asia lite - vacation notes three

the sheets here all smell like sandalwood. a familiar smell but not one associated with western sheets. a good metaphor for hong kong. its neither overwhelmingly asian, as i first expected, nor completely westernized, but rather somewhere in between. since the city is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary as part of china, it makes sense that centuries of english rule would have this affect on the country.

they drive on the opposite side of the road from the us (thanks jenny!) but unlike the metropolitan of london, they careen up a curving, one-way in each direction cliff side road cut into the mountain. all signs are written in both english and Cantonese. although most people are chinese, there are a fair amount of americans, british and europeans, but perhaps that is because we've been hitting fairly common tourist sights so far.

i had a moment or so of panic when my plane arrived way before tara and todd latini (affectionately know as "TL squared" or "TL2") expected, and once passing through customs i kinda wandered around the arrival area, wondering what exactly i should do. i had gotten confused about my arrival times, what if they had read the schedule wrong? without a cell phone, i needed to try and call her on a pay phone, but i didn't' have any local currency. so i visited a atm, only to receive $500 bills, hong kong dollars. so now i needed to find a way to transform these into a phone card or change. after talking to three visitor stations i was firmly directed to the correct place, and thankfully ran into tara and todd on the way. but felt better that if i had to, i probably could have gotten myself into hong kong proper solo, and had them meet me there.

the hong kong express from the airport takes you past chinese diseyland (i forget there was one here!) and some of the former outposts for the Beijing olympics, and into central hong kong in under twenty minutes. i was only in central hong kong for a few minutes as we zipped up the mountain to "the peak" where TL2, and most transplants, live. cabs are super cheap here, in fact, after london, everything seems super cheap here. the latini household, however, looks expensive. the wood floors are so shiny they could be mirrors, and about every window of their huge three bedroom (plus live-in maid quarters!) has spectacular views of the water. their main balcony overlooks the central part of central town, and its such a off putting feeling to be looking down on towering skyscrapers. manhattan looks tiny compared to this place. the international finance center (see "tomb raider 2") towers over everything else, which are all auspicious in daylight but kind of whimsical at night, where they seem to compete for the "silliest light show on the side of a building" award.

after dropping off my stuff and changing into attire appropriate for 85 degrees F and humid, tara and i head off to stanley, a shopping area located on the water half way across the island, near repulse bay. it stands to mention, that stanley was named after the prodigious lord stanley, yes THAT one, who would have been happy to hear of ottowa's victory last night. again, the cab raced around the precipitous curves of the mountains, wrong side of the road, which is not only a bit frightening but also Nassau inducing. a 25 minute cab ride there, it should be noted, cost about US$8. i shopped like an award winner, and managing to only spend about US$140. i loved looking at the money in my bank account at the atm here, since it gives your balance in HK$ and looks like much more then it actually is!

this could be very dangerous.

today i'm going to visit the biggest outdoor buddha in the world. ommmmm....

xx