January 29th: What do Cold, housing, and a giant Buddha have to do with each other?

Day 13, 9AM: It began like most other mornings so far. I woke up in one of those half awake, half asleep modes where you sort of lie in bed trying to stay asleep. Tossing and turning, I fought off the desire to sleep enough to finally wake up and strolled over to my computer. The only expectation I had was to confirm that the lease for our apartment next year had been signed now that I had emailed the office and gotten that mess sorted out. If you’ve had a chance to read my other posts, you would know by now that whenever I start something this way explaining my expectations or I know something will happen that it never actually works out that way. Due to my busyness I never emailed the office to tell them exactly what was going to happen, so when my six roommates for next year showed up asking to sign the lease they had no idea what was happening. So, to fix this I emailed the manager there and explained the situation to them and also had the other people who are currently in the apartment (my awesome roommates from last semester) email them as well. So, with housing taken care of (as far as I know) I continued about my business.

Today I was going to go to Lantau Island to see the giant Buddha. The cool thing about it is that you can take the MTR directly to the gondola ride that takes you to the monastery. So Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, Deborah, and I all get on the MTR on our adventure. It was a little chilly on the way there, and I was wearing my new jacket I had bought at Mon Kok yesterday (which is a running jacket and therefore allows the air to vent) so I was a bit cold. We arrive at a mall and do a bit of shopping before we go to the Buddha via the gondola. After an hour or so we go over and purchase our tickets for the gondola ride and two shows and begin our adventure.

From left to right: Deborah, Ri Huang, Me, Chang Sheng

As we start our ride the first thing I notice is how cold it is. It was already very cold at the mall, but just barely in the tolerable category if I shiver a lot. Once we’re in the gondola though, the vents inside allow that cold air to blow past us, creating a cold wind inside. I’m sure the vents are pleasant in the summer time, but when I say it was cold in there, I mean it was COLD!

The trip begins on land and then shortly turns and crosses a large river at which point it goes up into the mountains. This in itself is a good thing. However, the further up in elevation we got the colder it was. To make it even worse, as we began our ascent we discovered that there was low and very thick fog for the duration of our trip. The pictures here show just how thick the fog was, and you can probably guess that the fog made it even colder. You can imagine how happy I was at this point.

Ri Huang, me, and Chang Sheng freezing in the cabin.

So after about 25 minutes we arrive at the monastery and guess what, it’s even colder up there! The astute observer might notice how many times I have used the word cold so far and deduce that at this point I’m freezing – literally.

Me freezing!

You can see that even inside the fog obscures these plants that are right next to me.

So we’re all freezing now (notice how I’ve gone from using ‘cold’ to using the word ‘freezing’) and make our way around the shops and restaurants there. What I mean to say is that we’re going from shop to shop and running into each one to try and get warm. One of the shops we stopped in served a large variety of food so Ri Huang and myself both bought hot chocolate to warm ourselves. Shortly thereafter we began the long, steep, three mile climb up the mountain in the freezing fog. Ok, I lied, it was more like a half mile flat walk to the base of the stairs. Once we reached the stairs we climbed up, and up, and up, and up some more, made all the more difficult because the fog was so thick we could only see a short ways up the mountain. After many flights of stairs (probably around 15) the stairs suddenly stopped. At this point I was confused because we still couldn’t see the Buddha and we had reached the top of the stairs. I walked about two meters more and realized I was indeed at the base, but the fog was so thick I could only see the outline of the bottom of the statue.

You clearly (or not so clearly) can see that we have no idea how long the stairs are.

This is how well we could see

More statues at the top.

We walked around the top for a while, and also visited a museum of sorts underneath the statue. Now, in addition to being freezing it was also incredibly windy at the top, which only made it colder. By now I’m beyond frozen. We stayed up there for about 45 minutes before returning to the tourist area to watch the shows. When we got back down we went into a dessert shop to warm up and Ri Huang and Chang Sheng grabbed some food. We then went to the first show about a monkey. It turned out to be about a 10 minute movie with those cheesy “4D” effects where they blow water on you and have surround sound so it seems like the characters are actually running around you and was quite disappointing. Next, we went to the other movie and I must say that my expectations were quite low after the monkey one. It turned out to be an animated story about the life of the Buddha and was actually quite interesting and informative.

When we got out we went back to grab more food at a shop and discovered that it was actually about 3 degrees Celsius. Combine this with the fog and high winds and my description that it was freezing is no longer just figurative. After a quick lunch sort of meal we headed back down the mountain. I think I have already emphasized the cold aspect of our journey enough to spare you the description of the ride down, but suffice it to say that it was FREEZING!!!

Once back down we went to Mon Kok so Chang Sheng could pick up a suit he ordered and we grabbed some Japanese food. The shopping experience was again unlike anything I’ve ever done before because we weren’t in a shopping mall per say, nor were we walking around street vendors, but rather imagine a shopping mall where the stores are only 4x7 foot stalls. It was most interesting to think that people can make enough of a living selling things in such a small space. When I returned to UST I wrote up another blog entry and went to sleep.

