There's Emerald City. Oh, we're
almost there, at last, at last. - Dorothy GaleThere's Emerald City. Oh, we're
almost there, at last, at last. - Dorothy Gale
The Hong Kong airport is snuggled into the middle of a huge
grouping of high-rise office buildings. This means that the plane
must make a 45° turn 500 feet off of the ground. Wow! A
bit scary. Whilst waiting to clear customs with Kelvin, I notice
the only other caucasian there; a Rubinesque young lady with the
most engaging eyes I have seen anywhere. She strikes up a
conversation with me in a heavy Welsh accent. So far, so good.
She had just spent 9 months in Japan on an internship for
nursing. She had chosen it because it was the place most
different from the UK that she had to choose from. Kelvin takes a
hint and vanishes. The young lady is staying not too far from me,
at the YWMCA, so we share a cab, and make plans to visit Macau
together the next day. Cool. Not in Hong Kong even an hour, and I
already have a date!
I check into my hotel. What a view! It's horribly expensive and
impersonal. I had wanted to stay in one of the many infestations
of Chung King Mansions, but as I had my computer with me, and
staying in Chung King Mansions would have most definitely have
made it disappear, I was stuck here.
I depart the hotel for a walk about town. It's quite late, so
most of the shops in Tsim sha Tsui (my neighborhood) are closed,
but the streets are packed!. The 7-11 over the road from
my hotel (BP-International
House) had this condoms for sale - Mambo was the brand name;
the price tag obscured the description, but it looked like they
said "The Bigger Condom" (It turns out the said
"The Snugger Condom"), so I bought some for
Torre; I figured he'd get a kick out of them.
The next morning, I call over to the YWMCA looking for my date,
but she's not in her room. I decide to check out Hong Kong for
the day, and try her later in the evening, to see if she still
wishes to go to Macau.
Hong Kong is one giant flea market, filled with bad food, cheap
clothing, and not-so-cheap electronics. I do find the Aussie bar
that everyone had raved about; it was boring. I head back to the
air conditioned hotel at about 19:00 and give the YWMCA another
call.
Great! She's in! We agree to meet for dinner. We go to Mad Dogs,
drink a few, and it's easy to see that she's not really
interested. She has a thing for Japanese men apparently, and I'm
not Japanese. She still want's to go to Macau though, and I
figure, what the heck! It will probably be more interesting to
share it with someone, so we make plans to get together in the
morning, and catch the ferry.
Morning calls. So I call the YWMCA. She's not in again. She
knows to expect me at 08:00, so I head on down there. She's still
not back in her room by 09:00, so I leave her a note and head off
to the ferry terminal alone. The ferry ride across Hong Kong Harbour is a trip in itself,
but it doesn't take very long.
I arrive in Macau, and ignore all of the hawkers trying to sell
me a bicycle powered rickshaw ride into the centre of town. I
choose to walk instead. It's quite a hike, especially in the hot
sun, past all of the casinos lining both sides of the road. I
eventually make my way down the narrow alleyways,
into the centre of old colonial Macau.
Macau is, and has been for the last 500 years, a Portuguese
colony. It won't be turned over to the Chinese in 1997 like Hong
Kong, instead the Portuguese will last a full 500 years to the
day, and turn it over sometime after the turn of the millennium.
The city certainly shows it's Portuguese influence. The
architecture is reminiscent of old world Europe, and there are
chinese nuns running about everywhere. It's pouring rain, but,
I'm having fun anyways.
After several hours in the pouring rain, I decide it's time to
head back to Hong Kong. I'm wet, bored, and miserable, and
besides I've spent almost all of my money. I decide I have enough
to hire this old guy to peddle me back to the ferry, so I do so,
and it's excruciatingly slow, but interesting none the less.
When I arrive in the terminal, it's packed to the gills. No ferry
space available. No hydrofoil space either. No Hovercraft space.
No Helicopter space. No Flights of any kind. No rowboats either.
