after a ridiculously long day of traveling, i arrived in hong kong around 2200...the airport is quick and efficient, and it's easy to get into the city...everything is just as crowded as i remember it...getting out of the taxi in front of the building where i had booked us, at least three people tried to get me to look at their rooms...apparently, saying "i already have a room booked" doesn't work...anywho, i figured out where i needed to go, and the first thing the guy at reception demanded was money...he wanted me to pay the rest of the amount we "owed" which i refused to do...i hadn't seen the room, met up with layna, anything!!! he became rather angry and belligerent, and i don't react well to that sort of behaviour...i stood my ground, and refused to hand over money until i at least got to see layna and the room...more than anything i wanted to make sure she was there, and that we had a room...
anywho...the room we had was a box...we each had a single bed, there was a small dresser in between the beds, and we had the smallest bathroom ever...(it makes my bathroom in korea look like a palace!)...there was a tv, though it didn't have much of interest...(but it was still good background noise distraction for me...and i watched the entire bbc newscast)
the main reason we went to hong kong was to get our visas for china...we had heard it was the easiest and quickest place to get them, and that ended up being true...though, being americans, our fee was the highest of any nationality...(ugh)...all we had to do was fill out the form, give them a passport picture and our passport...that was monday morning...thursday morning we went back and picked up our passports, and voila, our visas were in there...after being worried for whateva reason, i'm glad it was so easy to get the visas!!
i'd been to hong kong once before with my irish friend ivan, thank goodness...because i spent the next day in bed, in our room, not doing much...trying to write blogs, get a little caught up on email, upload pictures, etc...i also felt like crap, and was hoping the day of not eating anything would help...but it didn't really...everything i ingested, even just water, made my stomach cramp painfully...two days after this (it had already been going on for 5 or 6 days) it FINALLY got better...i guess i can't complain, this is the only time i've actually been sick during this entire trip...i've definitely been lucky!!
the next day i went out with layna in the afternoon...but the weather was craptastic, thanks to an approaching typhoon...rain, wind, etc...we wandered, but not far...that night i met up for dinner with my friend tanya...she's canadian, we got to know each other through rugby in seoul...she and her partner had moved to hong kong less than a year earlier...(i think?)...it was fantastic to catch up with ty, she's awesome...after dinner we also hung out with david (known to most as jr) who had stayed away from dinner due to an ear infection...a great night, totally chill...
thursday night ended up being the only afternoon/evening with clear skies...we took the opportunity to take the tram up to the peak and look over hong kong at night...beautiful...hong kong has a great night skyline...several of the buildings take part in what's called the night symphony...they light up at night, supposedly working with each other...i never noticed that myself, but i loved all the lights, and watching them change...beautiful...trying to get a picture to work out properly just didn't happen though...darnit...good pictures, but we wanted one with the two of us, and we couldn't make it happen...oh well...
friday morning we crossed the border...really easy to do...take the subway to the border, walk through the appropriate lines, filling out a health form, get passports stamped in the appropriate places, etc and walk out on the other side into a city called shenzen...hong kong residents can cross into shenzen for day trips, it's a special economic zone...a whole lot of CHEAP chinese shopping...cheap foot massages too, i wish i had had time for one:)
we took a bullet train to guangzhou, the capital of that particular province of china...walking out of the train station we walked all over trying to find the ticketing office, it took a while...signs seemed to point one way, but when we went that way, the ticketing office definitely wasn't there...anywho, we finally found it, booked our tickets, and took the metro to where we thought we could find a cheap hotel...we did find a cheap hotel, with the help of a tout, though it wasn't the one we were originally looking for...apparently the posted rates in a hotel in china, mean absolutely nothing...we paid about a 1/3 of what was posted!! we had an air con room, each with our own big bed, a nice bathroom, tv, etc...our own water filter...after some of the places we've stayed, particularly in hong kong, this was a palace...we walked around and explored, and found great street food...(this would be the start of my love affair with real chinese food)...and it's so CHEAP!!! our adventure in china began, and i already loved it, even though it was the country i was least fussed about when our trip started:)
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