Hear Ye! Since 1998.

Summer Holidays 2002/03

Holiday in Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.
17
Dec 02
Tue

I’m Off

Ok I managed to snag a terminal at Gate 32, the flight leaves in half an hour. Thank you, that is all. :)

20
Dec 02
Fri

Of Food and Massages

Nearing the end of our so-called “eating trip” in Hat Yai. It’s a small city, or large town, near the Malaysian-Thai border. We arrived here late Thursday afternoon. Although we are not here on a tour, we had hired a tour bus to drive us to our hotel. The tour guide gave us the usual spiel about the city, including a mention about the “agua show” and the “sexy show”. He took great pains to emphasise that the “agua show” (a transexual cabaret) was a family show, whereas the “sexy show” was… well, not. After a large scare involving my grandmother losing her passport (she was extremely lucky as it was eventually recovered intact, being lost on the bus which took us to the hotel), we headed straight for food. Dinner was on a hillside restaurant overlooking Hat Yai. The view was quite nice, although in the daytime, the city transforms into a grey slagheap like most other Asian cities. A$13 bought us a two hour massage (including tips) which we had in our hotel room. My goodness, a one hour remedial massage back in Oz costs $50. I was sharing a room with my American half uncle. The earliest we could have booked our massage was 11pm, so we were half asleep by the time they came up. It seems that because of Hat Yai’s proximity to Malaysia, that the Thai here know how to speak Hokkien, along with most members of my family. I, of course, do not. So my uncle is busy making banter with the masseurs (masseuses?) while she’s walking up and down his back, and I’m there clueless, trying to figure out if my masseur is trying to tell me to sit up or turn around. Turns out that my uncle’s masseur was having trouble with his somewhat larger frame, and was calling him a fat ass (in that many words). Nonetheless, very refreshing, no problems getting to sleep that night!

Today we went out to the markets where mum went crazy and bought out half a store – over 10kgs of preserved junk (nutmeg, dried mangoes, cuttlefish, etc.). In the afternoon we went for a reflexology session (foot massage). Again, very refreshing, although the guy did get a bit over zealous and as a result I now have a bruised left calf. Then I got a surprisingly decent A$4 haircut despite the barber not knowing a word of English (he just started cutting, no questions asked). The food here has been wonderful: fresh, sweet coconuts and mangoes, suckling pigs, pigs trotters, crabs and so on. Beautiful. (Kev & Em – I’m back on a one day cycle!) We leave tomorrow morning for Singapore, and leave the following day for Hong Kong. I think I have time to slip in a midnight viewing of The Two Towers on Saturday/Sunday in Singapore.

I swear, Australia needs 24 hour eateries. We arrived in Singapore on Wednesday at 11pm. The plane was 90 minutes late because Qantas misplaced someone’s luggage. After dumping our bags with relo’s, went off for a second supper (first one was on the plane) at 1am. Love it. This place is about to close, so I’ll be off now.

23
Dec 02
Mon

HK

Woke up with a whole lot of gunk in my throat this morning, but I think I’ve just about acclimatised to the pollution in the air. Spent the day tramping around with Gerald and Edmond looking for a 33.5kg Denon home cinema amplifier, which is roughly 50% cheaper than in Sydney. We found a good price for it, but I have no idea how he’s going to bring it back into Sydney. This evening, met up with Christine (from three years ago), and two other of Gerald’s net friends, Ron (a chemicals trader) and Ada (interpreter). Interesting mix of quite different people, but my lack of ability to speak Cantonese is proving a liability with regards to communication heh. Tomorrow we’re going to a Christmas Eve party. Daytrip into Guangzhou is scheduled for next Monday – apparently to visit my grandmother’s ancestral village which has records of her bloodline stretching back a millennium or two. Trying to meet up with Lill on Friday. Kit arrives tomorrow, Jamie on Friday. Other than that, nothing to really write about. Just the SES cycle (sleeping, eating, shopping).

24
Dec 02
Tue
26
Dec 02
Thu

The 24th: A house? Like, a real house?

Gerald and I spent the first part of the day shopping, with two things in mind. The first was a digital camera (more on that in a later post), and the second was for random KK gifts. One for the night’s dinner, and another for the party following. The only restriction was that it had to be to the value of HK$100 per gift (AUD/HKD = 4.3). So after some aimless wandering, we settled upon a more or less matching set of gifts: for the dinner, a box of Lindt chocolates and an electric toothbrush. For the party, a bottle of Aussie wine and $100 worth of assorted condoms. They said be creative for the party gifts, so we were.

Following that, we took the MTR to HK island, down to Causeway Bay, which was absolutely packed full of human traffic, with the intention of meeting Kay and Bev. Kay was running late, and we were to meet Bev at the Clinique stand in Sogo. A fairly bad choice for a rendezvous point, seeing that the Clinique stand was at one of Sogo’s entrances which was constantly flooded with an unending stream of people. And also due to the fact that we hadn’t met Bev before, so had no idea who we were looking for. Anyway, Kay turned up and we discovered that Bev had actually wandered off to the Body Shop. We spent the next few hours shopping with Kay and Bev for their KK gifts, and also for wrapping paper for our condom “custom fun pack”. Mostly uneventful, except for the incident with some stuffed toys in a department store – Snoopy’s compromising position on the shelf and Mickey and Minnie’s questionable choice of undergarments. Hmm, yes.

