Dateline: Northwest flight 18 from Hong Kong to Tokyo, 27 August 2004
We’re finally outta China and on our way home. We checked out of the White Swan at 7am Thursday and took a bus to the new Guangzhou airport, where we said goodbye to guide David and were released from his protective custody. Armed with Vonne Mei’s immigrant visa on her Chinese passport, we not only had a new family member in tow, but America gets a new citizen in a few hours. But to get to this point, we had to transit through Hong Kong, which meant leaving China (sort of) and entering into . . . uh. . . China (sort of).
Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese by the British in 1997, but it remains a place unto itself—just attached to China. I mean, Hong Kong competes separately in the Olympics (yes, I notice such things) and yet, the men’s ping-pong doubles gold-medal match was described as “all Chinese” because one team was from P.R. China and the other was from Hong Kong.
Okay, so that’s a rather superficial point. Here are better ones: Hong Kong still uses Hong Kong dollars (7 to one buck), not Chinese yuan (8 to a buck). Plus, when you fly from China to Hong Kong, it’s considered an international flight, with all the requisite border control stuff on both ends. And yet we took China Southern, one of the domestic Chinese airlines, to Hong Kong.
Weird huh? And it felt weird. It felt like we were in a totally different country and yet it was still all Chinese, even if most of them spoke great English (many even with British accents, which is sort of strange when you see the words and faces seemingly working in different directions).
So it was like we had left real China and entered a sort of way station to the outside world, which was cool, because it was like the world was giving us an opportunity to decompress slowly from pure China to China lite to non-China (with the two-hour layover in Tokyo letting adjust even further—as though to avoid the cultural “bends” of coming up too quickly for air).
We were feeling pretty beat up when we arrived at Hong Kong International Airport. The good news was that our hotel was not only upscale, it was actually attached to the terminal itself by an enclosed walkway (it was raining). Neither Vonne nor I were feeling too good, and we were fairly exhausted, but after a good lunch at a hotel restaurant (where I found what real Ramen noodles are all about), Vonne talks me into spending the afternoon in Hong Kong (the island) proper.
In retrospect, the safe thing to do would have been simply to chill out in the room and go to bed early. Heck, Hong Kong International scans your body for a high temperature as you pass through security here (it’s done in a pretty cool fashion with a heat-sensing technology as you pass through a narrow passage, plus you can see your body pass through on a big visible screen {blue is cool)). If you’re “hot,” then you’re forbidden to travel until your temp returns to normal and the minimum delay is two days (and yes, it does happen, as it did happen to one family and their baby, who was later found to have pneumonia).
So here I was feeling pretty weird, like I might be coming down with a sinus infection or something, plus there was a typhoon level-one warning going on (thus the rain). But Vonne was like, “When are we going to get back to Hong Kong where it’s so easy to visit like this?” She was absolutely right, and already knowing how much Vonne Mei prefers to be on the go-go instead of hanging out in a hotel room, it seemed the best bet for getting a decent night’s sleep
So we go, baby in tow. We buy roundtrip tickets on the airport train line, which is much like the one that takes you from Heathrow to Paddington Station in London. Very new and high tech, and the scenery on the way down the peninsula toward Kowloon is quite beautiful (lush, tight hills and small mountains). Mei is transfixed by the view and already we feel like we made the right decision.
Past Kowloon and over to Hong Kong Island, we pull into Central Station, where we navigate our way out of the intricate maze of platforms (linked to a subway line) and up to the street, where we cross over to the big bus terminal next door. Asking around, we find out which bus (basically anything beginning with a “6”) will take us over the mountain ridge that runs the length of the island to its back side, which is far less developed than the north side, which resembles Manhattan in its skyscraper skyline.
We took the 66 (very lucky Chinese number), which was a double-decker (enclosed), and sat in the first row upstairs, which provided a fantastic view as we toured through the downtown, then moved past the big sport fields just beyond and then became our snaking, rather tortuous ascent up the mountain side along a very windy and narrow roadway full of buses, trucks and cars. I mean, every curve was as tight as could be, and more than a few times I tightened up instinctively, dead sure that we’d hit a double-decker coming the other way.
But when I wasn’t freaking over the close calls, I did enjoy the sights, which were quite spectacular. Hong Kong is one very vertical space, whether we’re talking the towering downtown or the towering mountain ridge dotted with houses and high-rise apartment buildings clinging to its steep sides. It’s really something to pass right by the window of an apartment that’s thirty-floors up! And with the constant hair-pin turns, I almost reached for the Dramamine.
Vonne Mei slept in the carrier the whole way across the island, waking up as we got off and started wandering around the old Stanley Street Market area, which is this never ending maze of small shops connected by very tight alleys—so tight that you didn’t really need an umbrella despite the rain.
First we got some cheesecake and tea. Actually, I got a hot water with lemon and shared it with Mei, who is really a baby willing to try almost any taste known to man.
Vonne and I really enjoyed shopping here. We had changed some USD to HKD at the hotel, and I was looking to score some coins, which I love to collect, especially any from the year 1997, when Hong Kong was handed back to the mainland. I was looking for those last cool trinkets for the kids, plus I really wanted to get a small pair of dragons for my office, the kind that you see at the front door/gates of almost every hotel or building of prominence in China. The one on the right is always the male dragon, with one paw clamped down on a ball symbolizing power. The one on the left is always the female, with her paw clamping down on a baby dragon.
I was in luck and picked up a pair of red ones for about $9US. Also got one of those funky waving cats for my son Kevin that we saw in so many stores at the cashier’s counters. Nice beaded shawl for Em, a nice Mickey and Minnie Mouse combo wearing traditional Chinese costumes for Jerry, and some beaded purses for Vonne—all at about 1/4th the cost of such items in all the other places we visited, so waiting for Hong Kong to get them paid off.
But really, it was just being out and about that was the fun here, as well as the many conversations with the shopkeepers. I find that the slower you are taking out your cash, the more the price comes down, so the fact that I carry a rather elaborate waist-pack really paid off because it made it seem like I was really uncomfortable parting with my cash and several of the shopkeepers seemed to view this as a negotiating tactic.
On the way out we bought some water bottles for the road and I shared a small Toblerone chocolate bar with an appreciative Vonne Mei.
I guess what we liked most about the afternoon was just being together on our own as a threesome, with no handlers and no directions or timelines.
We didn’t get back to the hotel until almost 7:30 that night. While Vonne watched the BBC for news on the typhoon, I doubled back to the airport and got some McDonald’s carryout for us both (quite good and reasonable). The familiar food felt good in our bellies, and after a quick repacking, we were lights out around 10pm.
Up at five the next morning, I showered and quickly ran over to the airport to make sure the plane was leaving despite the weather. It was. So I grabbed a cart and took it upstairs to our room (a no-no according to hotel policy, but no one stopped me). Then we loaded up and went over to check in. Spending the last of our HK dollars, we bought some reading material and more chocolate, plus grabbed a quick breakfast at McD’s.
The ride to Tokyo was about 4 hours, made all the more easier by flying in business class. We had an entire interior row to ourselves (row 17, the last in biz class in this very large jet airplane). Mei slept most of this flight, so I read several newspapers and Vonne managed to catch up on her sleep somewhat.
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