Singapore to Hong Kong

A quick trip to Singapore and then on to Hong Kong gave me a great break from the heat of Penang. Having lived in Penang for about 6 months now I think that I have become used to the heat each day. Now I only sweat constantly instead of constantly and profusely. I actually had a dream last night that it snowed in Penang and I can clearly recall dancing in my living room at the sight.

In Singapore the weather was mostly overcast and rainy, so that certainly contributed to it feeling cooler. I only spent about 36 hours in Singapore and I tried to do what touristy things there are, but since it was Chinese New Year half the stuff was shut down. I did see the Merlion, but I am still confused as to why Singaporeans worship a 5 meter tall half fish/half lion that is constantly vomiting. Its weird. I tried to go to the national museum, the horse races, Kinokuniya, and a number of other places all closed. Oh well, I will be back since it costs only about 30 usd to fly there! 

In HK the weather was perfect. Upper 20’s during the day and low 20’s to high teens at night. It was beautiful. If I could find a place with weather like that all year round that would be fantastic. The skies were also generally clear and HK is such a nice place because of all the mountains and waterfront. It really is a unique place. If you are looking at those photos and thinking, did he wear the same thing the whole trip? The answer is yes! (kind of) I packed a very light 4 day set and did washing at my friends so made a week long trip with about 7kg on my back. I figured, no one would really being seeing me more than once anyways so it wouldn’t matter (except for the people who read my blog, apparently). Yeah me for being practical!

Unfortunately flights to HK directly from KL (where I had to route) were expensive since it was Chinese New Year. For some reasons flights to Macau were considerably cheaper. So instead of flying direct I went to Macau then took a ferry to HK. I was staying with my friend Alex, but the first night I would arrive a bit late and the day I was leaving I flew out early so I booked hotel rooms for both of those nights. I made sure to do it far in advance since it was CNY and I knew that prices would only climb the longer I waited.

Arriving in Macau my CNY experience started off with a bang. There is a ferry terminal a short walk from Macau’s airport and as far as I knew you could not reserve tickets, plus ferries left every 30 minutes so I was pretty sure I would be able to buy a ticket. Wrong. All sold out for that day. So I back tracked to the airport and caught a cab to the other and more active ferry terminal on Macau’s main island. Not too much luck there either, but at least tickets were available. I ended up getting super class for about 50 dollars on a ferry that was leaving in 20 minutes. Despite getting in the immigration line immediately I barely made the ferry. Now, I am sure that as some of you read this and you hear the word ferry you are imagining some bulky iron boat. Not so. These are more like large streamlined pleasure boats holding 100-200 passengers. Plus, you certainly aren't imagining the young man standing next to me who was practicing martial arts on a support beam every 10 minutes or so. The ride was pretty good sailing and I got a meal with my ticket which helped me to forget about the cost of the ticket. Unfortunately I didn’t pay much attention to where the ferry would land in HK and so had to take the subway to get to my hotel. After wandering around for a bit to find it I finally arrived around 9pm. Now, because I was travelling alone and not expecting to do much more besides sleep PLUS hotel prices were jacked up for CNY I aimed to spend about 75usd for the night which left me few options. I ended up making both my bookings at the infamous Chunking Mansion on Nathan Rd. The first night I was staying at the Paris Guest House. Immediately upon entering the mansion I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I had been here before. Ah yes, it was in 1995 when I watched Judge Dredd. The crumbling walls, the hustlers and people of varied ethnicity all squishing against each other in this dystopian place brought me back, to the future. My first instinct was to chuck it in and find a nicer hotel. This was even before I reached the place where I had booked.  

From there forward, it got even better. After I had ridden the elevator in which the regulars managed to cram an extra person in after the weight alarm went off, by standing on their tiptoes by the door I tumbled out onto my floor. When I entered a couple of girls entered at the same time as me. They got to the front desk first and asked the man if he had a room for the night. In my head I was saying, “ARE YOU KIDDING?!? It’s Chinese New Year. You must be daft if you think you are going to walk into ANYWHERE and get a room.” So my turn came and I told the man, proudly, within easy earshot of the girls, “Yes, I have a reservation.” and proceeded to give him my information. Now, at first I thought that either he was sick, or he was on drugs. His eyes darted around, he avoided eye contact, and shuffled a bit. Then he asked me to sit and quickly got on the phone and proceeded to converse in rapid Hindi. Long story short, the hotel had sold my room and didn’t have another one. I argued for a bit, then hit the streets in search of another hotel.

After four hours of searching I was walking back by the Chungking Mansion on Nathan rd. when I was asked if I wanted dope, nope, or a girl (standing right there), nope, or a room, oh… uh yeah. So I followed the guy up to his guest house where he showed me the “room”  which was smaller than a prison cell. By this time it was 130am. So when I asked how much and he said 100usd I said, are you kidding? Its 130, you won’t sell this room to anyone else tonight. How about 300hkd? (about 50 dollars) back and forth we went, settling on 400hkd, the exact amount of my refund from my reserved hotel.

From there forward things went pretty smoothly. I slept through the night only hearing, “No, get your hands off of me!” a couple times from the vents leading to the dark alley next to the mansion. The next day I met my friend Alex and we took a nice hike after he showed me the school he works at , HKIS. He told me that sometimes on Fridays he hikes home after work. Lucky. Bugger. A few days of hiking, sleeping, and eating well in the very pleasant weather of Hong Kong and the company of my friend was enough to recharge my batteries. I even went back to the scene of one of the best moments of my life, where I proposed to Aya. Since Alex lives about a 5 minute walk away it wasn't hard to find, but sure was fun. I pretended to drop the ring all over again. 

We hiked the Dragon’s Back one day, a very nice hike with great views and as we were spit out near Shek O we spotted a mini-golf course. Victorious.  One night we went to dinner with a number of other teachers from his school. It was enlightening. They were all a bit older, 40’s and 50’s and had lots of experience. The thing that struck me most was the average age and tenure of teachers at HKIS. It seemed to be an average age of 45 and a tenure of more than 10 years. I think my school would be about 35 and 3 years.

Spending time in HK was great, but all things must come to an end. As I was preparing to depart I decided that I had better get to my hotel a bit earlier in the evening this time to ensure I actually got my reserved room. When I arrived the man behind the desk asked me repeatedly, “You are Kevin Hurley? Did you come here before? Where is your booking number? How do you know this is you if you don’t have the booking number?” I had not brought the print out assuming that I wouldn't need to. I clearly could see my name written on the list of customers he had for the night. Only after I produced my passport to verify my name did I realize what was going on. They had sold my room to someone else who had claimed to be me. I wondered why they wouldn't just kick them out, but it was Chinese New Year and there was money to be made. That’s my guess. Fortunately this time things turned out a little better and the guest house next door had a, better, room available. All things went well and I took the ferry back to Macau and the plane back to KL and then Penang. As I left the Penang airport the sun was just setting. I got into my car, which had been baking in the sun all day. AS I left the airport I was ensnared in traffic and got lost in the myriad of one way streets of Georgetown taking about an hour more than it should have to get to my apartment. I was home.