It's not the beginning, but a good place to start would be here: on top of Victoria peak, looking out over the glittering landscape, overwhelmed with accomplishment. I stood there on top of Hong Kong in more ways than one. With no regrets, I came off that mountain and back to Seoul.
That was, of course, the high point. I was seriously questioning my logic the night before I departed Korea. There's something just plain ominous about buying a ticket to China in my mind. It's not something to be taken lightly. I was equal hours from confirming the purchase and boarding the flight, breaking down as I imagined my bags packing themselves. The situation was going to get worse before it got better. My developing head cold was in full swing by morning, and I forgot to shave (which I've made a point of doing before every flight since 9/11...). I took a cab straight out of work 15 minutes before I was allowed to leave, because I wouldn't make the flight otherwise. There I was, having scurried from one end of the city to the other, in an airport, with a Muslim appearance and symptoms of swine flu. As you can imagine, by the time I got onto the Airport Express into the city proper, I...well, you don't have to imagine.
My hostel was in an overwhelming area after all that. I rode the cab (British style backwards) to the heart of the madness, where I was accosted by groups of people attracted to my baggage and trying to get me to stay with their hostel or hotel. If buildings were humans, this one would have been a zombie. The room was beyond minuscule. I've seen more spacious janitorial closets.
When I eventually went to the history museum, I learned the bizarre geological history of the area. It was once a swamp, when sea levels rose and it became ocean. As land changed it was just a lake, until it was a bunch of volcanoes for some 200,000 years. Then it was a desert, then a bunch of mountains. During the ice age it was actually glacier, and when everything melted it became the bunch of islands it is today. But for my duration there, it was 100% a jungle. The first morning I shook myself out of slumber and snot and drug myself into the oppressive heat. More oppressive than anything I've ever imagined. Hong Kong is as far south as Hanoi, and parts of it look like what I imagine Hawaii would look like, particularly when I left the city proper.
On a few occasions I took bus around to the south side of Hong Kong island to a pair of small towns known as Repulse and Stanley. As opposed to the city itself, which faces north into mainland China, the south end of the island opens up straight into the South China Sea. There were some beautiful beaches and plenty of ritzy places to live. It was here I really experienced some of the wacky weather of the island. It would go from sunny to ten minutes of downpour completely unannounced. Then it would clear up and be lovely for an unpredictable amount of time, when rain would again materialize for ten minutes.
I didn't mind the unexpected rain. It gave me an excuse to duck into buildings, especially restaurants. I surprisingly only ate Chinese food less than half of my meals. There was a wide variety of noodles+ (from beef and veggies to more questionable supplements) and there was Cantonese barbecue. I had pork, duck, and goose. The birds were a bit disturbing, but the pork was excellent. The reason I ate such little Chinese food was that the options were so abundant! I was in a former British colony, and the global feeling of the city was present in every aspect of my stay (I spent 30% of my culture shock on the Britishisms everywhere). I was so not the only foreigner. Never was I stared at (unless I was coughing) since there were Indians and Africans and all sorts of Europeans everywhere. This of course meant that there was excellent foreign food in Hong Kong. I mean excellent. I ate Indian food half of the time. The absolute best of my life. It didn't even survive long enough to be photographed. I had top notch sushi, great fish and chips with an actually good Guinness, and just about popped in for a real steak.
When I wasn't eating or window-shopping, I was walking. Due to my worthless Korean bank telling me there was no way to access my account from one of Seoul's only nearby major cities (3rd world banking quality imo), money was much tighter than I first expected. I accepted the challenge optimistically and cut back on paid transportation. I took the ferry (it cost about a quarter) and hoofed it most everywhere else. In this way I got lost several times (the most frightening time in some sort of steel working part of town on the mainland peninsula of Kowloon) but always managed to right myself more reliably than I thought I was capable of. I also managed to walk/bus myself to some very peaceful temples and such. In the end I was glad both for the enforced budget as well as for forgetting my iPod in the rush out of work on Tuesday night. I was forced to experience a greatly different group of sights as well as sounds.
Hong Kong had it's quirky times as well. Take, for example, the fact that on literally every busy street corner three Indian men offered me a tailor. I was in a t-shirt and cargo shorts. Did I look so bad that everyone in the city wanted to make me a suit? Were I there much longer I would have been approaching Indian men myself and preemptively offering them tailoring services just to throw them off. "Excuse me sir, can I interest you in a tailor? Prices very cheap! Very good quality! Please just come and see my location, perhaps you will change your mind!"
As far as just the flat out crazy times, I think the hostel getting raided by the police took the cake. I came back at the end of the day to find our humble tenements surrounded by cops. They let me in without a second glance, but then I couldn't get out without presenting papers. I was disallowed from using the stairs, and my papers were again checked when the cops came around banging on doors in the hostel. The word was that twice a year it's legal for the police to just blow through and check every foreigner they can until they find illegal ones. I witnessed the biannual panforeign screenings!
In the end it wasn't what I had expected (though I had only really left myself about 12 hours to build said expectations in the first place), but it was an adventure. I was mostly in such an international place that English was always readily understood, so I didn't really get that lost-without-a-sole-who-can-understand-me experience that I had wanted, but I think this was a good toe in the water. The trip did garner me an overall feeling that my job thus far has been worth it, as I had hoped that finally reaping the benefits of my labor would. With more to come, I turn my mind now towards surviving more Avalon until I can take my 9 day trip to who-knows-where at the end of November.
