A few more pictures from my hotel window yesterday morning. Lots of tall buildings in Hong Kong. Spiderman could live here, but he wouldn’t last in Tokyo because the buildings are too short. As you can see the weather in Hong Kong was hazy and depressing. It felt like it was going to rain all day but never did. I was pretty much exhausted from saturday and with the weather being the way it was I didn’t want to do anything. I’ll probably be coming to Hong Kong quite often so I don’t feel an urgent need to go see stuff this time.

So, I spent the morning catching up on emails and putting in a few hours of work. Around noon, I went to get a massage at a place recommended by yumiko. The place is called Golden Rock and is run by the blind. A one hour massage was just what I needed! After that I walked around Causeway a bit and got some barbequed pork buns and coconut bread. Haven’t had these in years and they were delicious! If I had to compare Japanese bread products to Chinese ones, I would have to say I prefer the Chinese ones because I grew up eating the stuff.

Another unrelated observation is the lack of bookstores in this city. Maybe I just haven’t been going to the right areas but so far I’ve only spotted about 3 bookstores in the week I’ve been here. Page One in Times Square has a decent selection of English books and there was another shop in IFC. The third was another Chinese bookstore near the night market. That’s it. I read on some blog that people in Hong Kong don’t like reading. I doubt that to be true but it sure does appear that way with so few bookstores in the major areas of the city. This is unlike Japan where there are tons of bookstores. On the other hand, I’ve seen a considerable number of magazine and newspaper stands, selling lots of Japanese magazines too. One stand had gay porn magazines hanging prominently at the front for everyone to see.

Friday night!! I ditched the office early and met up with Yumiko, one of my oldest and dearest friends whom I haven’t seen in over 15 years! She’s been living in Hong Kong for as long as I’ve been in Tokyo and it was nice to catch up with her. We had some local food and then took the Star ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side. This was the first time for me to see the so-called “million dollar night view.” Now, I’ve seen tons of photos of the HK skyline but I have to say that in real life it is magnificent and I was completely in awe at how amazing this nightview really is. Even though the sky was a bit cloudy from the pollution it was still wonderful. Hong Kong people are lucky to have such a perfect skyline. It was fairly late so I missed the laser show. At 8pm all the buildings shoot lasers out into the sky. Sounds really tacky but I want to see it.

We took a walk along the “Avenue of Stars” and finally found the Bruce Lee statue I was looking for (1) This is Bruce is all his glory. Did I tell you Bruce Lee is my hero? Then we headed further down to see the Xmas lights. Yes, there are already lots of Xmas lights everywhere. I can’t get used to the Xmas spirit while it’s 25 degrees. After that we walked around Nathan Road to try some mango pudding (2) Unfortunately, the mango pudding place was out of mango pudding (go figure) so I had this other mango-ish dessert. It was either that or turtle jelly, birdnest pudding or frog sperm drink or something like that…

Tomorrow, I’m on my own and I have the whole day to explore the city!

My fourth day in HK and haven’t had a chance to do much but work and eat. There’s lots of great Chinese food here, obviously, and my hosts have been taking us out every night to a different place. I like the simple, traditional restaurants with the plain white dishes and round tables like the ones back in Canada. People use the small bowls to eat from and the dishes to hold the bones and other non-edible bits.

(1) Round tables are standard in Chinese restaurants, something you will rarely see in Japan except in Shakey’s (2) This drink is coffee and tea mixed together. It tastes exactly like it sounds and is named after some kind of bird. I don’t why anyone would want to drink coffee and tea mixed together but whatever. They also mixed jasmine tea with chysanthemum tea which wasn’t bad.

Some other observations.

-Lots of smells in this city. Some good, some bad and some that remind me that I’m Chinese.

-Public displays of affection. For 3 consecutive days at the MRT station, I’ve seen the same couple in the same place kissing. Lots of kissing spotted in other places too.

-The average height of people seem shorter here.

-Tall buildings and slow elevators means long queues to wait for the lift.

-Candy bar keitais are the norm and clamshell types are rare.

-An English bookstore was playing the worst JPop I’ve ever heard.

Apologies for the lack of quality updates recently. I’ve been rather busy preparing for a business trip to Hong Kong in the middle of November. I’m there for 2 weeks and while I’ll be mostly stuck at the office I hope to get out and about the town if I can. So far I don’t have anything on my to-see-do-eat list except to visit the Bruce Lee statue. So if you have any suggestions about places I might like, should avoid etc. please let me know.

