A Whole New World

I arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday night and even though I’ve only been here 2 days, I am absolutely in love with this city. It’s objectively awesome. I may not have taken a magic carpet 

ride here, but there are definitely new horizons to pursue and a hundred thousand things to see. It’s like an amalgam of London, New York and Miami, but with lots of Chinese people and mountains. There’s so much to do and see and buy, but sadly, my sole purpose for coming here was to get my visa so I can enter mainland China. I am very happy to say that I have successfully accomplished my objective and I have done a bit of sightseeing as well. Yesterday I dropped my documents and passport off at a travel agency (a very helpful Swiss woman I met on my flight over here gave me the name, number and address of a travel agency) and they took care of everything. 24 hours later, I am in possession of a visa to China.

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions (SAR) in China, the other is Macau. An SAR is a highly autonomous region with its own political system, code of law and economy. But they are still part of China. It’s part of Deng Xiaoping’s “one country, two systems” principle. Basically it means that if you’re American, you don’t need a visa to stay here for up to 90 days and you can still use Facebook and Youtube. It also means Hong Kong has its own currency, the Hong Kong Dollar, which I really like because the paper money is really colorful.

Hong Kong is made up of a bunch of islands that are all quite different. I’m staying at a hostel on Kowloon in a very “Chinese” part of the island, as in there’s no English on the menus at most places. Yesterday, I walked to the ferry pier to go to Hong Kong Island and my surroundings got more and more “Western” with every step I took. After I took the ferry over to Hong Kong Island, I just wandered around for a bit. There are lots of parks and gardens spread out all over the city, sort of like London. I also took a tram up to the top of a mountain (it’s one of the “must see” things in Hong Kong) to get a nice aerial view of the city. There were a bunch of restaurants and shops at the top and obviously the view was pretty spectacular. There were also a bunch of nature trails, so I took one that went around the mountain. I didn’t go all the way around, but I walked for a good two hours, listening to my iPod and doing my best to sing with all the voices of the mountain.  I think I walked about 15 miles yesterday, which is probably a conservative estimation. I was very entranced by the city so I didn’t feel like taking the subway. I took a lot of pictures, which as most of you know is very unlike me.

  

I’ve had a very relaxing day today. I slept late and then walked to the Jade Market to just have a look around…haha, I learned very fast that you do NOT go to the Jade Market and just look 

around. You WILL buy something, the vendors make sure of that. Once they catch you looking at something, they won’t give up until you buy it. Afterwards I got some lunch and then picked up my passport from the travel agency. I am currently sitting at a Starbucks in a giant mall, enjoying an Iced Chai and the Christmas music. This is my third Starbucks trip in the past 2 days, each time at a different Starbucks and each time as legendary as I imagined.

I’m really enjoying the fact that I blend in really well here. It’s really nice to not be an obvious tourist; people treat you very differently. An unfortunate side-effect of that is people assume I speak Chinese and they just ramble away and I have to wait until they are finished talking and inform them that I did not understand a word they just said. Even the stewardess on the flight over here assumed I was from here so she didn’t give me an arrival card. I had to wait in line at passport control, get a card and then get back in line as I filled it out. A really good side-effect will be that the starting prices I get at markets will be much lower than those given to people who are obviously Westerners.

Tomorrow I leave for Xi’an. The anglicized pronunciation is “Shee-ann,” in case you were wondering. It was the capital of a bunch of important dynasties (you can Wikipedia it if you really want to know which ones) and is still one of the cultural centers of China. It is also where the Terracotta Warriors are. So there will be a lot to do and see there as well. I also start teaching really soon, the 26^th I think, which I’m really excited about. It will be nice to have some kind of consistency week to week; my schedule the past 5 weeks has been pretty erratic.

Thanks for all the comments, I love reading them and I hope everyone is having a great Holiday Season!!!