Can't even swim. I'm fucked. I'm stuck in Macau, in the rain,
with no money until tomorrow. Shit. I eventually find out that
"Tomorrow" means 01:30, so that's not so bad, but it is
only 16:00. I decide that I shall try out one of the many
casinos; at least they probably take credit cards. They won't let
me in. I have shorts on, and they have a dress code. Instead, I
catch a bus out to the old Macau gate; the entrance to China.
Bored again, I decide to try and go stand by on the ferry.
I meet this guy from Birmingham in the stand by queue for the
ferry. He's in the same boat as I am (literally and figuratively)
with respect to getting back to Hong Kong. He's in Macau because
his wife is Chinese, and needs to leave Hong Kong once a week
because of the type of visa she has. He tells me that they met
when he was a mining engineer in central China. They have a
little girl. He procedes to tell me that the Chinese cut out his
wive's womb minutes after the birth. This is part of their Zero
Population Growth policy. They did this even knowing that she was
leaving the country. Brutal. We have quite a good time in the
queue; we took turns buying duty free wine and consuming copious
amounts of it. The stand by system is a joke. There are separate
lines for each departure (about 20 minutes apart) and you loose
your place if you don't make it on, and there is a mad rush for
the next queue for the next departure. After twice barely missing
a boat, we decide to wait in the queue for the boat after
the next one, so as to get a jump on it's line. By midnight, we
luck out and get a ferry back to The Emerald City.
After arriving very late into Tsim sha Tsui, I crash and have
crazed dreams of being hunted in the Inquisition by mad Chinese
monks and being beaten by them with ferry tickets.
My last day in Hong Kong. I decide to try and sneak across the
border into China; I may never get a chance to see it, so I hop
on a train through the New Territories to the border town of Shen
Zen.
I do not have a Chinese visa. I didn't get one before I left
home, because they can take weeks to obtain, so I deliberately
waited in the wrong line at the border crossing. No dice; I'm a
foreign devil; I have to go upstairs. Ok, I go upstairs, and wait
in line there. The Peoples Immigration agent does not speak
English. Good. We act confused for a long while, and he won't let
me in because I don't have a visa; however he closes the line,
and takes me into a back room, where I "buy" a visa for
$5.00US, and exit the building into a back alley. I'm in China!
I look up at the skyline, and it
certainly does not look like I had expected. Tall buildings,
fancy cars, commerce running full tilt. No mud huts, no endless
fields of rice being tended by women in san pan hats behind water
buffalo. Ok, let's walk around a bit. I'm hungry, so I go looking
for a food stall of some sort. I find one, point out what I want,
and eat. I don't have any Yaun to pay the bill, so I proffer a
$1.00HK note (30¢US). The proprietor smiles profusely, and hands
me a wad of Renmimbi in change. I have no idea how much
change I got, or really care, but there were about 25 crumpled,
dirty bank notes that he handed me. Renmimbi is not convertible,
but it sure felt like I had a lot.
I continue wandering around. On almost every street corner, some
nicely dressed woman is standing with pamphlets. They always
approach me, and try and get me to take one, then follow them
somewhere. I took the first one, but couldn't read it; It was in
Chinese (of course).
Later in the day, I come across one of these women who actually
speaks English. She explains exactly what this was all about.
These women are prostitutes. The pamphlets are price lists for
sex acts. OK, strange, but each to their own. She then proceeds
to tell me that the state chooses each of these women in
adolescence for the prestigious job of prostitute. She herself
went to college and was a nurse, until the state decided that
they had too many nurses and not enough hookers. Ok, time for me
to leave.
On the way back to Hong Kong, I smell the distinctive aroma of
barley malt. A brewpub! Hot damn, I take my fist full of Renmimbi
and step inside.
Very upscale. They have complete Kareoke equipments, and
the beer smells wonderful. After talking to the brewmaster for a
while (he say's he's a capitalist now) I ask him about what the
prostitute said earlier. He says that she was probably telling
the truth about herself, and definitely telling the truth about
how they choose most prostitutes from adolescence. Whoa.
Definitely not in Kansas. Time to go home.
We're
not in Kansas any more! (Part I) |