Dinner was at a Western-style cafe at Wan Chai with Bev’s family and friends. Mediocre food. Turns out that when Honkies try to cook Western food, they are still influenced by Asian tastes. For example, the beef steaks were given a large dose of meat tenderiser (sodium bicarb), which is fine for normal Asian dishes where beef is sliced fine. However, for a large hunk of steak, it is decidedly strange. During the round of KK present swapping, we were extra careful not to mix the condoms and wine with the chocolates and toothbrush. I got a business card holder, Gerald got some Neutrogena shampoo. Right.

Dinner finished at about 11 and we went up to Kay’s office to drop off some bags. Kay works in PwC (GTS) Hong Kong, having transfered from the Sydney office a few years ago. Her office is in the Cheung Kong Center, also the office of Hong Kong’s richest man (the building is also owned by him). The view from there is quite impressive, one aspect showing the harbour to the North, and another aspect showing Mid-levels, basically the equivalent of Sydney’s North Shore, imposingly dotted with expensive high rise apartments climbing up the hillside. We also stopped for a quick toilet break in the schmick-ish executive Women’s toilet (it seems they have a separate toilet for execs). The toilets require security card entry and naturally Kay only has access to the Women’s ones, but this wasn’t a problem as the office was naturally deserted at 11pm on Christmas Eve.

(BTW, Bev is one of Kay’s friends, living in Hurstville, working as a market analyst in a Sydney firm on holidays in HK like us.) Waiting for a bus that never turned up, we instead took a taxi to the party, stopping on the way to pick up Carol, a UK-born Honkie working in audit also at PwC HK.

The party was at a house at Jardine’s Lookout. That middle word is a strange one on Hong Kong Island: house. In a place where space is at a premium, and where apartments abound, and an area such as Mid-levels, owning a house says something about affluence. So, naturally we were all quite curious to see this residence. It turns out that the place wasn’t quite a house, but a townhouse. Not that that didn’t mean a 7 or 8 figure price tag. Our host owned a few of them and joined them together. Nonetheless, going by Sydney standards, the place was decently sized. Although HK has higher wages and an extremely low tax rate (15%), this is balanced by significant living costs, especially for housing. For the same price in Oz, you could get a mansion in the ‘burbs, although we have a 48% tax rate to contend with.

The party was bustling when we arrived. It composed mostly of work people in their mid to late 20s, so not really my age group heh. The party was surprisingly tame (by Aussie standards, anyway). Lots of bottles of wine, but not a single drop of beer or spirits to be seen. And no one pissed. Unfortunately, everyone was jabbering in Cantonese (although a large number of people seemed to be overseas educated and therefore English-speaking) so we didn’t mingle much. The KK gifts were randomly distributed a few hours later, and we eagerly awaited to see who would receive our bundle of fun. It went a little something like this:

Generating an idea for a KK gift: Free
A few boxes of assorted condoms: $95
Gift wrap for the boxes: Free
The expression on the face of a rather innocent looking Honkie woman (and those around her) opening “gift number 42”: Priceless

I was a bit surprised that no one had had a similar idea, but as I said, it was a tame party. Turns out Kay knew the unlucky/lucky recipient of our gift, and she was married, so at least we knew our gift would be used in one way or another hehe. We eventually returned to the hotel later that night.

Post about what we did on the 25th coming later.



The 25th: Christmas Day

Kicked off the morning by meeting Edmond in a dodgy Mong Kok alley at 10. After getting him to translate for us a bunch of yellow doorway signs and posters adorned with attractive women and prices ($350 for all day “service”!), we went for breakfast. The unusually hot chilli we added to the won ton meen was just a bit too fiery for that hour of the day, and my stomach went a bit queasy for the rest of the day. Luckily it didn’t develop into something more inconvenient.

Next on the agenda, we walked to Olympia City to catch a 11.40am screening of Hero, joined by Kay (who was late again). The movie is in Mandarin, but has English subtitles. Hero’s a very cool movie, better than that other well known flick, Crouching Tiger. If it has made it out elsewhere, do go and watch it. The special effects are Hollywood-class, the actors are big name (Zhang Zi Yi has no functional purpose in the movie, but makes for good eye candy), the cinematography exceptional, and the plot is decent. The movie centers around assassins and the unification of China into the Qin dynasty in 221bc, a popular theme for Chinese movies like this one. Perceptions about the unification of China in Hero and The Emperor and The Assassin are interesting. On one hand, there is the view of the Qin kingdom mercilessly conquering the six kingdoms, ruled by a manical tyrant emperor. However, curiously the view that seems to emerge more strongly in movies is one of appreciation for the acts of this tyrant – the formation of the unified “Great Motherland” of China which would otherwise have not arisen. If not appreciation, then at least a Machiavellian understanding of Qin’s motives. I wonder how many Chinese share this view. From my airchair view of world politics, it is perhaps this view that goes some of the way to explaining China’s persistence in regaining Taiwan. Even present day nations dream of gaining or regaining glory (such as Mussolini’s vision of rebuilding a Roman empire), and China is no different. It’s just that today’s borders are more or less policed by the US.

