Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Well, you’ll finally be done with us after this message, save our inevitable upcoming messages regarding our photos.

Our internet connection at home went down a few days ago, so we were able to write from Hong Kong.

The second day of our Mekong Delta trip was good, but a bit boat-heavy. We started the morning in a bunch of rickety row boats rowed by women who stand at the stern. I find it very odd that all rowboats in Vietnam are rowed by a person at the stern. I personally find it much easier to row backwards than forwards. Anyway, our boat was more rickety than the rest. Right next to me, there was a little jet of water coming in, about as high as a drinking fountain. It was spraying water about 3 inches into the air. I discovered this and pointed it out to Ian, who wasn’t too pleased, given that he can’t swim. When I showed it to the German in front of me, he spent a few minutes trying to plug it with his finger, but I guess only the Dutch can do that successfully. The boat lady took some goo from one crack and tried to plug the hole with it, but all it did was stop the jet, the water was still seeping in. When the boat with our guide pulled up, Ian asked how long we’d be in the boats and he said it would be another 30 minutes. This is when Ian really got nervous. I had visions of making floats for him out of empty water bottles. I yelled to the guide that Ian couldn’t swim (something he studiously avoids mentioning). Luckily, we had a scheduled stop at a floating village just a few minutes away, so we boarded a different boat for the rest of the journey.

We stopped in a Cham village later during the rowboat ride. The people in this village are Muslim, not Buddhist as elsewhere. It was odd to see a mosque. The kids in this village were just dying for pens or gum. We’d encountered kids in the town where we stayed with the same requests. Our guide told us that they needed pens for their schoolwork. I found this particularly frustrating because we have one zillion pens and I considered bringing some on our trip so that I’d have something to give to the kids that wouldn’t have a terrible cultural impact, but then I figured that they wouldn’t be interested in pens. Oh well. We had three pens with us, so I gave one away.

Once we got back to Saigon, we picked up our bags at the tour operator’s office where we left them. When we got back to the room, I was taking some clothes out and discovered ants on my trousers. I’m not a bug-lover, so this was very displeasing. We couldn’t figure out where they’d come from. After we managed to pick them off of everything in my bag (they were reasonable localized to a single area), we discovered a hole in the bottom of my bag and quickly realized that a rat had clearly eaten a hole in my new bag to get at the power bars that were individually sealed and stored in a heavy-duty ziploc bag. You’ve got to be impressed by the rat’s nose. There was a half-eaten bag of power bars in there, hence the ants. I’m not happy about the hole in my bag, although the rat did pick a decent spot to make a hole in that it didn’t compromise the structural integrity and it was pretty easy to avoid having stuff fall out of it due to where it was. We got the bags at REI. I’m told that REI is like Nordstrom’s in their dedication to customer service. Who knows, maybe the lifetime guarantee covers rat holes.

We arrived in Hong Kong in the afternoon of the 29th. In Hong Kong, the immigration people each have ballots on their desks for people to vote for the most courteous immigration officer. I voted for our guy because he smiled, more than I can say for most immigration officers who speak only the language of grunt. We got to our hotel in record time, thanks to the very efficient airport transit system. Our hotel was marvelous. The lights, air conditioning, and do not disturb and make up the room indicators were all controlled by a panel on the bedside table. There were real towels, full-sized and not like sandpaper, and, best of all, a down comforter! Of course, the price tag was somewhat higher as well.

Hong Kong is a shopper’s paradise. I like to shop, but only for bargains. Not just for stuff priced at or above its value. So Hong Kong wasn’t all that interesting to me. It is very beautiful, but most of the beautiful areas are residential, so access to them is limited to time spent on the bus. The weather was pretty crappy for our whole visit to Hong Kong, so we missed out on the view from the Peak 🙁

We went to Macau on our final day. We got there via a very nice, very smooth, very fast ferry called TurboJet. On the way there, we were mistakenly seated in Super Class, which was aptly named. It was just like first class on a 747. You go upstairs, someone smiles at you and kisses your butt and you get a big seat. The bathroom was fabulous. It was all marble and gold.

Macau was a bit of a disappointment, though there were good parts. The architecture is nice, but run-down. We found a great bakery and had yummy pastries. Pastries in the rest of our destinations left a bit to be desired. We went up the Macau Tower, a big Space Needle-looking thing. It was very funny there. In the floor of the observation deck, there were two areas with glass floors. I walked up to this, looked down for a moment and stepped on it. After all, I know that it will be fine — I’m certainly not the first person to walk on it. Ian had a different reaction, which was made doubly funny by the fact that he claims to want to sky dive and bungee jump. He got one look at this thing and said “I can’t do it.” I kept trying to get him to walk on it but he wouldn’t. Finally, I coaxed him into doing it, he inched his way on while I got the camera out to take a picture. We were at the end of a set of batteries, and the camera refused to take the picture, as it sometimes does when the batteries are sluggish. I told Ian that I had to rotate the batteries and he yelled, “Sarah, just take the $%&*@# picture!” He was a real grouch. His hands were almost as sweaty as they were during our wedding ceremony. That’s the only other time that I’ve felt his palms sweat. Later on, I stood on the biggest glass panel and jumped, just for the effect. It’s fun to be the brave one.

