Our first experience in Hong Kong was unpleasant. We'd booked a hotel room in a building named Mirador Mansion. Mirador is Spanish for "view," but the building is neither a mansion, nor, unless you fancy scabrous courtyards with pockmarked walls, does it have a view. Still, we are here, having secured a closet-sized room from a vicious old hag for a scandalous amount. To get her back, we have left the air conditioning on constantly and resolved to steal everything that is not nailed down. Unfortunately, she seems to have anticipated this, because most things are, in fact, nailed down.
Still, Hong Kong is a terrific city. We have seen two parts: the ultra-modern, towering Island, and the lower-rent, bustling peninsula of Kowloon.
We started out last night in Kowloon, in a neon-crazed neighborhood of restaurants and stores that mostly sell electronic goods and diamonds. There are also platoons of men with Indian accents offering you "copy watches" and tailored suits of clothes. We dealt with them by our usual method: a look that simultaneously communicates an extreme disinterest in their goods and an earnest desire to murder their grandmothers. The pace is hectic. Sidewalk vendors haggle with customers, girls tap you on the shoulder to drag you into stores, and every sign cries out that its owner is practically throwing merchandise in the street.
Exhausted by the lights and chaos, we retreated to our closet, and woke the next day to try our luck on Hong Kong Island.
This was a different city. A gorgeous, efficient subway dropped us off in a futuristic landscape of glass, marble, and steel. Impressively modern buildings reach dozens of stories in the air. They link to one another with intricate skyways, while elevated roadways snake between them at dizzying heights. As you follow signs from one place to the next , you find yourself passing through the gleaming lobby of some multinational corporation, and then, a half block later, through the kitchen of an open air restaurant serving bowls of noodles for $2. It's very fun.
After a trip up the funicular to view the city from Victoria Peak, we ate some soup and returned to our closet to plot an assault on Cantonese cuisine. Still, we already miss China. As we walked through the subway, I came within an ace of leveling a middle-aged woman with an armful of groceries. Unfortunately, she stepped aside at the last minute and politely inquired if I'd lost my mind. As Freud would have it, civilization has its discontents, and today I am one of them.
One final note: yesterday we able to check our blog stats for the first time in a while, and were surprised to find that some 438 people had viewed it in the last 24 hours. Considering that our previous best was 20, we wondered what had happened. Then we realized that our post on the Li River had contained the words "beating," "off," and "Angelina Jolie."
Our course, we deplore any additional readers brought to us by such low, underhanded means. Hot, free sex, get it here, get it now.
Still, Hong Kong is a terrific city. We have seen two parts: the ultra-modern, towering Island, and the lower-rent, bustling peninsula of Kowloon.
We started out last night in Kowloon, in a neon-crazed neighborhood of restaurants and stores that mostly sell electronic goods and diamonds. There are also platoons of men with Indian accents offering you "copy watches" and tailored suits of clothes. We dealt with them by our usual method: a look that simultaneously communicates an extreme disinterest in their goods and an earnest desire to murder their grandmothers. The pace is hectic. Sidewalk vendors haggle with customers, girls tap you on the shoulder to drag you into stores, and every sign cries out that its owner is practically throwing merchandise in the street.
Exhausted by the lights and chaos, we retreated to our closet, and woke the next day to try our luck on Hong Kong Island.
This was a different city. A gorgeous, efficient subway dropped us off in a futuristic landscape of glass, marble, and steel. Impressively modern buildings reach dozens of stories in the air. They link to one another with intricate skyways, while elevated roadways snake between them at dizzying heights. As you follow signs from one place to the next , you find yourself passing through the gleaming lobby of some multinational corporation, and then, a half block later, through the kitchen of an open air restaurant serving bowls of noodles for $2. It's very fun.
After a trip up the funicular to view the city from Victoria Peak, we ate some soup and returned to our closet to plot an assault on Cantonese cuisine. Still, we already miss China. As we walked through the subway, I came within an ace of leveling a middle-aged woman with an armful of groceries. Unfortunately, she stepped aside at the last minute and politely inquired if I'd lost my mind. As Freud would have it, civilization has its discontents, and today I am one of them.
One final note: yesterday we able to check our blog stats for the first time in a while, and were surprised to find that some 438 people had viewed it in the last 24 hours. Considering that our previous best was 20, we wondered what had happened. Then we realized that our post on the Li River had contained the words "beating," "off," and "Angelina Jolie."
Our course, we deplore any additional readers brought to us by such low, underhanded means. Hot, free sex, get it here, get it now.
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