Hong Kong in a nutshell

Today, I intended to go to a couple of places I knew had big markets so I could buy the last few presents I need to buy. I got slightly sidetracked by the internet in the morning, but I got out, and found the subway station. (Actually, I should say 'metro' station, as the Chinese have the annoying habit of calling underground passageways 'subway's)

In Hong Kong they have these nifty cards, called Octopus Cards, which you put some money on, and then can use anywhere. It is like a super smart card. They accept them at restaurants, convenience stores, and most importantly, the metro and the buses. The absolutely coolest part about them though is that they work via magic.

All you have to do is wave your card past the reader and it reads it. Not like with a laser scanner or something, because it still works when it is inside a wallet. I've been trying to find out how they work, but I'm not 100% sure. One of them said something about induction on it, which kind of makes sense, but is mindblowing nonetheless.

Anyhow, to use the metro, you wave your card when you enter the metro, and then you wave it again when you leave at a different station, and the card knows how far you've gone. This part is also magic.

I went to the first market, a place called "Sham Shui Po", which I'm pretty sure it impossible to pronounce correctly. They have there a marketplace, but it doesn't sell the right sorts of things. They sell useful things there, like computer components, or clothes. I don't think anyone wants jeans from China. So I left that area, and it was back to the metro.

The next place I visited was "Tsim Sha Tsui", which is even harder to pronounce than Sham Shui Po. This place had real stores, as opposed to the street market in Sham Shui Po. Unfortunately, all the stores (and I do mean all of them) seemed to be selling jewelery or watches. Or both. This is an area dominated by East Indian people, and they seem to have a somewhat different approach than Chinese people to pressure sales.

Chinese people (and this is a huge generalization, I know) tend to have their little spiel that they'll run up to you and say, but they don't really engage you. They just say there thing at you, and hope that you'll be interested. I rather like this approach, since at least it is direct.

The East Indian gentlemen I ran into are much different. They'll come up to you and start talking to you, ask you where you're from, how long you're staying in Hong Kong and so on. Then they'll tell you they've got a super deal for you, they'll make you a suit! For cheap! And it'll be done before you get on the plane tomorrow! Amazing! Then you walk away, because WHY WOULD YOU BUY A SUIT ON HOLIDAYS?

I want to be clear that I don't think all East Indian people are this way, or even that it is a significant aspect of their culture. It's just the East Indian people in this one particular section of Hong Kong who are doing this one particular thing do it in this way.

I eventually found a store that was selling the sort of things I was looking for, and was about to go back to the hotel, when I saw a sign pointing to a tourist-y location called the Avenue of Stars that I'd been wanting to go to since I saw a blurb about it on the train. So I followed the signs through the metro station (which turned out to be HUGE. It's the largest underground structure I have ever seen) and eventually came out and found the last sign, which pointed to...a MALL.

Yes, the only way to access the Avenue of Stars is through a mall. Very clever that. I eventually got there, and it was pretty cool. You know the Walk of Fame in Hollywood? It's basically that, except for Hong Kong actors. Of which there are a lot. I saw Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee's handprints, among others. They also had some signs about the history of Hong Kong cinema, which I thought was fascinating, and I will probably bore people with when I get home.

Also: the view. The Avenue is actually a walkway built over the ocean, and it had one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Also the sun was shining, and it was in the high twenties, temperature-wise. All in all, a beautiful place.

I sat down to enjoy it for a moment, but only a moment, because another man (also East Indian) approached me. He kept calling me brother, and asked me about where I was from, and how long I was staying in Hong Kong (so far, par for the course).

Then, he told me I was very lucky, and asked me to hold out my right hand, which I did. Then he read my palm. Turns out, I have a long life ahead of me, but I have a somewhat scattershot money line, and my loveline dictates that I will be very generous, but no one will appreciate me. So says my palm.

Then he informed me that two women are in love with me, but I am only in love with one of them (which was news to me. If whoever these two women are could please identify themselves, that would be super. I don't want to be surprised by a palm reader again). Then he did a very simple mind reading trick, which I messed up by not choosing "rose" when he asked me to name three flowers. (The way the trick works is this: He writes down the word "rose" on a piece of paper, and then gives it to me. Then he asks me for three flower names, which he writes down. Almost every guy in the world, and most women when asked for three flowers will include 'rose' on the list. Then, he asks me to pick one, and if it's rose, he says, "AHA, I guessed right" when I open the piece of paper he gave me. If it's not, then he says I eliminated it and asks me to pick again, until either I pick rose, or it's the only one left, in which case, he claims he read my mind. I however, didn't write Rose, so he couldn't do the trick. So next time he only let me pick two of the things, and supplied the third himself.)