It’s surprising how many shops open on Christmas Day. It actually feels just like any other day. I reckon Aussies are bludgers and Asians work too hard :). We had a good lunch at one of those festy roadside places. This was followed by some steamed milk. Although we were full at this stage, we chased it up with a taro pearl milk tea at this really busy stall which makes like $5 every 10 seconds. We also came across this large sign, when translated, advertising “First Love Internet Cafe”. Turns out that it was probably a net cafe with, hmm… “added services”. Let’s just say, you can surf the web and get some tech support for your joystick at the same time. An illegal practice in HK, but nonetheless a sound business idea.

Three full days of walking takes its toll, and we tramped into a reflexology centre for a relaxing foot massage. With our feet revitalised, we took a break at the hotel, before heading back out to do more shopping. We ended up at Pacific Place, where Edmond left to meet with other friends. We had dinner in the area, and went to a really nice asian desert house called The Sweet Dynasty. That really hit the spot.

Kay left for home, and Gerald and I decided to resume his mission for this trip – to find a piece of memorabilia authentically signed by Andy Lau (for a friend). We had exhausted the knowledge of all the Hong Kong locals that we had gone out with over the last couple days. (Carol – see previous post -claimed to know someone who knew Andy Lau to an extent that an autograph was obtainable, but this avenue would take more time than we had in HK.) Thus, we turned to the next available resource: Hotel concierges. They are meant to know everything, aren’t they? The one at our hotel was fairly uninformative, so we decided to test out the reputation of two of Hong Kong’s best. Arriving at The Peninsula, Gerald donned a thick Aussie accent and a register consisting of enlongated vocabulary. The concierge immediately pointed us out to the Sino Centre in Mong Kok, which we had already visited. Inside that centre there are shops which exclusively sell pictures of celebrities which I swear are photos off the internet printed by inkjet printers. Throngs of giggling Honkie girls crowd around those stores gushing at whatever male singer happens to be in fashion at the time. Unfortunately, none of the photos were autographed. The confidence of the concierge hit a brick wall and he concocted an excuse saying that autographed merchandise is rare, and are only given out in concerts to true fans who would never sell their booty.

At the Sheraton, we were attended to by a concierge by the name of Wesley. Wesley was a woman. I’ve heard of wierd Honkie names (eg: Apple, Mango), but that one takes the cake. She was a bit more helpful in a request that was rapidly turning into something much more difficult than anticipated. She referred us to the Sino Centre, HMV, a few other music stores (all unlikely), and finding out for us what music companies Andy is affiliated with. However, still no dice. We were half hoping for extraordinary American-style hotel service, but I guess inhindsight it was fortunate that none of them said, “Unfortunately we do not have that information, sir, but we will do our utmost to find out for you and get back to you. And what is your room number?” (Although Gerald half-jokingly pointed out that if they said that, he’d go and book a room for the night. :)

Next post on another day. In the meantime, go amuse yourself with pictures of urinals from around the world.

31
Dec 02
Tue

Happy New Year!

The last few days have been heaps busy, between a daytrip to China and catching up with friends. Currently waiting for all the relos to get their acts together so we can go to dinner, then out to welcome in 2003.

Year in review? It’s been a long, long year, which at times has dragged quite badly, but all things come to an end, even the not so good things. I have learnt that the world is both small and big. I’ve learnt that there’s much more than one way to skin a cat. It’s all a matter of perspective.

What about the incoming year? I normally don’t make New Year’s resolutions. After all, all they are, are annual goals you set for the year, which may or may not be kept. I keep a list of goals throughout the year, continually revising them as they are achieved or are no longer relevant (although it is important not to confuse reclassifying a goal as irrelevant, with rationalising yourself out of that goal because it appears too difficult to achieve). Most goals fit within the convenient package of a year, but some don’t. When I get back to Sydney, for instance, I’m going to sign up for a Scuba diving course while it’s still Summer, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. I should receive word whether I’ve been accepted into law in Mid-January. I don’t know what to expect from next year, but nonetheless I look forward to 2003.

Anyhow, time to head off. Have a blast, this New Year’s Eve!

9
Jan 03
Thu

Trip Roundup

I got a bit tied up when I came home with things, but now that I’m free again, I’ll finish writing about the trip. This will be a big post.

The 26th: Caveat Emptor
Kicked off the day with breakfast with Amy and her mum. In another one of those “degrees of separation” trackbacks I’m so fond of, Gerald and I both know Amy through two different routes. With Gerald, she’s a schoolmate’s cousin. With me, I first met her when she was the year 12 formal partner of a schoolmate of mine, which eventuated because she went to his sister’s school. Coincidentally, she’s also in the same dragonboat team as me now. Tangled web, eh.