I’m back safely. The overnight flight went by very quickly. The plane was only half full so I had an empty row to myself. Singapore Airlines is great because even in economy they have tv’s for each seat and 100 channels to choose from. They had to restart the system a few times because the video wasn’t playing properly so I gave up and went to sleep.

After take off, it became freezing cold in the cabin, eveyone had on a blanket or cardigan, one guy even had his coat on. The flight attendants didn’t seem to notice. I finally asked one of the crew to turn down the aircon and they were like “Oh, are you cold?”

My last day in Singapore and everyone is being sent home at 5pm because it’s “Go home early to eat with your family day”. What a great idea. We should have these kinds of things in Japan. How about “Go home early to pet your dog day” or “Go home early to watch tv day”

Not sure why they call it a circus because I didn’t see any clowns (Except for the 2 guys that I came with) This Hawker Centre is a touristy place, but someone always wants to bring me here in the middle of the night when I’ve had too much to drink. It’s one of those places that stays open really late. In Singapore, a Hawker Centre is basically an outdoor food court with many local food stalls and tables. The local delicacy here is “Sting Ray” (right photo) Mmmmmmm..taste like catfish.

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The hotel room I’ve been in has one of those adjoining doors which open to the room beside me. The door is fairly thin and all week different guests have been very noisy. TV, talking, banging etc. Tonight, I had them move me to a different room. As I walked into the new room I noticed a very strong and peculiar smell. I was reminded instantly of that urban myth about the couple that are on their honeymoon and they notice a bad smell in their room, after a few days of trying to endure it they finally call the hotel manager to investigate. He comes and discovers that in the bed’s matress box, someone had hidden a dead body. Well, I looking into the bed and was relieved to find that there was nothing dead and rotting in there.

I called the front desk again and complained. 30 minutes later a chinese guy with a big spray can came and sprayed every corner of the room. When he walked in, he made a strange face obviously finding it smelling bad too. I asked him if he thought it smelled strange and he just replied “Yes, toilet”. Huh? Well, I guess he didn’t understand English.

After work, I was trying to call a cab from the office. Unlike Japan, in Singapore most people call for a taxi. This is very sensible because there are certain times when it is very difficult to get one like when it’s raining or on friday nights. I tried calling a few times with no luck and decided to just go out on the street and try my luck. My office is faraway from the city centre and you got to walk a long way to the train station. No cabs came by so I decided to walk towards the main roads where there was more traffic. It was rather cool and I enjoyed walking under the trees. That is something I miss living in Tokyo. It’s the first thing that strikes me about this country. You look up and all you see are trees, no telephone poles or wires.

Anyway, to make a long story short I ended up walking quite a long distance and after getting pretty tired I decided to just wait in one place. Every cab passing was already occupied or on their way to pick up a customer. I waited for about a hour before one finally stopped. What a relief. This happened to me once before only that time I was desperately in a rush trying to get to the airport to catch a flight. I’ve learned my lesson.

Most Japanese who visit Singapore will know the Paragon Mall, it’s the one with all the designer shops like Gucci, Ferragamo, Chanel etc etc. However, I love the supermarket in B1. It’s got all these cool things you can’t find in Japan. Like all these amazing kinds of Canned Tuna (1) There’s curry tuna, deli tuna and tom yam kum flavored on the far right (2) ginger and soy, hot chili and there were many many others. I wanted to buy all of them and crate them home. Japan is definitely lagging in the canned tuna industry.

Well, I arrived safely in Singapore. This morning, the Narita Express was very crowded. I noticed that the car I was in had all the seats facing one direction, which is good thing. I don’t like it when they have the box seat arrangement since this encourages people to talk more and usually I get stuck sitting with a group of loud people for the entire ride. The flight was full of ojisans, not a young girl among them. This might have to do with it being sunday and I suppose most vacationers would try to flight out on a friday or saturday, while people travelling for work leave on sunday so they can be at the office on monday. Anyway, lots of these Japanese guys ended up at the same hotel. I even noticed some of them from the platform at Tokyo Station this morning. I took a little stroll around orchard just now and got this picture of a chinese girl in kimono handing out some flyers. I’m sure she’s uncomfortable in that kimono with the temperature at 34°C.

One of the things on my to do list this year is to go to Easter Island. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking but I just want to go there. I haven’t researched in depth yet but there seems to be lots of resources on the web about traveling there and some package tours that start from 250,000yen (Damn!). It looks like it’s probably very touristy now. I’m thinking some time in late November just before the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (another thing on my to do list). I want to meditate with the Moai Statues so I can invigorate myself with all that mystical cosmic energy and pass Level 1 with flying colors! Anyway, thought I should bring it up now and commit myself before the year flies by and I forget about it. Travel advice anyone?