Our First Trip to the City

Yesterday Annie, Heidi, and I made our first real expedition into Hong Kong proper. It was amazing. The trip went something like this..

We left from HKUST on the 91m bus at about 1pm. It was one of those double decker buses like you see in London. The girls thought it would be cool if we sat up top, and I secretly agreed, as looking out bus windows in Asia is one of my favorite pastimes. I can't really be sure, but I think that in HK mostly kids sit on the top levels of buses. At least on this bus, everyone up there was under the age of 16 and wearing a school uniform. There were almost no seats left so I stumbled to the back bench. The ceiling was really low, I am not graceful, and the bus was already moving, so it was awkward. Surrounded by tiny Hongkongese school children, this was one of those moments where I felt like I wasn't really blending in so well.

We arrived shortly at the Po Lam shopping mall which has an MTR station (a green station) beneath it. I was snapping pictures of the apartment buildings that towered above us as we walked up to the mall. There are massive apartment building skyscrapers everywhere in HK. The kind of building that are so tall they make you dizzy if you look up at them. We have zero apartments of that size in Seattle.

We emerged from the MTR at the Wan Chai station. Annie forgot the power chord for her Dell laptop back home in Seattle, so she did some research and found a computer store in HK where she thought she could get a new one. We found the place in a mall on a huge floor of tiny stalls all selling computers and electronics. The tiny stall we walked into was probably only 75 square feet. The walls were lined with computer components and different types of chords. Honestly I thought it would be a futile exercise actually to find the exact right part, but sure enough they had a Dell branded power chord in stock of the exact specifications required. Lesson: Never underestimate Hong Kong's ability to get you the right good, or Annie's ability to do research on the internet.

We decided to hike up to Central from Wan Chai so that we could check out the heart of downtown and locate the building we would have to return to later for our Econ class. (HKUST has most of it's night classes downtown in order to accommodate part-time students' work schedules.) I was completely blown away by the scale of the city. Every building is huge and elaborate in some way. It seems like the HK's architects have been engaged in a pissing match for decades over who can build with the most style. Style is a big thing here. Not in a bad way either, it's just in the DNA of the city.

We found a restaurant in the guide book and sat down to eat. The place was bright yellow with crazy mirrors on the ceiling and flashing lights embedded into the decor. We ate rice with scrambled eggs and shrimp, vegetable curry (with a fried egg on top), and fried rice noodles with beef satay. It was fracking delicious. Not that I was on the fence or anything, but that lunch was what made me know I love HK.

We needed cell phones to use during our time here. We headed back to the MTR (a red station) and took a quick ride over to Mong Kok in Kowloon. When we emerged on the other end it took a few seconds to get over the immediate sensory overload. Ladies with large signs were trying to hand us fliers, there were people everywhere, and colorful advertising and shops filled our fields of vision. We checked several cell phone vendors looking for cheap phones that weren't too crappy. Heidi tried unsuccessfully to bargain. Eventually we got tired and went to Starbucks to get a boost. Once caffeinated we made our way through a row of tents full of really cheap goods.. mostly stuff for women I guess.. belts, jeans, watches, jewelry, etc. Annie bought a wallet and bargained successfully utilizing the old i'm-walking-away-now tactic. I think she saved two bucks on her $8 wallet. Was it Chanel? nvm. We eventually found cell phones and paid the list price. Oh well.

It was getting late and we still had to get to class. We got back onto the MTR (a blue station) to Pacific Place in Admiralty. We felt lucky when we got off the train and realized that the station was actually connected to the building that our class was in. We felt confused when we emerged from the station into that building and found ourselves in another shopping mall. Apparently malls make up the ground floors of lots of building in downtown HK. And not crappy malls either.. We're talking Gucci caliber malls. After taking a series of zigzagging escalators we eventually found our way to the elevator that brought us to our classroom. And what a classroom. If only the UW would treat us so nice. There was coffee, tea, ice water, and Mentos set our for us, and the huge pane glass windows looked out at the Bank of China building which was doing it's crazy nightly light show. I must admit I felt a little important.

Class went on for four hours. The subject was econ in China. It was interesting and the prof was a very funny Shanghainese guy.

After class we got back on the subway, got off at Hang Hau, and caught a mini-bus back to UST.

The pictures that I took (in chronological order) are here.

Hope everyone is having fun on exchange and back home.