Welcome To Hong Kong!

Hope you enjoyed the last post.  This one is pretty long, but I think it reads pretty fast. I'll try to keep the next one shorter...

Here is a map of the area that I will be referring to...I'll point out a couple things right away.

1) CUHK - located in the New Territories on the eastern side (light blue line, University stop).
2) Airport - located on Lantau Island, left side of map - about a 40 minute drive to campus
3) Tsim Sha Tsui - located right at the bottom of Kowloon across from HK Island
4) Central - located on HK Island on the western portion (blue line).  Where everything goes down.

So I arrived on Monday night, and have now spent roughly three days on campus and in Hong Kong.  I will go through them and try to highlight the things that I noticed and were important in these few days.

After going to sleep fairly late on Monday (~1am), I started my jetlagging, waking up at 5, 7 and 9 for interruptions from sleep.  The final time, I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to handle anymore and sat in bed reading my Lonely Planet Hong Kong guide (looking good so far by the way).  I still couldn’t believe that I had gone to sleep the night before (technically two) in my own bed in cozy Long Island, and here I was now, waking up on the other side of the planet.  I had a flash memory of being on the beach as a child thinking that if I dug deep enough in the sand I would reach China. Twenty years later, I made it.

I then went with one of my flatmates, Mike, who I had met on the plane and goes to Notre Dame, to the exchange student office to check-in officially and get our packets of information and forms.  This was no easy task, as our dorm, the I-House, is situated on the other side of a hill, which we must climb and descend each time we want to make it to main campus. Interestingly, the campus is not so huge, even though it houses ~12,000 undergraduates as opposed to WU’s 6,000.  The problem is that everything is on different levels since the campus is built into a mountain, essentially.  This makes getting to campus a full aerobic workout.  I’m telling you, my calves are going to look like Roman pillars when you see them next!

We went to one of the two canteens (read: cafeteria) on central campus for lunch.  Even though it is nearly a week before classes start, there is still a pretty substantial line.  My first meal in HK is pork chop over noodles and some vegetables.  By vegetables, they mean a few large iceberg lettuce leaves that have been cooked.  I will later confirm that the meat in the canteens is a bit suspect, though edible. Overall the meal was fine, but nothing too extravagant.

Next, we went with one of our new friends from the airport transfer, Andrea, from Austria, to the nearby mall to buy mobiles (read: cell phones) and some other necessities.  Thankfully, there is a train stop on campus.  The system, called the MTR (not sure about the acronym), is amazing.  It must be brand new.  The cars are extremely clean, and the timing is impeccable.  They run to each stop every 3-5 minutes – so much better than the LIRR or Metrolink.  To go on these, you must buy an Octopus Card, which serves as a great multipurpose card that you can put money on and is scanned by RFID (i.e., it can be in your wallet somewhere and will scan).  These can often be used at canteens, vending machines and some stores.  The fares are based on distance traveled (so much nicer than the flat rates for LIRR and NYC Subway) and are INSANELY cheap, as I will expand upon for the rest of my experiences.  The trip to the Sha Tin Mall was two stops, and cost $7 HK round trip, this translates to less than $1 US (FYI, the exchange rate is pegged at about 7.75 HK for 1 US).

First off, I should mention that there are 7-Eleven’s everywhere.  They are pretty small as compared to the US, more like an indoor newsstand, but standing in one, you can almost see the next one. Getting out of the train, there was first a little indoor shopping plaza that gave way to the Sha Tin New Town Plaza.  The behemoth is 7 floors, and has three “phases”, which translate to something like a terminal.  This mall is the size of an airport, truly enormous.  There are many American shops and food places, and even more local ones, but I’m pretty sure you could find anything you ever needed or wanted many times over.  We got to a cell phone shop, and my two pals bought the cheapest phones for about $250HK, roughly $30US.  They tried to sell us the SIM cards as well, but we decided that 0.15HK per minute was too expensive.  We went back to the 7-Eleven and got our cards, charging 0.12HK for calls from noon-9pm and 0.05HK for all others.  I bought 48HK worth of credit, and I think this will last me at least a month or two.  After unlocking my iPhone in the US, I just had to pop the card in, and I was in business – god bless jailbreaking.

After getting back to campus, we took the campus bus, which runs (on an ACTUAL schedule, not like at WU) every 15 minutes and took us up the huge hill to our dorm.  A little bit about the I-House.  There are two blocks, each has 10 floors, two flats (apartments) on each floor.  Each flat has 5 rooms, one single, three doubles and a triple.  I’m in a triple with one full-time student (I don’t know if he’s from HK or mainland China as he hasn’t arrived yet as of 1/10 at 10pm) and another American, also named Michael, from UNC Chapel Hill.  The bedrooms are pretty cramped as I have about a foot of space between each bed and then a desk at the foot of each bed.  There are drawers under each bed.  The “mattresses” are about an inch thick (or thin I should say) and are moderately comfortable.  Nice to sleep in, not so much to sit on.  We have three bathrooms with toilet and shower and a kitchen with a hot water dispenser (read: ramen maker), hot plate, microwave and refrigerator.  I don’t foresee much cooking in my future past noodles and cereal (none of Zach’s meat sauce either…).

