past few days have been a haze of bowling, drinking at lkf, and staying up too late. and it rains a lot during typhoons. go figure. tonight is last night in hong kong, we think we're gonna go to macau (mini-vegas) during the day
got up before thayer again, so i went out to the usual Pacific Coffee to use theinternet, only to discover liek 75% of hongkong shuts down whenever you're in a typhoon. BULL SHIT. found this other internet cafe, which is substantially cheaper, but all the computers are in chinese mode and i don't know how to change them. no worries
yesterday jun 24
we were kind of sore from bowling for 5 hours the previous day, so we wanted to relax on the beach, but it was too cloudy. so instead we did our first touristy thing and headed up to "the peak" of hong kong, which gives you a crazy view of how cool this place is. nothing but massive, modern skyscrapers. the peak had a mall, several schools, a police station, a lot of bars, a visitor's center, a shit-ton of restaurants, and i'm pretty sure a small factory. who the hell puts all that shit on top of a mountain? we went home and napped till evening, then met up with mike and checked out again the nightlife in TST, only to be sorely dissapointed (probably because of the "typhoon". BULL SHIT).
today jun 25
raining like a madman today (it varies between downpour and light-rain-at-70-degrees), so we'll probably bowl again or something, then try and hit up lkf tonight
you want to know what makes it hard to post notes about what you've been up to? having no sleep schedule and wandering around in hong kong. *that's what*. i had to sketch an outline to myself and play around with it in order to figure out what to write right now
thur jun 19
so, after previous post. don't remember what we did all day, but ended up going to thayer's friend's mike's house and playing poker 'til 7am. i now know how to play texas hold em, and it's actually decently fun. stakes were low, so i didn't mind learning (lost $150, which is like 20 USD). the architecture around here is super nice; all the apartments are insane modern high-rises nestled in mountains and coves. started reading this book called "the game" by neil strauss, which i recommend everyone read.
fri jun 20
7am poker ends, so naturally we decide to go to the beach. we check out of our hotel on hk island and get our stuff, then shlep off to this mountain cove beach area and nap/swim around; it's super hot, like you can only be in the sun for 5 minutes even with spf 70 before you feel like you're going to die. the water's warmer than a heated pool. they have more staff keeping the beach clean and water safe than they do people on the beach (at least until later when it gets more crowded). after, we head over to kowloon (the more mainland part of hongkong) and check into our expensive hotel (we decided to live it up for the weekend), sleep 'til 10p, then head back to lkf (the bar area in central) and meet up with the brits and canadians and meet a few more people. don't exactly remember where we went... i know at some point it was just us and the brits, and then we lost the brits, and found them much later, and hung out until they had to catch a plane at 7am.
sat jun 21
saturday we explored southern kowloon, walked through an insanely huge like 2 mile long mall, and checked out kowloon park, a highly stylized version of new york's central park. it has pools, sports facilities, sculpture gardens, mazes, an aviary, castles, other weird shit. an "advanced challenge course" in which hongkongers trying to get fit are instructed at one of the stations to "walk on balance beam 1 times if novice, 2 times then walk if advanced". it's hardcore fitness here in hong kong.
