Canto-town

Currently I’m sitting on an island off of Thailand burnt to a crisp thanks to the harsh sun here, so I thought I’d take the day to catch up with a bit of my traveling.

After Shenzhen, I went to Guangzhou. Guangzhou is another city very near that is also very large, and is the capital of the Guandong province of China. This province is one where my language skills are much less useful than in the rest of China, as the majority population speaks Cantonese instead of Mandarin, which are mutually unintelligible languages, really. It wasn’t too much of a problem, as mostly the places I was going to for the day were English-speaking places anyway, but, still.

The only thing I really wanted to do in Guangzhou was to arrange for a visa-on-arrival for Vietnam, then take an airplane from there to Hanoi. I had made a last minute reservation at a youth hostel there, and I got on a train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, which was a pretty short ride away. From there, it was a simple bit of metro-finagling and then a smidgin of walking to get to the hostel, which was on the side of a large river that runs through the city. Its even called Riverside Hotel. I got a little lost on the walking part, as I took a left when I should’ve taken a right, but it wasn’t so bad, and I had that naan bread from the Indian restauarant the previous night to keep me goin.

When I got to the hostel, I dropped my things off, then went straight for the Vietnamese embassy. I had looked it up online, then asked for the best way to get there at the front desk of the hostel, and then took off like a rocket, but I had forgotten to actually write down the address.

So when I got to the area it was supposed to be in, it was obvious that I didn’t have the slightest chance of finding it just by looking around, but I tried to anyway for about an hour, maybe a little less. Finally, I saw a police station, and I dropped by to see if they could give me directions, figuring they were the only ones around that would possibly be able to help out. It was a good guess, and the officer told me how to get there in pretty clear directions.

I didn’t understand fully that I was supposed to cross the street at this one point before a bunch of construction, though, so I ended up walking uselessly for another half an hour or so, with a building name written down on a slip of paper by that officer, and asked a few people where the building was. Finally someone pointed across the street and basically said “it’s right over there, idiot” and I thanked them for their time and went on my way.

Once inside the embassy, I waited in front of the counter for maybe ten minutes. No one ever addressed me or even looked at me. Finally I knocked on the window and asked for someone who could speak English. A guy got up from his desk at the back of the office behind the counter, and came over to me, and gave me a regular visa application, despite the fact that I explained I really just wanted a visa on arrival letter of introduction. It’s a slightly strange system, but basically if you get this letter in advance, by asking for it, you give it to the people at the airport when you land, and then they stamp your visa. It’s also supposed to be about 30-40 dollars cheaper than any other alternative.

He told me that I couldn’t actually do this at their office, and that I could only get a regular visa there, and that, to boot, letters of introduction aren’t always excepted at airports in Vietnam. I sort of assume he was just saying this because they make more money via the regular visa, but who knows.

In any event, I’d have to wait another few days before being able to get a regular visa, and I was ready to go NOW, certainly not to be staying in that same place for long. So I politely declined and tried to figure out what else in the world I could do with myself.

So I went straight back to the hostel, got a bit of simple food, then sat down in their common area to get a few things worked out on my computer. Here's a picture or two of the area right outside the hostel, by the way.

I ended up applying for that letter of introduction after all, and was told I’d have enough time to get it before heading out to Hanoi in just two days. I found a flight that was a pretty damn good price, but heavily discounted only for students, and so I tried to purchase it. Having been satisfied with my decisions, I then headed out to just walk a bit, and take in at least a small portion of the city of Guangzhou.

It wasn’t long before I was called up by the airline I had reserved the ticket with; it turned out that that student ticket was only available to citizens of either China or Vietnam, and the fact that I was a registered student in China wasn’t sufficient.

So, that pretty much killed my Vietnam plans. I just didn’t have enough time to get anything else worked out.

So I went back to the hostel again, and planned some more, this time deciding instead to go to Hong Kong, then fly to Bangkok, as the cost would be actually a little less than if I were to take any of the other available flights to Hanoi. Also, because Thailand doesn’t charge for visas, it would actually work out even better cost-wise in the long run.