My dinner.

January 28th, Shopping at Mong Kok

Day 12, 10AM: To begin, I would like to say I've decided to try a new format for my posts, where I actually give each a title so you have some idea what they're about. I thought this would be an improvement over my previous format where you only saw the date and day number in the title. Furthermore, I have digressed in my writing style for the past several posts and will make an effort to return to my more crafty, and eloquent style of writing rather than the simplistic style I have been using in the interest of time. The morning was fairly uneventful and consisted of playing Starcraft with Grady again, but an excitement filled the air in my room because of the plans I had arranged the previous day: I was going shopping for clothes! Now, I usually only get excited when shopping for electronics, but I made an exception for today. In fact, I rather dislike clothes shopping because they never fit quite right, are usually overpriced, and it's a guy thing, but I can't stand walking around a department store and want nothing more than to get in and out as fast as possible. So you must be wondering: why would Ansel get excited about clothes shopping? Let me tell you. First, since the day I arrived here I have felt somewhat under dressed. It seems like everyone here in HK are very fashionable and dress up on a consistent basis. I honestly feel somewhat embarassed wearing my USC sweatshirt because a sweatshirt doesn't fit in when everyone else is wearing a nice jacket or a vest or a suit. Secondly, I only brought enough clothes to last me about a week and a half and was now pushing my luck. Before I left everyone told me how cheap everything was in HK and that i should just buy new clothes when I arrived, so I admit I took some of their advice and did not pack enough. Additionally, I've never tried to bargain or haggle with someone before and I have been looking forward to my first true shopping experience with a fair amount of trepidation.


here you can see me standing just to the right of center pointing at the street vendors.



Mong Kok was unlike any place I have ever set foot, with the streets absolutely packed with people as far as the eye could see, and every available space on the streets taken up by street vendors trying to sell you their wares. We began our adventure in a shopping mall where Ghoribet and Wai Zin looked at ladies' clothes. There were about 7 floors and each floor was packed with small shops that were only about 80-100 square feet. I must admit I was somewhat frustrated (but not really) when they looked at so many things, but didn't buy anything! This is the difference between men and women. Women want to first look at everything and window shop, then they go back another day to actually buy things once they know what is available and the relative prices of things. I can understand the value of this methodology, but guys shop very differently as previously mentioned. Guys tend to go somewhere knowing what they want and desire to get in, get it, and get out as fast as possible. After several minutes my agitation at their lack of clothes buying must have been apparent because they kept saying how bad they felt that they had dragged me along when they weren't buying anything. What was their solution you might ask? It was to take me where I could go shopping and they could be the ones standing around while I looked at stuff. Does that seem odd to anyone else but me?

So, to alleviate their guilt and make me feel guilty instead, we exited the mall and walked down to the streets. The streets were packed with vendors selling almost every imaginable thing. There were booths ranging from clothes, to children's' toys, to display cases, and each was different than the next one. First we walked from one end of the street to the other end to get a sense of what was available before making our way back and actually buying stuff. First, I bought a jacket.


This jacket we had found on our first round and it was initially priced at $210 (all prices here are referenced in Hong Kong Dollars, not US dollars). Lucky for me Wai Zin can speak some Cantonese and bargained the price down to $140, which was probably not as low as we could have gotten it, but this was our first attempt at bargaining, and secondly, that's a little less than $20 USD. Let's face it, clothes here are practically dirt cheap and I'm happy paying pretty much whatever price they want to give me. After that I also bought four ties, and three polo shirts, with the ties being very nice and having neat patterns on them, and the shirts were only $30 (about 4 USD) each. All in all it was a very fun trip and quite culturally enriching. My favorite part though, was the calculators. Basically, all the vendors have these big calculators where they ask you to name your price when you're bargaining. This is not because of any language barrier or anything like that, it's because they don't want other people to hear the price they're willing to give it to you. What they do is inflate the price they quote you at first so that you can bargain it down and then feel satisfied you got such an amazing deal, which I think is brilliant and being a business major I can appreciate it.





Unfortunately, I had two goals going into the shopping trip: 1) get polo shirts, and 2) buy a jacket. An observant person might point out that I did indeed satisfy both of these goals, but this is beside the point. I failed in goal 2. My goal was not to only buy a jacket, but to buy a nice jacket that I could wear and feel like I was more dressed up. One might again point out that the jacket I bought fits that description, but it's cold right now in HK, and I have been freezing almost everyday since I arrived. So the jacket i wanted had to zip up and keep me warm, which the jacket I bought did not (it's more for just looks than for function). On our way back to the MTR station we ended up getting lost and going the wrong direction, but in the process we passed an Adidas shop and I decided to duck in. I stepped in, surveyed the bustling scene and spotted my prize: a jacket almost exactly like what I had been searching for. It was very expensive by HK standards, but I was willing to pay for what I wanted and I have worn often since its purchase (you can see it in my photos in my next post where I will also share a funny story about this jacket). If I may digress for a moment, I would like to share something (It's not that I need your permission or that you have any say in whether or not I digress, but it seemed like the polite thing to say). Here, their debit cards are called EPS (I think it's Electronic payment System) where they swipe your card and all that, but instead of you punching in your PIN onto a pad attached to the counter they hand you a small pad and then bow while you input your PIN. They then return the pad to a cradle where it verifies your PIN. I think these things are really cool not only because they're sort of half wireless, but because they're fun to use. This concludes my digression.