The rest of the day was spent shopping for a digital camera. Let me say upfront that, if you are buying a digital camera in Hong Kong, be careful. My main requirement for a new digicam was that it should be able to fit in my pocket. After research, my original intentions were to buy a Canon Digital Ixus v3 – compact, well featured, good quality and 3.2 megapixels (RRP is A$1000, best price in Oz: A$820). We found one shop selling it in the high HK$2000s (about A$700), so that was a decent deal. But then we sighted the Olympus C-50 Zoom going for HK$3500 (A$815). It was a compact, a centimetre fatter and wider than the Canon, but still decently sized. Its main selling point was that it was 5 megapixels. I knew nothing about the model, so I went back to the hotel, jumped on the net and did a bit of reading. The C-50 retails for US$800, received positive reviews and had most of the features I wanted, so the Olympus it was.

The first strange thing we came across was the selling price of the digicam. Up and down Kowloon, from Mong Kok to Tsim Sha Tsui we asked for the digicam (with an international warranty). Prices ranged from HK$3500 to HK$4900. About 20 shops later, we were still clueless as to the reason for a A$300 price difference. And we were getting annoyed that we had to ask for a price at most of the stores, because it’s common practice to not stick price tags on goods. We came across a camera shop on a street parallel to Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. After a quick round of bargaining, we underwent price-shock: the digicams were being offered to us at HK$3180 a piece. Out came our credit cards and down went our signatures on the dotted lines. We had to wait 20 minutes for them to retrieve stock from their warehouse, so the salesman took us into a small room to teach us how to use the camera. That’s when things started to happen.

A perhaps not so well known sales tactic, but a common one nonetheless, is a modified bait and switch trick. You go into a store wanting to buy one thing, but you come out with something different because the store has convinced you to buy something else. They rope you in with a low price on your original item, show you it, then dissuade you from buying it, switching you to a “better” model which has a much higher profit margin. Only it’s not really illegal, because in bait-and-switch advertising, the bait is “out of stock” or “not for sale”, but these HK merchants are still willing to sell you the goods you originally wanted.

So, the onus is on the salesman to switch you onto a different product – which isn’t going to be easy, right? The incredible thing about this is that this can happen without you realising it, even if you are aware of the tactic, which I was fully (garnered from dad’s tales of his shopping experiences in HK a decade ago, and from my shopping experiences 3 years ago). I don’t know if it is the skill of the salesman, or the stupidity of the customer, but the relative ease of which they can start to make you hesitate about buying the camera that you spent hours researching on the net, reading through impartial reviews and opinions, and begin considering the model that they, a party with a huge vested interest and bias, are recommending – of which you have next to zero knowledge – is very troubling.

I know my technology. I was very well informed when it came to the compact digital camera market at that time. I knew about bait-and-switch, and yet, they almost managed to do the switch on us. Almost.

There was something a little different and dodgy about this camera store. The guy had taken us into the room with the Olympus and had already started to bad mouth its quality. Here we go again, I thought. He snapped a couple shots, and stuck them up on the TV. We were agape. The quality was pretty cruddy. Washed out, faded, slightly blurred photos. He brought in a Nikon CP5700 for comparison (Gerald already owns a 5000, so he wasn’t trying to push the 5700 on us). No contest, the pictures were much better. We knew the CP5700 was a class above the C-50, but the picture quality on the Olympus was way, way below par. At this point, doubt started to enter our minds.

We were beginning to doubt the quality of the Olympus. Despite all its glowing reviews, here we were seeing its image quality, which was quite frankly, crap. Surely the reviews would have picked up on this? Or maybe this is just how the camera is? What on earth was going on? Our camera hadn’t arrived from the warehouse yet. Alternatives?

“Here, have a look at this Fujifilm’s quality. This F402 is 4 megapixels.” (Although he neglected to mention it was an interpolated resolution.) We sat and compared the Fuji’s quality to the Olympus, and it won hands down. Now we were worried. After extolling the virtues of the Fuji F402 for a few minutes, the next sentence jolted me back into reality: “This camera sells for HK$5000, but I’ll do it to you for HK$4500.” He was doing the switch. At this point I shut up and was adamant in not considering the F402. Gerald, on the other hand was beginning to get drawn in. Blood in the water. The salesman started to focus all his attention on him.

I had to pull Gerald out of his spiral, so I said that regardless of the quality, we can sell the Olympus back in Australia new for 75% of its Aus RRP, and still make a profit. All good. Then, second shock. “Erm, this model you are buying – it is Japanese. The camera menus, and manuals, in Japanese.” Shit. What the hell were we supposed to do with a Japanese version of the camera? We couldn’t use it without obvious difficulties, let alone resell it back in Australia!

