A Productive Weekend Experience

This weekend I did a lot of fun things, hung out with a bunch of fun, interesting people, and got to do some cool Hong Kong activities.

Friday started off later than expected as it took me a while to get myself going to get back to Wan Chai to pick up my visa.  By the time I was done with lunch, and after realizing that I needed to pay the $1030 HK in cash – an amount, that while only about $130 US, is not something people ever carry around.  Ultimately, it was a good thing that I didn’t go.  I spent most of the afternoon recovering from going out the night before and catching up on some reading and current events.

I’ve started reading a blog called TechCrunch, which I like a lot, and is just a more up-to-date version of the NYT or WSJ tech section.  Also, some crazy shit with the MA Senate race really surprised me.  Not so much that a Democratic seat could be lost in MA, but more that the Democratic party has its head so far up its ass that it couldn’t figure this one out.  Really pathetic and unfortunate for our country.  I read a good article by Paul Krugman in the Times about the healthcare bill and why it needs to be passed now (http://bit.ly/6fc1ba).  We are really in a desperate situation in our country and it scares me that we have a political system that is not focused on that.  Even further than that is the craziness that came out of the Supreme Court regarding election campaign financing.  I haven’t read up much on the actual backing of the decision, but this is going to make campaigns super-influenced and insanely more expensive.  Now, a company can run an ad about a candidate saying anything it wants, and have no direct accountability to the candidate at all.  Seems pretty crazy.  We’ll see what Chuck Schumer is coming up with to legislate around it (http://bit.ly/5kvVRb).

Friday evening I met a couple of my Dutch friends Isabelle and Renate at the MTR and headed to Mong Kok for dinner.  Above the station is a really huge (vertically) mall and is about 14 floors.  The funny part is that to get up you can’t really use an elevator but have to walk up in a spiral (like the Guggenheim) passing by all their stores – smart planning on their part, bad for my quads and hamstrings.  We ended up having some western-like food because waits were really long on a Friday night. We have had some really great conversation.  The two girls are grad students studying at CUHK for Cultural Management, which seems like a combination of sorts between Sociology and Anthropology and such.  We ended up brainstorming a bit for one of their thesis’ which was pretty interesting – about the cultural affects of tourism in democratic vs. authoritarian regimes in Asia.

Then we walked around Mong Kok for a while, ate some more street food (a la my Monatrice trip) and at around 11:30 went to Central to meet up with some of their friends, also post-grads, for some drinks.  We walked around the LKF area, which is really cool to do just for people watching.  We chatted with some promoters for a party next weekend about some underground hip-hop / techno DJ’s – too bad I’ll be in Thailand, oh well.  The cool part was seeing their flyers (handout below) literally on every lamppost in LKF.  Street teams are awesome.  We called it an early night and got back by three as Renate was going on the IASP-organized trip to Lamma and Po Toi Islands the next day, which left CUHK at 8am.

(Flyer for MTR party - "The MTR is freedom" - Kid Fresh)

Saturday I woke up around noon and met up with Isabelle and some of her other Dutch friends as well as my flatmate Mike to head off to Sha Tin to visit the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, conveniently a 10-minute walk from the MTR.

(Only $5 HK for students :)

The museum seems pretty new and has three floors – one of which was a children’s exhibition, which we skipped.  The main exhibit they had running was about Cantonese opera.  One was specifically about the most famous Hong Kong playwright Tong Tik Sang and actress/singer Yam Kim Fai.  It exhibited a lot of costumes, manuscripts, playbills and video clips in a really well done, modern exhibit.  Unfortunately, I was scolded for taking pictures, even without flash.

(Outside of museum - looks like a cool temple)

(Even the museum is prepping for Chinese New Year!)

(First exhibit - no photos allowed)

In retrospect, I should've visited that one second because the other one I went to was a more general Cantonese opera exhibit which was fascinating and had more information about the history and heritage of opera in Hong Kong.  While the opera singing is much less beautiful than, say Italian, it sounds more like screeching animals (in the nicest of ways), I plan on going to see one. Apparently it is much more akin to going to a movie than our conception of an opera, as people don’t really dress up, which is nice.

