Hong Kong Blog

Hong Kong had always seemed like a distant dream. Even after all the planning and then the good wishes and final goodbyes from friends and family, I still found it hard to believe that I was actually sitting on a plane flying across the world. While people I knew who had been to Hong Kong had tried to describe their experience(s), I found their explanations akin to describing a rainbow to the blind. It’s a difficult emotion to describe, having absolutely no idea what you’re going into - I didn’t feel nervous or apprehensive, just the expectation of… something.

After a little research Joe and I had chosen to fly with Oasis (largely because they were the cheapest flights available but more because they shared the name of Joe’s favourite band) and they turned out to be fantastic. The food was nice, the chairs were comfy and Aladdin was one of the movie choices… need I say more. As we were to land at 3:15PM local time my plan was to try and avoid sleep, then somehow survive until 10PM and adjust to the time zone immediately. The plan was executed flawlessly until I stepped off the plane and thought I was actually a zombie. I think I probably bashed into about fourteen walls. Adrenaline is a funny thing though – walking through the airport and seeing Chinese writing everywhere finally made the dream a reality for me, and I just couldn’t wait to collect my suitcase and explore the region.

Thankfully City University had arranged for two students (who were actually the other side of the exchange going to the United Kingdom in a couple of months) to meet us at the airport. Raymond and Tyler. Where do I even begin. Without them we could quite easily have wondered into Argentina instead of making it to our student residence. They led us to the bus stop and gave us a running commentary of all the famous sites we were passing while also explaining a bit about the language and culture of Hong Kong. Upon arriving Raymond, our battle leader, somehow negotiated with a rather fierce little angry security lady that we really were part of the University and that we had still to collect our student residents cards. After explaining the situation to yet another lady in the student residence office we received our cards to enter our rooms. I’ll say now and will continue to say in the future that we owe Raymond and Tyler a HUGE amount, and I hope they are taken care of similarly in England.

After getting into our room and being shown perhaps the most important part of Hong Kong – the air conditioning controls – we asked Raymond and Tyler where a good place to have dinner was. They pointed out the window and said “you see the black building over there? They have a couple of restaurants and a supermarket there, head towards that”. And so it was that an hour later Joe and I headed towards the “black building”. The entrance was slightly hotel-like and we exchanged a brief glance wondering whether we were in the right place. As we entered our jaws dropped. It was like we had walked into the tardis as this tiny black building suddenly opened up into an ABSOLUTELY gigantic shopping centre. Humongous. ‘Festival Walk’ is just enormous, it’s like they packed every shop ever in existence into this one building. They have ice rink, a cinema and about two hundred and fifty seven thousand floors worth of shops. After having a bite to eat and returning to our room at a decent 11PM, we went to sleep.

The next morning Joe and I awoke with broken necks and injured spinal cords. While the room has a fantastic view, loads of cupboard space and one of the best (most powerful) showers I’ve ever used, the beds are ridiculously hard. For all intents and purposes, we might as well have slept on the floor. We thus decided that while it was wise to be generally careful of our financial situation, there would be no limit to how much we’d spend on our beds. Led once again by our valiant leader Raymond we visited Mandy at the University to pick up some documentation, and then we journeyed into ShaTin to Ikea, which coincidentally and conveniently was just around the corner from JP Morgan (where Joe is to work). There are two railways in Hong Kong, the MTR and the KCR. This was the KCR. I’ve heard it said that Hong Kong is 10 years ahead of London in terms of public transport and technology. I’d say it’s more like 50 years. Everything here is absolutely perfect… the trains (and all the MTR stations) are air conditioned, bright, clean and efficient. The ‘octopus’ cards are far, far superior to the London equivalent (oyster) in the way they operate and their price. It cost us about 30 English pence to complete our journey and the most I’ve ever spent is 60p. In actuality everything in Hong Kong is far cheaper than in England. Anyhow. After a brief snoop round JP Morgan and then effectively buying out Ikea we spent the evening in festival walk before returning home to sleep like kings.

The next morning I had an appointment with the HSBC Human Resources department at Olympic, where three HSBC towers are located. When they say towers, they do mean towers. They’re massive, absolutely beautiful structures… I felt like a bit of a nobody walking along the marble floors, nodding at the twenty or so security guards I passed. Little was I to know this was to be nothing compared to the following week. Anyway, after dealing with that I met Joe and Raymond and together we journeyed to Sham Shui Po in the hunt for mobile phones and to visit the ‘golden computer centre’. Quoting from wikipedia, the golden computer centre which, “have extensive computer products from peripherals to main components like motherboards, RAM, and CPUs, as well as complete systems. It is generally considered one of the cheapest places in Hong Kong (if not the world) to get (or buy parts to build) a personal computer. The Golden Shopping Centre is also known for the number of video game stores it contains, where many people purchase gaming systems, software and accessories at either a slightly discounted price, or in special in-store packages which might include an extra game or extra accessories.” We were there for quite a while. After meeting up with Tyler in the Dragon centre, he and Raymond took us to another famous Chinese restaurant as they continued to teach us about the culture of Hong Kong. I’ll let Joe concentrate more on the local cuisine in his blogs but the food there was absolutely gorgeous.

The following day in order to avoid border control and almost certainly the death penalty, the boys (Joe, Raymond, Tyler and I) made our way to Macau in order to activate our visas. We opted to take a ‘turbo boat’ instead of an equally cool, but twenty times as expensive helicopter there. It only took about an hour to get there and time seemed to fly by with the help of some ridiculously awful Cantonese television station (from what we’ve witnessed fairly typical of the region). Apparently 70% of all people that enter Macau go there to gamble and indeed Raymond – our ever insightful guide - told us that the two largest buildings there are casinos. I’d like to tell you a dramatic story about how we almost bet our room and several members of our family in a game of black jack, but in actual fact we didn’t go near the casinos. We visited the parliament, a fortress and a shop that was famous for its egg tarts. After successfully having our visas approved we were then caught in a race against time to reach Festival Walk before 10PM so that Joe could buy his phone. I won’t lie to you, I thought I was on 24. We raced from station to station, desperately trying to race against the ticking clock. Luckily we had our own Jack Bauer with us - the man, the legend… Raymond. With him, that we’d make it should have even been a certainty.

On Saturday we headed back to back to Sham Shui Po to buy my mobile phone and sim cards for us both. Somehow we managed to secure a deal that costs something like 2p per minute when we call home. Modern technology eh! In the evening Joe and I went to the cinema to see Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Unfortunately we booked fairly late in the day so the majority of the cinema was booked up so we ended up sitting fairly close to the front. Unfortunately the screen turned out to be gigantic and we decided that probably the best way to watch this film was if Joe commentated on the right hand side of the screen while I took the left. Unlike the previous movie adaptations I really enjoyed this one, I thought the acting improved as did the script writing, however undoubtedly the ultra enthusiastic Hong Kong audience also helped; whenever there was a joke everyone almost died laughing. I can’t wait to see a comedy here.
On the final day of our freedom before a year of work we met with Stephanie, our official ‘buddy’ from the City University of Hong Kong. She treated us to a traditional Chinese lunch before taking us to see Victoria Harbor and ‘the peak’, the highest point on Hong Kong Island from which it is possible to see most of the region. The view was spectacular. I really love Hong Kong- the hustle and bustle in the streets is so atmospheric compared to London never mind Canterbury. The people here are friendly and the streets are clean. It’s exceeded my expectations in almost every regard. I promise pictures will be uploaded soon.

And so finally at the end of a long week, we returned to our room, prepared our suits and set our alarms in preparation for our first week of…. gulp…. work.

Coming soon…

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 2:16 am and is filed under Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.