“Never mind, how hard can a camera be to use, huh?” the shark said, smiling wryly at us. “By the way, the Fujifilm is in English.” We were in a rut. I stuck to my guns with the Olympus, but was starting to panic inside. The shark dropped the price on the F402 to HK$4200. Gerald paused, then started talking in a Anglo-Cantonese (swapping between English and Cantonese):

“Look, we’ll duck back to our hotel and check out the Fuji’s price, then return and buy it if it’s better.”
“No, don’t waste your time. Wait until your C-50 comes, then go back to your hotel room, check, and come back.”
“No no, we’re not doing anything now, we might as well check now.”
“Oh what, don’t you trust me?” he retorted.
“No, it’s not that…”
“You’ve seen our discount over Australia on the Olympus, the discount on the Canon will be similar!”
“But… I’d like to check back at the hotel still–“
“– you don’t trust me?! Look if you are going to be like that and not trust me, I won’t even sell it to you at $4200!”
“No need, no need, I trust you.”

Meanwhile, I was figuring out if I could get out of the deal altogether. Otherwise, we were going to get burnt bad, one way or the other. I received an SMS from Dad saying he wanted to meet up at the Timberland store. In the next few minutes, a miracle occurred. I asked Gerald whether it was possible to back out of a deal even though we had signed. My reasoning was that we hadn’t taken delivery of the goods yet. With online retailers, you can cancel orders even after authorising payment, so it is possible, but I wasn’t aware whether it is a consumer right to be able to cancel orders before delivery (any lawyers out there that can answer this for me?). Gerald spoke again, “My cousin wants to cancel his order.”
“Huh, why?” he said, turning to me. Think fast, think fast.

“Because you are scum and are ripping us off.” Nope, can’t use that one.
“Because you are a person of questionable parentage and I’ve changed my mind.” Nup, not that one either.
“Ummm… my Dad just SMSed me. He has been looking for a camera and just bought one without um… giving me warning. He’s on Hong Kong island… so uh, I don’t need to buy a camera anymore.” Oh wait, did I say that one aloud? I guess that will have to do.

In an amazing event, which I’m still not sure of why it happened, he asked Gerald if he wanted to cancel his order too, and then… complied. He didn’t get angry, or anything. He gave us back our credit card slip (all 3 copies) and tore them up (thank goodness they weren’t using electronic transacting). We exited, extremely relieved to come out of that ordeal without loss, putting our faith in American Express’ card fraud protection program. Over the next few hours, we tried to figure out what the fark happened, piecing together the puzzle bit by bit.

Step 1: We tested the Olympus at a few more stores. The picture quality was much, much better. We suspect the C-50 we were looking at in the scam store was either a pre-production model, or had been tampered with for bait-and-switch purposes. Our faith in the C-50 was reaffirmed.
Step 2: We checked the price of the Fujifilm F402 digicam. The first store we checked at had a price tag on the camera. It read HK$2500. Ouch.
Step 3: We started specifying “international model, not the Japanese model” when asking for prices. The prices jumped up to the low HK$4000s. (Japanese stock, “soi forr” is reasonably common in HK. It’s cheaper, but everything’s in Japanese, including the 110 volt power requirements.)
Step 4: We revisited the 30 plus stores we’d previously gone to and started specifying “full package, including battery charger, remote, English manual, international warranty and international model” when asking for prices. The prices were revised again and rocketed to high HK$4000s.

Bingo! That’s what was different. We’d been shopping in the past two days for different camera models and packages, and not a single salesman in any store had mentioned anything about differences.

I ended up buying my Olympus in Singapore.

The 27th
Caught up with Lill (Aussie, HK-born) over lunch, one of the topics of conversation being a complaint of how she didn’t manage to get around to straightening her hair because it would have taken 6 hours and few hundred bucks (in contrast, my A$3, 20 minute haircut in Thailand was surprisingly decent). After lunch, we went digicam shopping AGAIN, but this time for a Canon D-60 (mmm, very nice) for her boyfriend, which she ended up purchasing the next day.

Went to the HK Museum of History, where they had recently opened an exhibition on the history of HK. We’d walked through the whole floor, when the announcement came that the museum was closing in 15 minutes. Then we realised that there was another half of the exhibition that was on the 2nd floor. Oops. We had to run through all the interesting bits.

The 28th
Met up with Kit (Aussie, HK-born). Bummed around the whole day. Tried to catch an afternoon session of Infernal Affairs on HK island, only to find that if you book 30 minutes before the show, only front row seats will be available. We ended up returning to Mong Kok and booking into a 10.40pm session. More bumming around. Wandered through Temple Street. On one end there is a long row of fortune tellers charging HK$80 for their babblings. Apparently if you ask them, “if you can tell the future, why aren’t you rich?” To which their standard response is, “I’m being punished for telling people more than they should know.” Which of course is bollocks. Just form a fortune telling cartel and tell each others’ fortunes.

Kit felt he needed something herbal to consume to address the problem of being too “eet hay” (peculiar asian concept that some foods are… hmm… “heaty” and need “cooling” foods or drinks to balance it out). We walked down Temple Street past a tramp of prostitutes (a couple of which barely looked 16) and sat down at a herbal place serving “turtle jelly” (guai leen goh). We spent the next half hour trying to convince Kit that “guai leen goh” was indeed made from “guai leen” (turtles), of which it is.