While figuring this out, a couple of guys around me tell me that they were planning on getting some dinner, and invited me along. I worked out the last bits, and then joined them, and our group was about seven strong. There was one American guy and his Chinese girlfriend, both of whom were fairly nice, a French guy, a British lady, a British guy, and then another guy from Canada. The guy from Canada was a bit of a shut-in, and I tried to talk to him a bit, but he just wasn’t sociable enough. Almost everyone else was pretty nice though, and we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night, though I had to take a one hour break to do a bit of tutoring.

The British woman was also heading to Hong Kong the next day, as it turned out, so we soon decided to go together. Most of the rest of the night was spent just killing time, particularly between me and the two British people, although an old ex-Brit eventually butted his way in as well, and we all had a lot of pleasant conversation, particularly about music. I told the British woman, Jo, that I’d like to get going at around 10am the next day, maybe 10:30am at the latest, and soon headed off to bed for an uneventful night’s sleep.

Soon enough, I was waking up at 9am. I forgot that I didn’t want to wake up until 10, so I cost myself a bit of sleep for no good reason. I still had to wait for Jo in any event, so I had myself a decent little Western style breakfast, the kind that so many hostels seem to provide; toast, eggs, a bit of fruit, and coffee. It was adequate, especially when I turned it into an egg sandwich.

Before you knew it, Jo was there, and we were off to catch the train from Guangzhou through to Hong Kong.

We actually had really wanted to take the ferry (re: I really wanted to take the ferry) but the schedule was more ambiguous, and the train station was so much easier to access, with trains leaving quite regularly. So we took the metro straight to the train station, had a bit of Starbucks, and killed time for just a short fifteen minutes or so before getting on the train to HK. Here's a picture of the escalator up to the train station:

It took about two hours to get to the city. This was fine, as it gave Jo and I a decent chance of getting to know each other a bit before going to the same hostel and attaching ourselves at the hip for the rest of the day. She’s a 27 year old woman from Britain who’s at the tail end of a couple months of traveling, bound for Australia in hopes she can find a job there, for no good reason other than because she feels she needs a change of pace. She left her boyfriend behind, but already has an end-date for her time in Australia, with a return ticket placing her back in Britain in ten months’ time.

When we arrived in HK, our Chinese visas lapsed. This felt a bit weird for me, knowing that I couldn’t just go back to Shanghai whenever I felt like it, but would instead have to get another visa to get back into China. It is an easy process, but still a process that would have to be done when it came time to return. Then, we were given a temporary HK visa, which is only good for seven days, and allowed to go on our way.

Another hour on the metro later, and we emerged on Hong Kong island. The train station actually dumped us off in Kowloon, which is the part of Hong Kong attached to the mainland of China geographically, so you had to find some way to get across to the island if you were staying there, such as we were. You had the options of metro, bus, or ferry, and we took the metro, though we later found out that we could’ve just as easily taken a very short ferry ride to cut off half of the total time it took for us to reach our destination.

When we got out on the streets, we started following directions Jo had written down from the website about how to find the particular hostel, named the Yesinn Hostel. Mainly, it told us to look for a Citibank and Watson’s to know that we were pretty much at the right place. Eventually we found a Citibank and Watson’s, but it definitely wasn’t the right place. I checked her directions again, and noticed she had also written down the actual street number of the address, which didn’t match up with where we were, so we backtracked a bit and finally found the place. Jo was pretty exhausted by this point from carrying all of her things; in fact, we really had walked a decent amount with all our luggage, but there was no other option for carrying on, so, she was just going to have to deal with it.

