Honkers

For those of you keeping track:

I'm back on Australian soil, safe, alive and lilting slightly to starboard. I've decided I don't like planes. I'm tossing up whether I really have to get the plane back to Townsville tomorrow. Can't say I'm sure there is any real benefit in it. I can just do my job from Brisbane, can't I? We've technically got a campus here...

Hong Kong was fascinating in a grotesque, hyper-real kind of way. Or maybe it just seemed grotesque and hyper-real because I'd just spent ten hours on a plane and had managed to move six hours forward in time while doing it.

I made a mistake coming into Hong Kong. You see, in Australia, people in official positions read things, think about them and make judgement calls, and being honest can actually make things go faster as they are less likely to take that much time thinking about you. In Hong Kong, they do it by the book. I was not aware of this, so when I was given a health card asking me if I had any of a list of symptoms, I answered honestly that yes, I did have a running nose.

I thought anyone worth their salt would say, "Well, she's been no where near swine flu infected areas, has only one symptom on the list - and an innocuous one at that - and hasn't done any of the other things we've asked about, so she probably hasn't got swine flu." After which they would respect me for not lying to them, let me through and I'd be on my merry way.

Not so, in China. In China they have a job to do - and by George they are going to do it without equivocation or interrogation. Runny nose? Straight to the health check zone for you. Do not come out and attempt to enter this country until at least three people have looked at your form, taken your temperature and asked you questions. Yes, this will add another half-hour to the time it takes you to get to the baggage reclaim area, during which time no one will tell you what you can expect to happen to your baggage. That's your fault for having a running nose and not being Chinese.

I suppose it keeps people employed, which is important in these times.

Then my pick-up told me to go wait for him "in the carpark", neglecting to mention that there were a number of different "carparks", and this one had a particular function. I managed to navigate my way around a small European country on a bicycle, but I had great difficulty getting out of the Hong Kong airport. By the way, following signs in Hong Kong is not the most useful past-time. Half of them seem to be pointing the wrong way, the others are pointing the right way, but are missing relevant pieces of information. It's almost like the entire country is based on the principles behind the Gruen Transfer (thank you, ABC, for telling me about that).

You can almost imagine the city planners chuckling to themselves: "Let's put a shopping mall directly in front of the park, and then make all of the signs to the park direct people back to the entrance of the shopping mall - even if they're already in the store! Hahahahaha! Ooh, and then we can neglect to tell them in any way, shape or form that they have to go out the side of the building and ride up four flights of escalators to get to this park. They'll spend so much money in our country because they're stuck in a mall, and when they finally get to the park they'll be so tired and thirsty that they'll spend more money in the restaurant. Mwuahahahaha!"

I have to admit it sort of worked on me. I bought I CD while I was stuck at the mall. I even looked at the clothes, before my natural aversion to paying AUD$150 for a dress kicked in. Sadly for them, I'm the kind of person who still goes to the park - even though it is nigh impossible to find, it's raining cats and dogs and there is thunder and lightening. I did buy an iced tea in the garden restaurant, but after that I refused to spend any more money until I picked up some lunch from the train station on the way back. Take that, you capitalist dogs!

When I first got to my hotel, I was dying to go for a swim or something to clear the cobwebs from the flight, but my hotel didn't have a pool and I didn't have any togs, so I went for a run instead. I gotta tell you, going for a run in down-town Kowloon is not the easiest thing in the world. It's full to the brim with people - all hurrying, but not getting anywhere very fast. It's a fight for any and all available space, physically, visually and possibly even spiritually.

No body moves to one side, no body stops for a second. It's like they're afraid to, because someone will come along and put a newsstand where they happen to be standing, or try to sell them something they don't want if they're still for too long. Going for a run in that area was like some strange, thrilling game of dodgems.

In my efforts to keep moving for more than three seconds at a time I ended up cutting through any available space, turning corners at alarming rates and changing directions dozens of times. I saw a whole pile of amazing stalls and markets, but I have no idea how I found them or where they were. There was a whole section with people selling dried herbs, fruit, live chickens, stressed-out fish (I'm sure being kept alive in two inches of water can't be good for the quality of the produce) and hardware. Heck, I even managed to see an argument between two stall holders turn into an attempted knife attack. That slowed the human traffic down, I can tell you.

And then there was the Ladies Market. An entire street filled with stalls with people trying to sell you cheap Chinese knock-offs of anything you could possibly knock-off: T-shirts, handbags, watches, CDs...

I said somewhere to someone that visiting Singapore was like visiting the future - that it was so much like the futuristic cities you see in movies and television shows that I couldn't tell who was copying who - the designers of the shows or the designers of the city. Well, Hong Kong was a bit like that too, but one of those distopian type futures that you see in Ridley Scott films - or like the boarder planets in Firefly with the old and poor set right next to the new, high tech and wealthy. I got the feeling the people I saw selling chickens in the market never took the MTR into Admiralty to shop at the Mall - even though it was maybe a five minute trip...

Such was the impression of Hong Kong I managed to get in the day I was there. Oh, I also decided that, as my holiday was over and therefore wouldn't be ruined if I got food poisoning and died, I didn't have to be so careful about what I ate. I tried at least three things I didn't recognise, and a number of things I had never eaten before (like eel and sea snail). Hey, if the luke-warm keefir in Pärnu didn't kill me, I'm sure I'll survive whatever I put in my mouth yesterday.

If not, let's assume it was whatever that deep-fried stuff I had at the market was...