Our flight home was uneventful, other than the whiner sitting in the seat behind Ian. At the beginning of the flight, she asked him if he usually reclines his seat. He said that he usually did on an overnight flight. She asked him not to so that she could see the movie. I told her that the little screens imbedded in the backs of the seats swiveled a bit to counteract the effects of the reclining chair, but she seemed to already know about this. Ian never really responded either way to her request and just left it as he told her in the beginning, that he usually reclines his chair. After all, who doesn’t? So he reclines his seat an hour or so into the flight. We both hear her say something, but we have headphones on and don’t know what it was. Clearly something indicating displeasure. Later, Ian told me that she had clearly just woken up because he felt a big thump on his seat and heard her say “I can’t move!” Of course, the person in front of Ian (and everyone else on the plane) has reclined her seat. At the end of the flight, she said, “you know, it was really frustrating the way you reclined your seat for the whole trip. I couldn’t move.” He reminded her that everyone had the same amount of space and that she must have known prior to purchasing her ticket that the seats recline. He suggested that she fly first class next time. She grumbled some more and said that she didn’t recline her seat out of respect for the person behind her. She kept talking about it being disrespectful to recline your seat. So folks, keep this in mind next time you board an airplane: don’t press that recline button! It’s there as an aesthetic feature only.

Since we got home today, we’ve had too little time to sit around on our butts, so I’m going to sign off now and do just that. Work tomorrow, ugh. Oh, I almost forgot. So far, the homeopathic jet lag pills seem to be doing an equally good job for the return trip as they did for the outbound trip. We recommend them. Get them at REI or Whole Foods.

Hong Kong is the world’s biggest shopping mall. Wherever you look, overpriced shops and restaurants beckon you to enter.

This is clearly a different part of Asia to the area that we’ve grown accustomed to. Judicious use of funds is required to avoid spending more money here in a single weekend than during the previous month of our honeymoon combined.

In many ways, it reminds me of London here. Glitzy, ostentatious, the traffic on the left-hand side of the road, familiar road signs, markings and traffic lights.

As one would expect, excellent Cantonese cuisine can be enjoyed here, but as with all other things, the price reflects this.

The Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China doesn’t seem to have changed that much on the surface since the departure of the marauding Brits after their 99 year lease expired. The roads still bear their English names in addition to the Chinese names, English as a language is still used widely (though apparently on the wane), the currency is still the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) and the region still prints its own stamps. Besides, capitalism is clearly more at home here than in many places in the West.

We arrived late in the afternoon on Friday, which left us just enough time to be very impressed with the efficiency of the airport, the train to Kowloon (travelling at around 135 km/h) and the connecting bus shuttle to the hotel.

After checking in, we wandered out for a walk around downtown Kowloon. As hinted at before, the main thoroughfare of Nathan Road is not dissimilar to London’s Oxford Street: an endless parade of tasteless, designer tat in large window displays; nose-to-bumper double-decker buses, etc. Hong Kong competes admirably with Las Vegas for the sheer amount of neon signage.

Temple Street market was worth a quick look, if only because the corny cheap-and-nasty crap on sale there is different cheap-and-nasty crap than the stuff I’ve seen on sale before.

London has its Thames and Hong Kong has its own stretch of water, too, in the form of its harbour. The eponymous Hong Kong Island can be seen across the water from Kowloon, its own neon frontage reflected in the water and illuminating the low-lying cloud from below. It’s a most impressive sight, combining the spectacle of Las Vegas with the natural coastal beauty of San Francisco or Vancouver.

There are a lot of high-rise buildings in Hong Kong, but somehow they never seem to engulf you in the way that New York’s ugly, discordant skyline inspires claustrophobia and leaves you gasping for a glimpse of the firmament. The big city filth is also conspicuously absent in Hong Kong, with litter bins strategically positioned on every street corner.

Hong Kong traditionally enjoys gorgeous weather at this time of year, but apparently not on days when we’re known to be in town. The city has been plagued by low cloud cover and sporadic showers since our arrival.

Yesterday, we were up early for the tram ride to Victoria Peak (more commonly known as simply The Peak. This is on Hong Kong Island, so we caught the Star ferry from Kowloon, a crossing that takes just a few minutes.

he tram ride up to The Peak ascends some 439 metres with a gradient of 27 degrees to the horizontal in some places. You can feel the seat digging into your back during the ride.

The view from the top should, judging from the placards on the viewing terraces that label the sights, be one of the best cityscapes anywhere in the world, but, sadly, it was not destined to reveal itself to us today. The same thick veil of mist apparent on Friday kept Hong Kong harbour’s majesty well and truly under wraps. We’ll return on Monday if the weather improves.

The next stop on our list was Stanley Market, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The bus ride there from Central was nothing short of spectacular, even with the inclement weather working against it. Parts of the ride reminded me of Gibraltar and the old valley area of Luxembourg City.

On the way, we passed through Repulse Bay, with some beautiful beaches giving some clue of what Hong Kongers get up to at the weekend when the sun is shining.

After shopping in the rain at Stanley Market, we took another bus to the town of Aberdeen, on the south-west side of the island. This is a place with very little in common with its Scottish namesake.

The light was beginning to fade, so we chartered a sampan (a kind of motorised boat) for a 30 minute ride around the harbour. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but perhaps that’s because we’ve been spoilt by all of our other boating adventures of late.

After an unremarkable dinner, we struggled to find a bus back to Central, but eventually managed to locate a suitable bus-stop. Back at Central, we took the ferry back to Kowloon, where we had dessert and called it a day.