Movie was quite good. Best cop movie I’ve seen in a long time, although the Mong Kok cinema is crap and is in mono sound.

The 29th: Chinese Roots
When we arrived into Hong Kong, my uncle had the flu. On the second day, my grandfather caught it. He spent the rest of the trip in his hotel room. From there, it was transmitted to the rest of the family, catching everyone. When it got to Dad, he was bedridden for almost two days. I thought I had managed to evade it until it caught up with me on the very last day of HK.

The 29th was our day trip into China, so after waking up at the obscene hour of 6.30am, we caught a ferry up to the Cantonese speaking district of “poon yue”. Specifically, “poon yue dai loong” (something something big dragon). This was the hometown of my grandmother, and it was here that I was told I’d be able to “get in touch with my roots”.

The China air was frigid when we disembarked. We made our way past the unsmiling immigration officials, and got picked up my grandmother’s relatives, all descendants of my great uncle (paternal grandmother’s brother, or “kow koong”). The 13 of us set out in an overcrowded minivan they’d hired for the day. First stop was a Buddhist site featuring a 40m statue of some Buddhist god or something atop a hill.

One of the problems with China is that they have no eye for aesthetics. When they attempt to beautify things, they appear incredibly artificial, which detracts majorly from the presentation. While you understand their intentions, they just haven’t got the hang of it. It seems to be a problem with not adapting to the environment, but making the environment adapt to them. (Much akin to them “beautifying” Ayer’s Rock/Uluru by chiselling it into a cube shape.) In this case, they had flowerpots with lettuce in them lining gardenbeds. Lettuce amongst flowers? I mean, come on. That, and the Chinese people’s overwhelming urge to build everything using grey concrete. Concrete everywhere. I hear they have concrete urinals elsewhere in China, which stink to high heaven (waste slides over porcelain, it sticks to concrete).

The worship site was quite interesting. They had this shrine alcove you could buy firecrackers for. People would run up to the shrine holding a bundle of crackers, then gingerly lighting the fuse before piss bolting out of the area. As a result, you could hear the thunderous roar of crackers no matter where you were on the hill.

Evidence of China’s considerable economic growth is readily visible. We were expecting my grandmother’s village to be exactly that, a village. Instead, we came across a rapidly industrialising town. Much infrastructure had been recently developed. Too much, in fact. The three lane highways were grossly underutilised by a populace still trying to come to grips with lane markings. As with all lesser developed countries, the horn is used frequently as a signalling and warning device (as opposed to one of road rage as in Australia). My uncle was undertaking a “take-no-prisoners” approach to driving. Zebra crossing ahead? No worries, just let loose with a few blasts on the horn, rev the engine, speed up, and that 80 year old great-grandmother crossing the road will move out of the way for sure.

By the time we rocked up at the restaurant for lunch, the rest of the clan had arrived. A veritable entourage of young and old relatives I never knew I had. They all came on scooters. It looked like a bikie gang… but of scooters. Enough relos to fill up three large tables. It was at that point in time it struck me how much like mainlanders these people were. My uncles were all slouching in the typical mainlander garb of a well-worn and frayed cheap suit, loafers, unkempt hair, chain smoking away on cigarettes. They were so much like peasants. Well, that’s because they were. And I was related to them.

I must stress here that I neither intend to be condescending nor patronising here. This realisation did not come with such a feeling. What I realised was that these were my roots, and my roots were not as far away as I imagined. All Chinese, everywhere in the world, have migrated from China to seek better fortune somewhere along the line. These mainlander ancestors, amongst the billion or so other mainlanders, would likely have been peasants. For me, my paternal grandmother had migrated from China to Singapore. She got lucky and married my grandfather, who was exceedingly well-to-do at the time (and still is currently, somewhat, despite his various rash and excessive youthful vices). But even on my grandfather’s side, migration only occurred with his father – my great-grandfather – living in poverty in China, migrated with nothing to Singapore after selling off the family pig for $5 for a boat ticket. Within a couple decades, he was a business tycoon, mixing it in Singapore’s colonial high society. It only takes one generation to change things, but it can be many generations before that happens. I’m just one of the more fortunate ones in the extended family.

Despite me having bestowing the undignified classification of peasantry on my not-so-distant relatives, they pulled no stops for lunch. Their hospitality and generosity was exceptional. Put it this way, they certainly weren’t living in poverty, which I suppose is a tangible result of China’s economic progress – a falling percentage of working class in poverty. A large plate of live (or at least, freshly killed) prawns was served. They were small and required much effort in peeling them. Nearing the end of lunch, everyone seemed to have lost interest in peeling the prawns, so me and Gerald began the process of consuming half a plate of prawns. Someone noticed we seemed to like prawns (well, we do – they are expensive in Sydney, and no one was eating them so we were acting as waste disposal units – but it’s not like it’s our favourite food) and when we finished our current plate, another half-full plate was plonked down. Compliments from the other table. After devouring that, yet another plate was put in front of us. We gave up after that.