When we got inside, we both checked in, and Jo was taken up to the 15^th floor, while I was on the 5^th floor, and I asked her to meet me back in the lobby in half an hour, after she’d get the chance to shower and such, and I could use my comp a bit to try and figure out Bangkok for the next day. Here's my room:

Unfortunately, the internet wasn’t working pretty much anywhere in the hostel, and to top it off, I had forgotten to check whether Hong Kong used the same electrical standard as China, and soon found out I needed an adapter to be able to use much of any of the plugs. I found one outlet that was a universal outlet, luckily, so I was still able to charge my stuff for a while, but still wasn’t able to figure out much of anything else about what I’d be doing the next day. Since I couldn’t take care of those things, though, I grabbed a guidebook off a shelf nearby and took about five minutes to put together a plan of attack for hanging out in Hong Kong for the rest of the day.

By the time that Jo showed up again, I was ready and rarin’ to go for seeing a few sights in Hong Kong.

I’d never really been particularly interested in Hong Kong prior. They also speak Cantonese there, and I don’t have the highest opinion in the world of the usefulness of that language. Also, it’s a relic of the British Empire, which only flipped from British control in 1997. In fact, many of the older coins and such still feature Queen Elizabeth II on the heads portion of the coin.

Nowadays, its one of the world’s financial mega-centers, and that’s all I really had to think of it on the face of it. Just another friggin’ modern city, or something.

Since I was there, though, I figured I ought to make the most of it and at least try to enjoy myself a bit.

The first thing on our itinerary was to go up to the top of Victoria Peak, a peak rising in the middle of the island that gives a nice view of the skyline and the bay, as well as the banks of Kowloon just opposing it. To do so, you have to take a small tram up to the top, so we were told. First things first, we had to get to the area, so we stepped onto another sort of tram at this spot:

And took it to this spot:

Then asked around a bit, to find out we had to walk up this hill:

Past this cathedral:

To the beginning of the trail to the peak, at this tram station:

It was a short ride along the tram to get to the top of the peak, and we were brought straight into the core of a building that had a series of escalators taking you to a higher level with a bigger view, to find out we had to pay an extra fee to get in to that very top section. We moaned about it a little, but gave in, and were treated to a decent view, just prior to the rolling in of a bunch of clouds that would obfuscate the rest of the night, and bring it down to a quite chilly temperature on that peak. Here’s a picture or two of that view:

Afterwards, we headed down towards a common area of over priced restaurants mixed with a few middling ones, and grabbed ourselves a small snack before heading back down the mountain. I got myself another obligatory cup of Starbucks coffee, naturally.

Once we were at the end of it all, we walked in general towards the water. Not long after we started, we stumbled across this scene:

 

 

We weren’t exactly sure what it was at first, but soon it became clear it was a sort of political rally. I had read an article only a few days prior about some things that were going on in Hong Kong, about a few representatives from their legislature stepping down.

Hong Kong’s government is kind of complicated. Technically, they’re a part of China, but really, they have a fully separate government and many other different aspects; their own currency, their own internet domain endings, and so on. When Hong Kong flipped from Britain to China in 1997, it was with the understanding that the government of China would allow them fully autonomous democratic government. I don’t want to get too deep into this, but basically they have a legislature where half the representatives are democratically elected, and half of them are appointed, resulting in a half-assed democracy. About ten political parties in Hong Kong exist that support further democratization, and several exist that support stronger ties with the government of the rest of China. The representatives that just stepped down from the legislature did so to enact special midterm elections that are supposed to act as a referendum on democracy, so they say, and that’s what I assumed this thing was about.

Apparently, in addition to that (my assumption was accurate) there was also a bit of a protest about a performance that was supposed to be taking place in Hong Kong that weekend, but was cancelled by the Chinese government due to the fact that a couple of the performers were members of Falun Gong, a religious sect that has some seriously bad relations with the Chinese government. I started talking to a Chinese lady, after receiving newspapers and my own little inflatable clapping balloons (those things everyone is holding in the above pictures are inflatable batons hit against each other to simulate clapping. No, I don’t understand the need either), and it turned out she’s actually living currently in Colorado, and came to Hong Kong to see this performance, but since it was cancelled, she decided to volunteer at this rally.

