Mark Smalley

Thursday, 7 Apr - Hong Kong
We buy a couple of souvenir items in the Salvation Army hotel shop, where the assistants phone rings with the Halleluljah Chorus ringtone.

Our last little trip is 2 MTR stops North of the hotel, to a bird market where they also sell birdfood: live grubs, grasshoppers and salamanders at $10 a bag. Then it's the flower market, not really a market but the area where all the flower shops seem to be concentrated, as the Chinese usually do. This leads us to the goldfish area and after that Ladies market. Close to this we stumble on a three story market building, mainly food, some alive, dead on in between, like a fish with the top quarter sliced off, showing the digestive system.

Some young teenage girls approach us and ask whether we'll pose with them for a photo. I assume they've mistaken me for a basketball player and don't like to spoil their day so we oblige. I can only just resist showing the peace sign alongside my smile, something lots of kids do when having their photo taken.

Speaking about resisting things, after a few days as a tourist in a new place I have to resist the urge to give other tourists unsolicited advice. Am I alone in this, I wonder.

The illusion of HK efficiency gets cracked when a drinks vending machine refuses to deliver or refund and nobody arrives with 2 minutes, having automatically been paged that a machine has malfunctioned.

Go for a haircut at Nice Hair Salon on the corner of Bowring St and Temple St. Have to wait a bit but get togged up in a gown with a piece of paper pinned on the back with my order. Young chap arrives, pleasant enough but looks unfamiliar with the equipment. It's like the unorthodox Chinese table tennis grip, I convince myself, trying to look inscrutable. This look seems to misfire, generating a "Why you look scared?"
He's a nervous kind of guy, regularly glancing out of the window as if he's expecting somebody who's collecting long overdue gambling debts.
He cuts away for ages, glancing inquisitively at me from time to time. I've dropped the inscrutable look by now and have adopted the look I use while walking and coming across other walkers. It's a cross between a smile and the grimace of somebody who's constipated. As my hair gets shorter and shorter, I wonder whether it's the custom here that the customer says when it's short enough, so I say "Looks good to me" and he prepares for landing. Takes about 35 min or so in total and costs $68, less than half what I pay at home but more than four times the price in Bangkok.

I return to Kowloon Park, where I left Marijke, who comments that this is the first time in 6 weeks that we haven't been doing anything or going anywhere. There'll be an opportunity to do some more nothing when we get back home because I imagine the idea of 1000 holiday photos and 8 hours of video will be enough to keep everyone at bay for a while.

Early evening meal is Beef breast noodle soup and BBQ pork and rice for $44 and not bad at all.

Walk down to the TST promenade for a view of the twilight skyline, briefly taking a look inside the cultural centre on the way. Mesmerising, as it slowly gets dark.

We take the same transport to the airport as coming in, the Cityflyer A21. A bus every 10 min, takes 40 min.

And then it's joy o joy, our early check-in strategy works, we ask for favourable seats and get row 71 allocated, where instead of 3-4-3 they've got 2-4-2 and we've got one of the pairs, much better for a 13 hour flight. Mind you, we checked in at 2100, 4 hours before departure (with 25 before us) but it's not too bad hanging around at HK airport. Big place, between 5 and 10 eateries, plenty of shops, prices not too bad for airport standards but the Canon S70 we looked at in town for $3800 costs $4570 here.

Costs: 5x548 + 50 + 140 = 2830 on the credit card + 3000 - 187 cash = $5643 of which:
- 2640 was lodging for 5 nights
- 3003 food and other costs for 7 days.
That's 553 euro or 92 a day (the previous destinations I've calculated on the number of nights but this was 5 nights and 7 full days so I've reckoned with 6 this time). Tasmania was 139 euro, NZ 95, Brisbane 92, Bangkok 88.

I've put some more photo's in an album on http://community.webshots.com/user/marksmalley.

posted by Mark Smalley @ 1:37 PM