Kong park near the bay.
A few quick notes/observations from last night and today:
-Most people here are friendly, polite, and willing to help tourists
-tall white people stick out like a sore thumb, but no one stares
-i saw exactly 1 black person today out of approxmately 1 million people...yes, he stood out even more than i did
-they use bamboo for construction instead of steel and it's really weird/awesome/seems sketchy...the construction workers climb up and down the bamboo effortlessly--pretty amazing really
-they drive on the opposite side of the road...i guess this should have been obvious since this used to be a british colony, but i didn't really think about it until i got here and noticed
-they definitely play basketball...i know this because i saw an urban cage court when we were walking around..way sick.
I'm literally falling asleep writing this (jet lag = real) so that's all for now, and sorry if any or all of this didn't make much sense. I'll have more in the next few days
Here are a couple of pictures:
A view from our Ah-Shan room window last night: Pretty sweet.
Our tiny but tidy room: Night one, no roommate; tonight, one roommate
The courtyard outside of our hostel...not sure this picture does it justice, but it's pretty interesting and maybe slightly sketchy.
This dude was automatic from 15'
bamboo for construction; these guys are brave
We got in late last night after a sweet 14 hour flight, where we met some pretty interesting people. We then spent a good two hours trying to find our hostel in the insane crowd of (small asian) people that is hong kong on a friday night (think manhattan, but all asians). The good news was that I'm approximately three feet taller than the next tallest person in this city which proved to be pretty helpful in finding this place...we're on the 14th floor of a shantytown type building, mixed with some run down apartments, hostel rooms, and god knows what else. It's a far cry from the upper middle class lifestyle we're used to, but it's actually pretty damn sweet. The hostel is clean (by the way, it's called the Ah-Shan hostel...um do you mean as-ian?), and the lady that runs the place is awesome--a funny/sort of goofy and hardworking little asian lady probably in her 30's.
Today we spent the day getting used to the city--in the morning we explored the area around our hostel and in the afternoon explored the more modern, and pretty incredible area around Hong Kong park near the bay.
A few quick notes/observations from last night and today:
-Most people here are friendly, polite, and willing to help tourists
-tall white people stick out like a sore thumb, but no one stares
-i saw exactly 1 black person today out of approxmately 1 million people...yes, he stood out even more than i did
-they use bamboo for construction instead of steel and it's really weird/awesome/seems sketchy...the construction workers climb up and down the bamboo effortlessly--pretty amazing really
-they drive on the opposite side of the road...i guess this should have been obvious since this used to be a british colony, but i didn't really think about it until i got here and noticed
-they definitely play basketball...i know this because i saw an urban cage court when we were walking around..way sick.
I'm literally falling asleep writing this (jet lag = real) so that's all for now, and sorry if any or all of this didn't make much sense. I'll have more in the next few days
Here are a couple of pictures:
A view from our Ah-Shan room window last night: Pretty sweet.
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| Below: skyscrapers/apartments on the hillside from hongkong park |
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