We left for a tour of the residential part of town. We pulled up to a street, across from my grandmother’s old primary school, which was now converted into a ceremonial hall. An archaic steam-driven pile driver across the road was meanwhile driving metal rods into the ground as foundation for a new building. Its clanging reverberated throughout the village. It was fascinating to watch in action, but the din it was making was not insignificant. Again there were many instances of aesthetic efforts gone horribly wrong. Ponds built in locations around the town were concrete eyesores, filled with stagnant, black and odorous water. It didn’t do anything to bolster their image when we were told that one of my Dad’s aunts had committed suicide in one of those ponds years ago. Heck, all you’d have to do is fall in accidentally and it’s game over.

People smoke everywhere. Convenience stores around the village are ill-stocked with merchandise rapidly nearing or past their expiry dates, and with non-perishables lingering around from the era of Mao. The exception is the ubiquitous availability of cigarettes, whose turnover must be earning the tobacco companies a tidy profit indeed.

Eventually we made it to the houses, which were all much the same. Devoid of carpet, they were nonetheless high-roofed and quite spacious (partially due to the fact of the relative lack of furniture). A water well in the yard was a remnant from the days when there wasn’t running water. I was aware that China had an “open door” economic policy in the late 70s, but it seemed like the town had an open door social policy too. We tramped through over half a dozen homes, a couple were rented out to non-family tenants, but they didn’t seem to mind when we flocked through their kitchen unannounced. One interesting three storey house we toured was uninhabited. It was actually still under construction, and had been for 20 years already. As there was no one to live in it, the family was not in any hurry to complete it.

The town was moving into the Internet age slowly too. My relos were quite eager in pointing out that they had a net-connected computer. “Gnor dei yow deen lo lau seong, lay tai-ha!” they kept insisting (We have a computer upstairs, go and look!) I swapped e-mail addresses with Warm, a cousin there who was also studying English at university. Paradoxically, her first Chinese name is “sheet” (snow or ice) but her English name is “Warm”. Unfortunately with my atrocious language skills, I couldn’t wrangle a satisfactory response from her on that matter.

Eventually we tired of walking around. I got bored. I took to pestering the local wildlife to amuse myself. My uncle kept a coup of chickens, one which had escaped from the pen. So Gerald herded the loose fowl towards me, and I managed to nab it, before tossing it over the fence back into the pen. That was strangely satisfying. Then I spent a few minutes herding another stray chicken through the streets. Chickens are stupid. You move left, they move right. You move right, they move left. Thus, it is very easy to direct them where you want them to go. I spent the next few minutes chasing the chicken (reminds me of the French Nike ad of the guy being chased by an angry chicken). During that time, I observed my peasant cousins, aunts and uncles watch me curiously. I can only imagine what they must have been thinking about “that strange cousin” from Australia’s peculiar fascination with the local poultry.

Dogs dragging around their litters of pups also frequented the streets. Extremely cute balls of fur flopping around in the dust. I soon learnt that those dogs were ultimately destined for the dinner pot, for soup and meat, which is understandable and not repulsive if you can accommodate for a cultural paradigm shift.

After a bunch of photos and more chatting, the daytrip was over and we returned to Hong Kong.

The 30th
Met up with Jamie and Kit. Since we considered Jamie as pretty much a local, we placed responsibility on her to decide what we should do for the day. After failing to find the prospect of Ocean Park enticing (an overpriced theme park), we decided to head for the outer burbs and see the Wishing Tree. An MTR, KCR and bus trip later, we arrived at the tree. Basically, these people sell you pieces of paper, carrying messages of luck and fortune, which is weighted with an orange, connected with some string. The aim is to throw the bundle into the tree and hope it sticks. The theory is, the higher your orange goes (and sticks), the more likely your wish will eventuate. If the orange doesn’t stick, then you’re stuffed. And there’s also the prospect of your projectile causing someone serious head injuries when it returns back to earth. (They aren’t familiar with the concept of yelling “heads up!” out there.) As long as you keep a respectable distance, it’s fun to watch other people grapple with their predicament – especially women, whose arms and shoulders are simply not designed anatomically for throwing. Oranges miss the tree completely. Some even fly backwards away from the tree. Some catch on other bundles of paper, fail to stick, and bring other people’s wishes down with them. Hilarious stuff, not that it’s meant to be a game. Tourist note: orange vendors sell bundles for $3 each, although you can get a deal that will get you 4 oranges for $4.

We returned to Tsim Sha Tsui afterwards and had a walk along the harbour side. There were many weddings going on simultaneously there, and we took to chasing after married couples to uh, check them out. Eventually we decided to go into the Science Museum and Planetarium. The Planetarium is a hemispherical dome, upon which an array of projectors cast images up onto the roof, so you have vision all around and above you. Chairs are reclined backwards for ease of viewing the movies and documentaries they show there. I was here last when I was about six, and was thrilled. Unfortunately, fifteen years on, the current experience left a lot to be desired. Probably because the projection technology was decades old, the documentary taught me nothing, the chairs were reclined, and we all fell asleep.