Then he told me that on January 28, 2008, I would get some good news, but ONLY if I was a generous man, and gave him some money for charity. See, he was raising money for a poor family. He was about to pull the same trick as he tried with the flowers on me to make me pick $500 (Hong Kong Dollars) to give to him, when I told him I didn't have any money (which is sort of true) and abruptly walked away. I was rather annoyed that my relaxing sit in the sun was ruined.

Later, as I was reading a sign, another East Indian man approached me, and told me his name was Mr. Yogi, and the man I had spoken to earlier was his student. So, he would read my fortunes much better. He did much the same spiel as the other guy did, except with a much heavier emphasis on my love life. He promised me that within 14 days, my true love (whose name I told him was Sophie, by the way. I used my made up girlfriend on him) would be back with me (I also told him we had broken up, after dating for two years. If he's going to make stuff up for me, I'm going to make stuff up for him). Then he wrote something down on a piece of paper, and said that if he could predict my reactions accurately, I would give him $500. He didn't accept my no money excuse, and offered to take me to an ATM. I told him to read his own fortune, which was obviously not very lucky, and walked away.

You see, I have learned. If someone is trying to swindle you, it is OK to be rude to them. $500 HKD is about $65 CAD (still less than I paid for that damned tea. I travelled halfway across China for less than the price of that tea). There is no way I am paying someone that much to read my fortune, especially when I didn't ask them to. On the upside, I do enjoy watching someone try to swindle me. I knew what was up right away, as soon as he brought up money, but I kept playing along for a while, just for fun. I do wonder if anyone falls for it though. I mean, who gives someone $65 for a magic trick? If he could snare one sucker an hour, he'd be making as much as a mid-range lawyer.

So: con averted! Until I went shopping again later, that is. I went into an extremely sketchy looking shopping area near my hotel, and found a store that was selling DVDs. I was pretty sure that something was up, but it was cheap enough to waste the cash finding out. What you do is write down the numbers of the DVDs you want, pay them, and they give you a number. Then, you wait for 20 minutes, come back and they have your DVDs. If I was thinking clearly, it would have been obvious what the scam was, but I was still surprised when I came back 20 minutes later and their store was GONE. As in, all of their DVD cases and everything just disappeared like they were never there.

I honestly don't understand how that can work for them. I mean, they managed to swindle me out of $5 CAD, but that's not really very much, and they can't very well do that every day or people are going to get angry at them. And they certainly can't do it to everyone, since they could only be open 20 minutes at a time.

However, while I was wandering the 'mall' I was in, looking for some trace of them (I do like to believe the best in people, even after they've taken my money), some other nice young boys showed me the store they were just opening (at 4 pm) which was full of porn. He informed me I would like it very much, and when I told him it wasn't quite what I was looking for (although maybe some people would like Chinese porn as a present), he told me that it actually was. I just left.

All in all, I feel like I went out and experienced Hong Kong (and was the target of a scam not once, not twice, but three times, not including the people who offered to sell me Rolex watches, or the "Opal Exhibition" that is actually a store that they trap you inside of. They have locking gates and everything). A good last day, if ever I saw one.

The south of China has some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. The city of Hong Kong is situated on around a glimmering harbour, with tree covered hills surrounding it, with rivers and lakes not too far off. It is gorgeous. However, I vastly prefer the culture of northern China. I liked the atmosphere, I liked the history, and I much preferred the way people sold things. Although I still like price tags over bargaining. Unless I'm feeling cranky. Then I could bargain up a storm.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about coming home. On the one hand, I'm very excited to see everyone back in PG, and also about being somewhere where everyone speaks proper English (it seems like some sort of impossible paradise that can't ever really exist). I'm also happy to leave a place where I'm constantly unsure. I never know what the proper custom to follow is, or what people actually mean.

On the other hand, I think China has probably been the greatest adventure of my life. I had almost constant excitement. Any time I wanted something interesting, all I had to do was walk out my front door and pick a direction. In addition to that, I feel like I've been completely changed, intellectually. This is not to say that I suddenly think that everything I believed before was wrong. No, quite the opposite. Being faced with a country so different from what I'm used to really laid bare what my basic beliefs really are. And, seeing how things are here, where many many of my core values are violated, made me fairly certain that I'm happy with them.

This is not to say I suddenly think I'm right about everything. This is just my core value system being validated to myself. Pretty important process.

OK, now I have to try and fit all the crap I've got into the bags that I have. I have one carry-on sized bag and three checked-luggage sized bag, and somehow I have to reduce that to two checked-luggage sized bags. I wish I had played more tetris!

This here is the second to last blog post ever for this blog (barring some sort of disaster). I'm going to do one big summing up when I get home, which promises to be epic. Other than that, I'll see most of you in a few days!

(No pictures today, as I forgot to bring my camera. Give me a break, it's the last day. My mind's not on tourism anymore)