This lady was onstage:

And I asked the volunteer who the lady onstage was, since it was obvious she was giving an important speech at this rally. She didn’t know, either, in fact, and upon looking at me and the big camera slung around my neck, asked “are you a journalist?” I just responded, “not exactly,” but she insisted on getting me my own exclusive interview with whoever it was onstage anyhow, as soon as she had come off stage. I said, “what the hell, why not”, as I was dragged over there by the wrist to start talking to the woman.

I wasn’t exactly prepared for this, but as the cameramen gathered around me to film it, I did my best to ask what her party’s angle was in this whole debacle. She stressed that it was nothing more than a concerted effort on democracy, but I still have my suspicions. If I had five minutes to prepare, I would’ve had more insightful questions to ask, but as it was, I think it could have been worse, so I didn’t feel too bad.

Here's a picture of her after my interview, quite clearly not too shaken:

In fact, I was elated, and for the next twenty minutes I ranted on and on to Jo about what I thought of this and Chinese political drama in general. I’m sure she got quite sick of it, but she was a good sport, so all’s well that ends well.

The next stop was to take a ferry across to Kowloon, the Star Ferry, a historical part of Hong Kong that’s been operating for over a century and only had service interrupted for WWII. It is an extremely cheap ferry, and gets you across the waters to the other part of Hong Kong quite swiftly. Here’s a few photos from that short but memorable trip:

Soon enough we landed at Kowloon, and walked in general towards the night markets that its well known for on Temple street. Along the way, I saw this sign:

When I did what it asked, I saw this:

Well, I thought it was funny.

Anyhow, we made it all the way to the night market in no time, but it was really nothing special, only the sort of thing that a Westerner who’d never seen any other part of Asia might think is cool. I did pick up a plug adapter though, so hurray for that at least.

After wandering through it all for a bit, we went after our second priority, which was food. I for some reason had imagined there would be plenty of street stalls, and that was far from accurate. In fact, there was nothing but restaurants, and a great deal of them, mostly marked up slightly due to the propensity of tourists for going here. They also mainly catered in seafood, which is something I’m not too fond of in Chinese cuisine, but hey, what can you do.

So we ordered some squid, some Yangzhou fried rice with shrimp and ham, and I think some shrimp with cashews. Here’s a picture of it all, and a picture of me eating shrimp’s tentacle:

From there, we booked it to get to a metro station to make sure we could get back to our hostel before the metro line closed, and I think we caught probably one of the very last trains to do so.

When we got back, we went our separate ways. I told Jo that if I couldn’t get a flight to Bangkok, as I’d be having to buy it at the airport and didn’t have any guarantee that there’d be any available, that I’d be back at the hostel by no later than 10:30, and we could do round two, but otherwise, I wished her the best. I probably should have gotten some sort of contact information, just because, but it just doesn’t happen every time.

I still had some things to figure out. My iPhone was dead, and because of certain . . . modifications I had made to it, there would be issues with making it work again. I therefore had no alarm clock, and I had to get up by no later than 6ish if I was to catch an airport shuttle outside of the hostel. So I resolved to just stay up. I wandered around the dead silent streets of Hong Kong for a couple of hours, got a really boring massage that was more expensive and less effective than what I usually get in Shanghai.

The streets really WERE dead, too. It was a bit strange to me, as Shanghai never fully shuts down.

Other than that, I waited until it was time, then got outside to catch the bus, and go to the airport.

I kinda missed Hong Kong almost immediately after leaving it. In truth, it reminded me very much of a Chinese version of San Francisco, a city in America that is after my own heart. I didn’t miss it too much, though, as I almost immediately fell asleep on the shuttle, and it seemed like less than five minutes later, we were at the airport, which was in fact no less than an hour away.

When I got inside the airport, it was initially not particularly different from any airports I had seen before. I walked for an eternity to get to where I needed to be, and had to withdraw cash to pay for the ticket. There was indeed some available tickets, so all was fine and dandy, and I killed some time at Burger King with a egg and sausage sandwich and cup of coffee, waiting til it was time to board, then suddenly realizing I still had to go through that whole security thing.

It was easy enough to get through, and soon enough I was sitting on the plane, ready to fly to Bangkok. It would only be a couple of hours.