(Huge. Right at the entrance to the second exhibit)

(Opera stage)

(Sweet headgear, for both M and F)

(One outdoes the other)

(Costume worn for martial arts performances)

(Statue that opera singers/actors prayed to and lit incense for before a performance)

One of the interactive parts of the exhibit was you got to take a picture of yourself and then it computerizes what you would look like with the opera-makeup applied.  Pretty cool, it was hard to capture on camera though.  Also, similar to older English plays, a lot of times men played female roles, although women often were in the operas as well.  This made deciphering them, with heavy makeup, very difficult.

(Mike, as the son-in-law of an emperor)

The last exhibit we saw was a traveling one by two European guys who make all of the images using the computer.  I thought this was pretty cool, but very strange.  It just felt weird walking around and seeing a lot of these designs and pictures.  There were no captions, so it was hard to make any sense of it at all.  I think it was a little too modern for me.

(Graphic village by Antoine and Manuel)

(Entrance to exhibit)

(Happy face)

(Sad face)

(Wacky room)

(Anyone who can figure out what Darth is saying would be greatly appreciated)

(Art piece.  The black things on the sides are butterfly clips, like for lots of papers.  But with further inspection, they aren't holding anything together.  Adds to the bizarreness.)

After the museum, we ventured into the Sha Tin Mall for a bit of a break and a snack.  We went to a coffee shop, which had some very nice couches at the tables and a nice set meal for about $8 that included tea, coffee or juice.  I got myself a banana crepe that came with a scoop of caramel ice cream (go figure).  It was quite delicious.  Afterwards, the girls went shopping, and Mike and I went home and relaxed.

We went to the canteen for dinner and then Park n’ Shop to pick up some essentials – Frosties (read: frosted flakes), milk, oatmeal (which was quite good even though off-brand), and my new favorite snack – dried mangos….mmmmm so good.

At night we just hung out, resting from the previous two nights out, and I finally planned my Thailand trip.  I jumped on with a group of guys and a couple girls and was happy to help them hammer out the planning.  The group is a bunch of people I know only a little bit, but know that they are going to be fun to travel with – a few Americans (UNC, USC, Texas etc), Barcelona, Colombia.  Here’s the plan:

Wednesday, 1/27 – Fly around 9pm Hong Kong à Bangkok. Sleep in Bangkok

Thursday – tour Bangkok all day.  Take 12-hour train overnight to Southern Thailand (Surat Thami)

Friday – take ferry in the morning to Koh Pha Ngan Island (not sure of pronunciation).

Sunday – I leave Koh Pha Ngan at night to take overnight train back to Bangkok

Monday – fly back home in the afternoon

Basically, we’re going to this huge party on this island called the Full Moon Party.  This happens every month as about 8,000 internationals make a pilgrimage to Koh Pha Ngan, population 10,000, for what has been described as the most insane beach party/rave in the world.  I look forward to it.

Also, just a quick thing about how cheap Thailand seems.  My flight was about $220 roudntrip (~3 hour flight), but that’s only because we fly out of expensive HK.  The hostel for Bangkok costs $5 US, the overnight train with 1st class sleeper seats (with A/C) is about $10 US, and the 3 nights in Koh Pha Ngan will cost no more than $40 total.  Ridiculous.

Today, Sunday, we went out for dim sum, a traditional Chinese breakfast/brunch.  I had never done this, and just assumed it would be foods like buns, pastries etc.  I was dead wrong, but very happy with the resutls.  We went to this place in Sha Tin mall that had an entire floor and at 1pm, was completely packed.  Probably well over 100 packed tables.  It’s a lot of meats and fish that are fried or wrapped in a rice-based “blanket” would be my best description of it.  It was delicious, and we ordered a ton.  All of this, and a couple hours later, we paid about $20 US, which I would say was worth every penny.

Some noteworthy items that we had – octopus and squid in a curry sauce/soup, cow stomach, jellyfish, and the biggest dumpling I’ve ever seen (about the size of a softball).  Other things I don’t know what they were, but all delicious.

(Beef-encased dish)

(Fish ball)

(Deliciousness)

(Crusted/fried pork)

(Happy Ryan and Mike)

(BBQ pork)

(Jellyfish and beef)

(Completion)

I’m making a resolution overall that I need to start bringing my camera with me to more places I go.  While the camera is bigger than pocket-size, I need to overcome my reluctance of carrying around my shoulder-strap pouch with me.  I feel like I need to capture more of this awesome adventure.