Next, we traveled over to Hollywood Plaza to meet CS for dinner where I was looking forward to eating a gourmet meal: Pizza Hut. No I am not crazy. Yes you read it correctly, Pizza Hut. You see, here Pizza Hut is a very fancy restaurant where you sit down and order from their menu (which is more than just pizza). I had heard about this before I came to Asia and I had been looking forward to trying it. Wai Zin did not feel like Pizza Hut so she and CS went somewhere else while Ghoribet and I enjoyed our meal. We ended up sharing a lasagna and a pizza which were both quite tasty, although the waiter gave me a funny look when I asked for a refill of my Pepsi. Apparently in restaurants here you don't get free refills. I've included pictures of the Pizza Hut here so you can see what I mean.

Ghoribet


Apparently I lied, you can see my nice Adidas jacket here.







So, that's what the Pizza Hut looks like. So after that we went back to the arcade for more musical fun of banging sticks on drums and then returned to campus. Once back I decided it was finally time to download the Orange Box from Steam (a game company). For those of you who are unaware of what this is it's basically five of Steam's most popular games, including Portal, which is my favorite game. So, I logged on and tried to buy it. Note my use of the word 'try.' Lucky for me, my two credit cards got rejected because Steam processes the request through the US, and I told my credit card companies that I would be in HK, so they nicely blocked the transaction to prevent fraud. Joy oh joy. Now, to give you an update, I asked my parents to log on for me and purchase it so I could then download it, which they did. The first day my download went 41%. That was 7 days ago from my current perspective, and it's currently at 88%. Basically, Steam doesn't want me to download the program because I'm not in the US. I'm less than thrilled about that.

January 27th, Day 11

January 27th, 9AM: So today I woke up ready to again play Starcraft with Peter. if you read my post from day 10 you will know that I was annoyed at his flaking out on me at the last minute the day before. So, after a slight miscommunication about the starting time we met online and actually played several rounds. This was a most enjoyable experience and we had several good matches. After we were done with that I got a call from Wai Zin asking me if I wanted to go downtown and see the light show. I had not seen it yet and it's supposed to be one of those things that everyone MUST see when they're in HK, so I went.

We started out walking around the city at TST (an MTR stop). I've included many pictures from this and more pictures of this will be included in later posts for days when i have no pictures. So, there were a couple of things that stand out in my mind about this. First, the city is very beautiful and well decorated as can be seen in the pictures below. Second, I was amazed at the bamboo. For those of you who do not know, I have a slight fascination with Bamboo and I keep a bamboo plant in my room (in the US) and water it daily. It was a gift from my sister and I want to start a bamboo collection next year, so it was interesting to see the practical uses of it in building construction. Third, I am completely ignorant about skin care. We were walking around and went past a Sogo (some kind of cosmetics store) that Wai Zin wanted to go in. During our walk though the store I learned all about things I had never before thought about. Namely the length of my eyelashes (why in the world would I ever think of that on my own?) and skin toner. Before that, if someone had mentioned toner to me I would have thought they were speaking of toner for a printer. So yeah, that was an experience in itself. After that we visited an H&M, which is a clothing store that I encountered during a project last spring and had to research it. I do not know if they exist in the US, but i had never been in one and it was interesting to see the differences between American department stores and ones in Asia. The H&M was much more fashionable and trendy that American department stores (at least the ones i've been in) and everything was carefully arranged and presented, not just all hung on racks for you to browse through.







The most interesting part of the evening, however, was the light show itself. It was amazing! What they do is that they installed very bright LEDs on the outside of the buildings in the harbor and synchronize all of them to music and basically put on a light show using lights and lasers. I've included two videos of the light show as well as pictures because as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.



Sadly, the site is experiencing difficulty uploading the other video file I wanted to share with you. I will try again tomorrow and I will make a note of it in a future post when I am able to successfully upload the video, because it's pretty cool.

So after the light show, which I thoroughly enjoyed, we went to try some Indian food. The Indian food was a bit too spicy for my tastes and I didn't eat much. That was pretty much my day and I figured I'd let the pictures do most of the talking instead of me.






















THE LIGHT SHOW!!!


here we are at the harbor


















This is a famous, and very expensive hotel in HK