(My space is the far one)

(Other roommates area, plus closet)

("Mattress")

(Bathroom)

(Common room with balcony)

(Kitchen area)

(Kitchen table)

Tuesday night we met up with some guys from across the hall, one from Switzerland, one from Sweden, and a local student for dinner in the nearby canteen and to the on-campus “bar” for a couple of beers.  It is more like a sitting area that happens to serve drinks than an actual bar.  The beers their were about $20HK (~$3US) and they were running a good buy-two-get-one special.  After about an hour or two there we packed up and went home for the night, succumbing to the jetlag.

Wednesday was mostly the same, taking care of errands – getting laundry detergent, shampoo and soap at the on-campus grocery chain (Park ‘n Shop). Mike and I then met another of our flatmates, Ryan from Ontario, and went to the Sha Tin Mall again to help him with his cell phone and grab some dinner.  Then we went to IKEA to grab some household items, which was nearby the Sha Tin Mall.  Of course, nobody realized that just a five-minute walk away, was another mall, where IKEA had its own two-floor area.  And I thought that the US was the home of the mall – I was dead wrong.  These people shop like we watch TV – excessively.

Thursday was our main day of orientation: 10-5pm.  The 250 or so exchange students filled about half of the lecture hall we were in. We heard presentations from many of the University services, nothing really of note.  The only amusing part was when the athletics guy was talking to us, he made a point of showing us how on each of the sports teams, there was one token international student, the funniest of which was the two black guys in basketball jerseys towering over the older five-foot something Chinese coach.  Clearly, this was a very uninteresting day.

At night, one of the local students who works with the exchange office who picked us up from the airport, arranged for a group to meet at the train to go out to eat and see some parts of town.  What was expected to be about 10-15 people, turned into 50-60.  This made for some embarrassing tourist-like moments where we clogged the streets and escalators, but hey, that’s what we are anyway, might as well embrace it.

First stop was the Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon.  Lots of street food and shopping items in a street market with tons of people. This is a great example of how even a smaller area is clogged, even on a random Thursday night. Realizing that 50 of us couldn’t fit in one restaurant (these are all little hole-in-the-wall places) we split up.  A group of us went to eat, and we had some typical meat and noodles in a bowl of soup.  This was pretty good, but just a step above the canteens.  But, you get what you pay for – I still haven’t paid more than $30HK for a meal at this point.  Yes, that’s right, I’m getting most of my meals for under $5.  And these meals are big portions – no European sizes – they keep even me full if that helps for comparison.

Next up was Tsim Sha Tsui (pronounced chim sha tsway).  This is a really bustling area on the Kowloon side of the Victoria Harbor, making for some breathtaking views of the Hong Kong skyline at night (pictures can be seen in the next post about my Hong Kong tour).  Also, there is a light/laser show each night at 8pm, which I will be going back to – apparently, it’s truly awesome.  After some time there, we took the famous Star Ferry across the Harbor to Hong Kong Island.

Central (one of the districts of HK Island) is basically a modern, taller, and smaller version of Manhattan.  Each building is taller than the next.  It seems that the smaller skyscrapers are the size of the Empire State Building – no joke.  The streets are not as wide, so there is a perpetual fear of being hit by the stream of cars zooming past you – on the wrong side of the road nonetheless (HK, a former British colony, observes the drive-on-the-left system). However, for easier walking, we went up to the many interconnected skywalks.  Apparently, you can take these around almost the entire city without setting foot on the ground – pretty impressive. 

We ended our unofficial tour at Lon Kwai Fong, a.k.a LKF (pronounced long kwye fung), which is (one of) the biggest bar/club areas in Hong Kong.  As it was still early, we took the advice of some international students who have been here for a semester already, and went to 7-Eleven to pick up some beers and head off to hang for a bit.  As a comparison, I bought 5, 500ml cans (500ml ~ 16oz) for $45HK.  So, that’s about 7 12oz normal cans for $6US – a pretty nice deal.  From there we went to the IFC (International Finance Center) building, the tallest in Hong Kong, and 3^rd tallest in the world.  It was also the site of a good scene from Batman’s The Dark Knight (click here).  In one of the adjacent buildings is, wait for it…. another mall!, which has a public open area with a bar and a great view of Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor.  Quite a nice place to relax and have a few beers before going out.

We ended the night going to a few bars on LKF, where Thursday night is ladies night – no cover and free drinks.  Finally we took a trip to one of the numerous 24-hour McDonald’s for some late night snacking.  I must say, the McD’s abroad is a lot tastier than at home, and even cheaper.  For all you purchasing power parity people out there, the Big Mac cost about $16HK, or about $2US.  The night ended with our 40-minute cab ride back to campus (unfortunately the MTR only runs until about 12am or so).  However, the taxis are just as well-priced as everything else so far – we split the fare 5-ways (the front seat is built for three) and paid about $30HK each for the ride.  Yup, a night out on the town totaled me only about $12US, including a few free drinks.

I think I’ll get used to this sort of life.