Hong Kong is Annoying, But We'll Be Back

There they are- our two ferry tickets to Hong Kong. When we got to the ferry terminal on Saturday morning, we could see signs posted that the 11:45 crossing had been cancelled, so we felt really pleased with ourselves that we'd gone early to catch the 10:15.

We changed our money, and then waited in this long line to go through customs before loading on the boat. Of course, there were no signs to tell us what the line was for, we just had to guess that we needed to wait in it.

After getting to the front of the line, the ticket guy looked at our tickets and said "No, wait 20 minutes" and directed us to stand against the wall next to him to wait. We'd been waiting in the line for the Hong Kong Airport ferry! Lots of other people had too, so we didn't feel so dumb. So we waited. Then, about 15 minutes later (we'd been waiting an hour total), another guy comes out, looks at our tickets and says "No, get refund. Boat broken." Whaaaaa? "Both the 10:15 AND the 11:45 are broken?", we asked. "Yes," he said, "Go to Shenzhen Bay. I'm sorry."

Now, a lot of stupid stuff happens in China, and this is the first time someone's ever actually said "sorry" for it, so we couldn't really hate on the guy. We hadn't had time to research the Shenzhen Bay crossing, so this kind of threw us for a loop. We got our refund easily, and dodged the beggars ("Hello, how are you Money?") to hail a taxi for Shenzhen Bay

The canceled ferry was annoying, but it had nothing on the hell that was Shenzhen Bay, which is a bridge that connects Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Let me tell you, if the ferry is ever closed again and I have to go to Shenzhen Bay- I'm cancelling my trip. The first thing you do at Shenzhen Bay is wait in line to go through immigration. I have never, EVER seen so many people in my life. I would guess there were minimum 50,000 people ahead of us in line, no joke. We just followed the signs that said "to Hong Kong" and waited in this massive group of people. Then, every 5-10 minutes, some guards would release a barrier, and everyone would push and run forward as far as they could before the next guard closed the next barrier. By the time we cleared the two China and Hong Kong checkpoints, we'd been standing in that line- nowhere to sit, no bathrooms, no water- for two hours. On top of the hour at the ferry terminal, we'd now been standing for three hours straight. And gotten nowhere: our apartment was still only 10 minutes away.

When we finally got out of immigration, we had no idea what to expect, but we pictured a place to buy bus tickets and some other transportation options. We did find a few buses, with a few English descriptions of their routes, but they cost $11HKD per person (exact fare only) and our only denomination smaller than $100 was $20. We were $2HKD short of an easy bus ride into HK. We thought we'd just make change for the $100, but SURPRISE, there was nowhere to make change. No shops, no ticket booth, nothing. We actually found some vending machines and thought our luck had changed, but they only accepted Chinese RMB. It was time to take a taxi. 

So, we checked a sign that listed the estimated prices for a taxi to the area we were traveling to, and it was about $35CAD. Pretty steep, but we were trying desperately to salvage the trip, and we hadn't had to pay for the ferry afterall. So we got in this guy's taxi, he asks us where we want to go and I say "Causeway Bay". He repeats it twice and then confirms I mean the metro station at Causeway. Imagine our surprise, 45 minutes later, when he's driven us to DISNEYWORLD. There's a metro near Disney called "Sunny Bay"! He asked if that was "OK?" and asked for the full fare (which at this point was what we would have paid to get where we actually wanted to go) we basically freaked out on him. I took pictures of his ID, threatened to call the complaints line, and then he started driving again. When we finally got to Causeway Bay, we'd been in his cab for 90 minutes and the fare was up over $70. We refused to pay, but ultimately we knew we were screwed because Mel had tested that complaints phone line while we were still driving and they're closed on the weekends. We negotiated the price down to $50, still a ripoff, and agreed to try to forget about how stupid everything was being.

SO, the next hour was pretty cool. We basically just walked and shopped around the Causeway Bay area and got to see a little of HK for the first time. Definitely, I think the most distinguishing part of Hong Kong's "look" is the signage. It's pretty unique, the way there's just this overabundance of signs that stretch out over and above the highways. I like it!

There were lots of little shops and BIG shops, but we had wasted like close to 5 hours at that point, so it was time for business. Mel wanted to get some grammar books for her class, so we headed to Page One bookstore in Times Square mall. It's a 13 story mall!

You can see the British influence, even in the bookstore: Where's Waldo is Where's Wally in the UK, and in HK too.