headed back to lkf that night (fri and sat it's super, super crowded), went to a club populated by nothing but asian chicks (bleh), then i left and pubbed around a bit, ending up at "the whiskey priest" and talking to some local chinese girl until 5am while we watched a big soccer game (she paid for drinks because i won)
sun jun 22
met up with the canadians and some of their kiwi friends for dim sum in kowloon near our new hotel (our cheapest one, but it's still pretty nice actually. much better value, that's for sure). after that went back to the island to a beach called repulse bay, which is the sweetest people beach i've ever seen; looks gorgeous, surrounded by amazing, amazing apartments and homes in gorgeous modern towers soaring over the cove up in the mountains; i've got lots of pictuers of these. thayer and i hung till late, then met up mike for bowling. thayer'd never been, and i've decided to learn to bowl properly (i was a straight-baller until now), so we started out slow, getting my usual score of 50-70. had fun though and learned that even in hong kong, cheap bowling places use the exact same shitty bowling program that states places do
mon jun 23
thayer and i watned to go to the beach, but we'd given our laundry to a laundromat and weren't going tog et it back 'til late, so that plus the cloudy weather meant we decided to locate a bowling alley and resume learning our skills (apparently he'd been dreaming about bowling?). this place was super new and high-tek, though, so it was really cool, and we both got massively better; we were consistently above 100, regularly hitting 150, and i got my new PR of 197. we did that for about 4 hours, then shlepped back to TST (the area in kowloon our expensive hotel was in,a nd the closest thing to western night-life we knew of around here). checked out a few bars, then on the way home i wanted to see a karaoke place here (thayer said they were different from the states, which is untrue), and we ran into some chinese folks who were boisterous and friendly, and they invited us chinese dancing (1am now). the father-like guy kept telling us "very traditional night time, traditional chinese, very fun". basically just a sitting room with karaoke and drinks and whatnot; a little expensive, but worth the experience. oh, and there was a monkey that i got to play with
today tues jun 24
finally caught up, pretty sure i've hit all the major points; been here for fucking ever, so gonna go see if thayer's up. i'll try to hit posts more regularly, primarily for the sake of me remember what's been up easier. 1:30p, signing off
(continuing story) so yeah. we got back to the hotel, called thayer's friend-from-cmu mike and met up with him in the subway. overall, hong kong is really cool; everything is high tech and really clean for a big city, the buildings are awesome, the ads are hilarious, and things aren't too expensive (though this is definitely wehre i'll be spending the majority of my money). we went to some really sweet bar area called Central and hung out, then came back to the area around our hotel called Wan Chai. Wan Chai is cool too, but also is a bit seedier in terms of strip clubs and what-not. went to a bar where there were a bunch of white girls dancing on teh bar, and i ended up chatting with a couple of them. we followed them back to Central, hung out there a bit, and ended up staying there really late (cuz thayer and i were still pretty fucked up on sleep). got back to our hotel about 6am, crashed till noon/1pm on wednesday jun18 (recall we got into hk at 6p jun 17).
so wednesday thayer and i head over to causeway bay, which is a super big mall/shopping area, and just kind of wandered through the shops and stores checking shit out. went back to central that night and met these two canadians named lee and carol, and then their british friends ash, john, and chris, and we all hung out at various places, including this russian bar that had a room kept at 20 degrees and covered in ice, appropariately called the ice room. they had huge fur coats for hanging out in there, and i was wearing sandals and shorts (by the way, it's been insanely humid and pretty warm the whole time, and kind of raining, but it's felt really good. it was too hot today when the sun came out, but besides that i've been digging the beach attire + tropical weather thing). hung out there a while, then eventually fucked off and went home.
today (jun19) we've been wandering around the business part of wan chai and getting a feel for the town; it's pretty cool. thayer's dedicated to living here, but the only jobs in hong kong are finance and law, so he's shit out of luck. he's taking a nap now, so i'm gonna go fuck around more until he's wested his wittle head. ttyl.
oh, and i'm gonna have so many funny pictures of shit here you won't believe it.
ok, first holiday trip post.
no sleep the night before. airport 6am on monday, 3 hour flight to vancouver, then 12 hour flight to hong kong. you get off the plane and it's pouring like a maniac, but it's super warm and humid - it feels really good. we wander around the airport trying to locate a computer because we don't know where our hotel is, and find a Pacific Coffee Company (the local starbucks - though of course there's real starbucks too), which has public computers (they charge you by only giving you a mouse if you buy a drink, but if you know how to use hot keys then it's NET FO FLEE) so we look shit up. i think it was something like 6-8 pm when we got there. take a train to the vicinity of our hotel, then spend a while trying to locate a cab who goes to this area (a bunch of them line up to go across the bridge and won't take you anywhere local), and eventually find one who takes us on a 5 minutes ride to a location that turns out was 2 minute walk away. fortunately, cab rides are all but free here.
i've been here waiting for thayer to get out of the hotel room, so now that he's here, we're gonna go eat. it's 10:30a. going to food!
