back from my Hong Kong/Macau trip, and i've gotta say, it was everything i hoped and more. first of all, it was really nice to get out of beijing, where i've been now for over three months. i went to macau to write a hotel review for city weekend, and then added an extra day to my trip to get a visa from hongkong. i hadn't really thought much about hong kong prior to going, it always had just sounded like some place where rich businessman took body shots off of ugly prostitutes. i was totally unprepared for the fact that i would fall in love with the city. it didn't seem promising at first. my flight was through macau, and after an hour ferry ride to hong kong and a long cab ride with a man who jabbered away at me in a dialect i couldn't for the life of me understand, i was ready to meet up with my friend and party up the town. i went to the hostel i'd booked a room in, and was surprised at how crappy it was, especially since i'd missed my reservation so they gave me a mattress on the floor to sleep on. the area i was staying in looked shady, and feeling desolate, especially once i found that my friend was staying really far from me, i begged him to let me crash at the house of the family he was staying with. setting out for the trek over there, i stopped at a mcdonalds to grab a meal. i don't know what did it, maybe it was just the mcdonalds magic, but for some reason when i walked out onto the street again, it didn't look so bad. and thinking about the hostel, it didn't seem so bad either. i decided that if i'm going to be travelling around asia this summer, i'm going to have to toughen up and deal with stuff. and that's what i did. i walked around the kowloon area where i was staying, looking at stores and taking in the atmosphere. when i got back to the room at around 12:30, all the hostelers were back, and i played an enjoyable game of kings with two germans, an australian, and a canadian. i even taught them some of my american rules, which were greatly appreciated. go u.s.!
the next day, feeling rejuvenated, i headed out to deal with visa issues. i went to the address of a travel agency that my boss had said would give me a work visa no questions asked (you're supposed to have a letter from an employer to get one), but was annoyed to find that they served everyone but americans. damn you, u.s.! so i had to head over to the american visa office, over on Hong Kong island. there i made the stupid move of trying my luck at a work visa, saying that i had forgotten the letter. stupid! they said they couldn't give me the work visa without the letter, and since i had admitted that i was living and working in China, they couldn't give me a travel visa. i finally convinced them to give me something to get back into the country, but they would only do a 30-day single entry. and i had to pay 650 kuai ($80) for it. don't mess with a visa office.
i had four hours before i had to pick up the visa, so i decided i'd see as much of the city as i could. first i headed over to victoria's peak, the highest point on the island. there's a cool tram that takes you up there, and then there are amazing views of the city. also a Madame Tussauds, but i couldn't afford it. this took way less time than i had planned, so i decided to walk back down rather than take the tram, something one of my fellow hostelers had recommended. i should have known better, damn germans. i don't even think people are supposed to walk down, i found myself walking along a straight-up road with no space for pedestrians, hoping that i would at some point start to head downhill. eventually i did, and within an hour i was somewhat near to being back in the city. i was getting tired of walking though, and frustrated that the streets i had reached still weren't on the map. at this point, i walked into a pole. just straight up walked into it. i banged my nose and my shoulder really hard, but at least no one saw. from there, i somehow wandered into the zoo, where i looked at some pretty birds and compared camera megapixels with another tourist. i made my way over to Central, the central area of Hong Kong island, and took in all the stores and tall buildings. i'm really into seeing the subway system in every major city, so then i took the subway back to the visa building's area. it was pretty nice, not among my favorites, but not bad. got my visa, and still had a while before i was going to catch the ferry back to macau for check-in at 8.
so i crossed the water again back to Kowloon where my hostel had been. luckily for me, wednesdays are free museum days, so i strolled through the space museum and the art museum. in the space museum, they had a thing that would make you feel like you were weightless, like the astronauts. looked cool, but once they put me in the harness thing i realized it was actually extremely painful. so then i had to pretend to be having fun while my hips were being sliced open, and a bunch of chinese people stared at me. also at first my shirt came up so my whole stomach was hanging out for them to see.
at the art museum, i saw their contemporary chinese exhibit, which was a bunch of screens and things made of human hair. there was also a room full of shoes made from human hair, all of which looked like something i pulled out of my drain. i'd like to talk to the brainiac curator who picked that exhibit. at this point my time had run out, so i headed for the ferry to macau. now i must go to sleep, so i'll tell about macau tomorrow or something.