Dinner finally rolled around, and what was going to be a dinner for four in Causeway Bay turned out to be a dinner for ten as Gerald and I roped in a few more friends. Kit and I went back to Jordan to pick up Glen, a Singapore computer engineer also studying at UNSW, from his hotel (finally, someone who has no Cantonese skills like me). Sometime after that, we made our way to Lan Kwai Fong, bar and club centre of Hong Kong, and crawling with drunk expats. We had drinks. I decided it was once again time to test my allergy to alcohol (I never learn, do I?) and managed to down half a cocktail before a rash was observed on my neck and I was persuaded to stop because no one relished the possibility of having to drag a vomiting sick bloke through the streets of Hong Kong at that hour.

The 31st: New Year’s Eve
The final day of 2002 rolled around and I met up with Derek for lunch. The last time I’d seen him was when we were both in HK three years ago. This is despite the fact that we both live in Sydney. Shocking. I learnt that since we last spoke, he’d started a grad law degree (like the one I am planning to do this year). I also learnt that in HK for some strange reason, lawyers earn a packet. Grads receive around A$90k, with that doubling after two years. The HK tax rate is also only 17%.

For the actual New Year’s celebrations, I met up with Kit once more and at 11pm we headed off to Lan Kwai Fong. However, we were obviously clueless, as virtually everyone knew that if you wanted to be in LKF for the countdown, you had to be there hours before the event. When we arrived at Central, police were directing the human traffic. A cop laughed when we said whether it was possible to get in, saying that there were 10000 people attempting that currently, but there’s simply no more room. So, at the risk of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, we jumped on the MTR and hurried back to Tsim Sha Tsui where we knew they’d be doing a harbourside countdown.

We arrived at the station and emerged above ground at 11.50pm, only to run smack into a brick wall of people. We were on Nathan Road, on the side wall of the Peninsula Hotel. All the action was happening just around the corner, on the road that runs perpendicular, along the harbour. Our line of sight did not reach around the corner, so we began to squeeze our way through the crown inch by inch, until we finally were stuck for good – literally hemmed in by the press of bodies in front and behind us. Luckily, the crowd was pretty tame. There wasn’t any alcohol out on the streets, and at one stage during a forward charge, Kit yelled out in Cantonese to the people behind to stop pushing… and they did.

Thank goodness everyone in HK is so short. I pity the girls standing around me that barely reached my chin level, they didn’t see much that night. Not that there was very much to see. Lifting myself on tiptoes, and craning my neck around the corner, all I saw was a sea of heads. Countdown came, countdown went. No fireworks, just a few hoots, a bit of silly string sprayed into the air, and the tide of people slowly started to reverse. Not content to waddle around at 1m a minute, we escaped down a side alley.

There’s a bar/restaurant up the Peninsula Hotel called Felix. In there is meant to be a real swanky urinal. The urinal wall is made out of glass, overlooking HK, so apparently you can “piss on HK city”. Out of curiousity, and because we weren’t going anywhere fast for the time being, we snuck in a side entrance into the hotel and wandered around. We found Felix. There were no restaurant tables left (naturally all booked out), but the bar was not full. Unfortunately, the HK$300 cover charge discouraged us mere mortals from entering, and we gave up on that idea and started making our way back up Nathan Road.

HK people work crazy hours. I wrote that all stores were open on Christmas. On the Christmas Eve dinner, one of the girls there in the fashion industry said she was moving back to Australia because of the HK working hours – 9am-midnight days weren’t uncommon. Derek’s sister, working in a law firm received a company memo said they could finish work early on Christmas Eve at 1pm. The memo came with a disclaimer: “(only if there is no work to do)”. Naturally, there was more work to do. So, there we were walking down the street, past 2am, and we came across a Giordano clothing store. Open. Fully staffed. 40% sale. These people are crazy, we were thinking, as we went inside and snapped up a few bargains. It must have been 2.30am when Kit overheard two of the sales people chatting.

“Hey, we just hit our sales target for today!”
“You’re kidding me! No way?!!”

I cringe to think what kind of sales total was the target, that it took until 2.30am to reach.

The 1st: New Year’s Day
Slept in. Woke up in time for lunch, which we had with Andy (Amy’s cousin) at 2.30pm. We then met up with Amy at a relatively dear Japanese dessert place which didn’t have English menus, so I went with the random choice – number 136 – the item without the photo. If it’s dessert, it can’t be all that risky can it? Turned out to be quite nice, though $10 for some icecream, jelly, dough balls, fruit and red bean paste is a little steep.

And that basically sums up the HK trip. If you’ve been to HK before and have seen all the sights, then it can be a very boring place. All that’s left is eating, shopping and sleeping. However, you can only spend so much time eating, your wallet only is so big and sleeping all day in your room is something you can do back home.

As I reiterate, my number one maxim for travelling is simple: Your travel experience depends on who you travel with and who you meet along the way. The better the company, the better the time you will have. And I had a pretty good time!