Soooooo, the mall didn't really have any educational books (not the kind Mel was looking for) and it also didn't have a food court (we were going somewhere high end for supper so we wanted some cheap eats for lunch) so since we were STARVING and there was nothing else around we went to McDonald's. I'm almost ashamed to post that. But, I can report that the menu is totally different (better) than China's. They sell quarter pounders, and sausage & egg mcmuffins are an all day thing. And my big n' tasty was delicious. After McDicks, we headed to a 6 story Forever 21!! The Men's section was small, as always, and was all hoodies and cardigans (who's looking for sweaters in 40 degree heat?), but Mel got some nice stuff. At this point, our feet were exhausted, so we got on the subway to go to the Peninsula Hotel for high tea.

Last year, Mel and I both read a book called "Gweilo" about a British boy who grew up in Hong Kong in the 40s. His mother used to bring him to the Peninsula for high tea, and he wrote about it in great detail. The Peninsula still serves their tea the same way they did 80 years ago, so even though we aren't tea drinkers at all, we thought it would be fun to experience this high tea and be fancy hos for the afternoon.

THERE WAS ANOTHER LINE. There was probably 50 people ahead of us. We'd read that there can be a 30-45 minute wait on the weekends, so we were prepared for this. We waited. And we waited. For 90 minutes we just stood there. Nowhere to sit or anything, just standing there, wasting our 5th and 6th hours in Hong Kong, respectively. By the time we gave up, not a single person had been seated in 45 minutes straight. The whole time we could see everybody eating and enjoying their fancy teas and scones. All of their conversations looked extremely annoying and nobody was eating nearly fast enough. We were disappointed :(

Walking to our next destination, we noticed that some workers were using some bamboo and rope as scaffolding. Maybe my dad should try this for his next house?

Our next stop was the Temple Street night market, which I was excited to see, but at the same time I kept waiting for when it would start to suck. We definitely had storm clouds over our heads by this point. Here we are walking through one of many sexy tents on our way to the market. Hong Kongers must need a lot of sex toys, because there were A LOT of people selling toys.

Here's the entrance to the market.

And here's what the market looked like. It was really cool, probably my favorite part of the day. It was small, crowded, and full of neat things. The stalls repeat quite a bit though: beats by dre knockoff stall (got some!), sunglasses knockoffs, paintings, bags, novelty USBs and flashlights, and repeat.

At this point our feet were on fire. Literally in so much pain. Between the ferry, immigration, and the Peninsula we'd been standing in lines for 4.5 hours, not to mention all the walking we'd done. We decided to get foot massages. Never mind that this was the third day in a row for me that I'd gotten a massage- this was a medical emergency. We would have needed to have our feet amputated if we didn't get massages!

The first place we went had a rat bait warning in the stairwell, so we walked back out and went into another place instead.

Our massages were great! We each had old Chinese grandmas working our toes for a full hour and it felt amazing. Plus, they had a cat so the place was basically perfect.

After the massages we felt a lot better, but we needed to find some quick food since we hadn't been able to eat at the Peninsula. We got some middle eastern food at the night market, and it was good, especially the hummus, but a little small.

I guess we could have eaten at this place instead.

NOM.

On our way back to the subway station, we passed Obama Language Center, where I'm assuming they teach you some Muslim languages.

In Hong Kong, Astroboy is the spokesman for electrical safety. (ad from the subway station)

We went to the Avenue of the Stars, near where we'd been for the Peninsula. The skyline is AMAZING.

Pictures can't do it justice, but it looked so cool. At 8pm, there was a music and light show on the buildings, where the lights moved around and lazers projected in the sky. I'd heard a lot about this, but neither of us thought it was very impressive. The movement and flashing of the lights is just too subtle and unnoticeable to make it worth watching again.

We'd been dreading going back through immigration again. If it was anything like this morning was, it would have killed us. We'd definitely have freaked out on someone and gotten ourselves stuck in Chinese prison. Luckily, our friends Stephen and Kayla gave us an amazing tip which we will always use from now on. We went to the nearby Elements Mall, and bought a ticket for a mainland bus. It was so easy! We bought 9:15 tickets so we could look around the mall a bit (totally bought a bunch of chips and Mars bars at the 360 grocery store) before loading onto our comfortable, 1/3 full bus.Within 45 minutes, we'd been let off at Shenzhen Bay, breezed through immigration, and we were back!

Back for one final insult. The picture above? That was the line for a taxi!!!!!!! It took about 35 minutes for us to get our taxi, which was probably better than I would have guessed when we reluctantly joined the line.

All in all, we're pretty disappointed with the trip. I expected to waste time on some newbie mistakes, but this shit wasn't our fault. Broken boats and taxis to Disney really did us in for the day, and we felt like we hardly got to see much of Hong Kong. We're not writing it off, though. What we saw was cool. And I don't think this was a typical experience. We'll go back to stay for a few days when my brother visits the weekend after next, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Plus, we're going to Disneyland. So if a taxi takes us there, we'll be alright with it!