hongkong survival guide

I once read in a book that, the best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot. It’s amazing how a little dot in the globe can be so vast and huge. It helps that HK had a great transportation system. The MTR gets you from A to B. Although this octopus train takes you anywhere you want to go, this does not spare your feet from a sound beating. To get the feel, the essence so to speak, still entails walking, and for this case tons of knee grease. With all the twists and turns, the nooks and crannies of this wonderful city, you will be using your feet more than ever before. It has all the proverbial sights, sounds and smells attributed to China towns’ world wide, except that this time it’s not just a part of town, it’s the whole country. [duh, what did I expect?] We are staying at the Grand Hyatt at the Wan Chai part in the Hong Kong side and this part of the city smells fishy, literally! It’s not really nauseating, but it’s not that pleasant either. So far, I am enjoying every minute of my stay here and here are some things that I have noticed…

The moment I got to be in the streets in HK, it seems reminiscent of another busy setting I know, NY. The same body of water separating islands of the Hong Kong side and the Kowloon side but it’s nothing the octopus train can’t get thorugh. The same busy streets, the same cramped apartments everywhere. It’s like the Asian version of New York minus all the dirt and the grime because people here are really disciplined, clean and conservative. Every place you turn looks spotless, I haven’t seen any vandalism on the walls and so far, no one has mugged me for money just yet. All in all, I’m impressed.

No wonder that this country is so progressive, everyone seems so busy. It’s like they like working all the time. They walk fast, in big strides and you have to keep up with them or else you lose your spot or get run over [just kidding]. I’ve gotten used to it eventually but it still strains my legs a bit. Now that’s why these Chinese people are so thin even with all those scrumptious Chinese food, they walk a lot and I do mean a lot. Their definition of a long walk surpassed my definition by a mile and a half.

Being in Hong Kong is also a test of your hearing ability. Not a lot of locals speak English and those who do speak it, [not really all but most of them] are hard to comprehend. I was asking this guy for directions and he talked for what seemed like 5 minutes with all the pauses and non fluencies. And it was then and there that I recalled what Chris Tucker said to Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, “do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” My answer would have been “no” and at some point in our conversation, I was convinced we weren’t talking about the same thing at all. We were just both nodding to be polite.

My expertise in Mandarin didn’t help either because HK was a predominantly Cantonese speaking country and as it turns out, they have a different version of Mandarin. I figured I must’ve sounded funny to them, in the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger sounds so funny when he speaks English. But they weren’t laughing so that was good and it also took 10 minutes to order a bowl of noodles. The taste was worth it. Man, these people really know how to cook.

Here’s a peek of me and my sister waiting for that noodle snack.



Another thing would be the transposition of words, you know how sometimes you get bored with words and you interchange them. Like Fornia-Cali for California or Diego San for San Diego, essentially mean the same thing. My sister and I discovered that Wan Chai and Chai Wan were two different places and we learned that the hard way. Our feet were severely sore at the end of the day. But we’re not complaining, all the more places to visit. It’s not everyday that you wake up and find yourself in an exotic place like Hong Kong.