| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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It could
have been embarrassing, but I seemed to be the only person who noticed.
We were supposed to have contiguous seats in row 52, but there are
only three seats on each side of the plane in row 52. B&B are off to
the right. I can just see them around the back of the kitchen. Steve,
Evelyn, and I are on this side. We started taxiing about 12:15 PM and
took off about 12:30 PM which now becomes 12:30 AM Hong Kong time.
Unless I miss my calculation they are twelve hours ahead so you turn AM
to PM (or vice versa). So we left home about 8 PM on October 4 and will
be landing about 9:30 PM October 5. The air part of our travel is about
211/2 hours (including three hours in Narita, a suburb of Tokyo, which
does not have its own international airport). At this instant we have
remaining only sixteen hours and eleven minutes of that twenty hours.
Oh, boy!
Another disadvantage of sitting this far back in the plane is that
at meal times you get whatever nobody else wanted. They had chicken,
beef, or green lasagna. Guess which one we had? Well, I guess it was
healthier to eat vegetarian. The audio program is not too bad, but I
suppose any audio program will wear think on a really long flight.
Still, the fact that they have two classical stations is nice.
Unfortunately there is no electrical jack for Walkman earphones. Plane
earphones always irritate the insides of my ears.
Well, they've started the first of their three movies, Bird on a
Wire. I saw that just a few weeks ago coming back from Europe. Well,
on one channel it's dubbed into Japanese. That's fun to listen to. On
the English channel you can just barely turn the sound up enough to
hear. At least beside the kitchen you don't see it projected; you see
it on a television monitor above head level.
I have been making goo-goo faces and waving at a cute little
Japanese boy in a nearby seat. He must be about two. He just came over
to say hello and to wipe a slobbery hand on my pants.
The film turned out to be a triple feature. The second film was
The Secret Life of Ian Fleming. It was an okay World War II spy story
with touches of where Fleming got ideas he used in James Bond stories.
In fact a big piece of the story is very much like Casino Royale. One
rather suspects it played a little fast and loose with the truth. The
third film was The Pink Panther. It put me to sleep. It is the best of
the Inspector Clouseau films but the series does not do very much for
me. Blake Edwards's slapstick comedies with Peter Sellers usually seem
forced. One exception is The Party, which I still find very funny.
October 5, 1990: I have been napping off and on, walking around
the cabin occasionally, drinking lots of orange juice. (Supposedly
drinking fluids helps fight jet lag. Orange juice also helps against
colds for me.) I read Evelyn's Holland and Belgium log and passed it on
to B&B.
Lunch was chicken pot pie, fresh melon, and banana bread. At about
2:45 PM we landed in Narita for the layover. Binayak said he thought we
might be able to get a quick tour and be back in time for our next
flight. 'Oh, sure!' I thought to myself. 'Sure, if you can arrange it.
But we have to be back well in time for our flight,' I said. I figured
that was effectively saying, 'No.'
Well, not only are there no such tours, they herd you into a sort
of quarantine 'waiting area.' There are a few small stores--perhaps
stands is a better word and you can't really leave it. This was a break
from the plane, but it isn't much of one. I had a grapefruit soda,
wrote some in my log, and slept a little. Evelyn and Binayak started
planning the trip to the New Territories for Sunday. I tried to get in
but couldn't get close enough to the book they were reading, The Hong
Kong Survival Guide. Instead I pulled out the Southeast Asia Handbook
which is also a very good reference. At least that way I could take
some part.
After a short snooze when that discussion was over they called our
plane for the last leg, short compared to the 131/2 flight we'd been on
(I think that was the longest single flight I'd ever been on). This one
would be only about 41/2 hours. Actually things were very disorganized
in the way crowds were handled. They took three queues for this plane
and made one mob out of it.
But eventually we were all on and they started counting luggage or
something. I started experimenting with the air nozzle. I like cool
air and I used to point the nozzle directly at the top of my head. Of
course that is a bit like Chinese water torture and it makes you crazy
really quick. Now I point it at my lap.
We finally took off about 5:30 PM Hong Kong time. I put on
earphones and once again they really irritated my ears. I actually
looked at what was irritating. There is a white foam cylinder over a
gray plastic tube. As often happens when they press plastic and have a
little too much plastic it leaves a rough edge where the plastic sprayed
out of the mold and hardened. It leaves little sharp spurs. The spring
action of the headphones pushes the spurs past the foam right up against
your ear.
Dinner was fish, but not very good fish. The movie was Back to the
Future III. I read rather than watching the movie. We landed about
9:50 PM. The crowd control for Customs was much like it was when we
arrived in Hong Kong eight years ago. There are something like twenty
queues and people rush into them. Now people are coming from jumbo jets
all the time. People who have found themselves in a slow line are
line-switching to bet on what they think will be a faster line. Spouses
are picking different lines to see who gets to the front first so they
can let the other spouse in. In general you have chaos. There is more
chaos at the carousel. Then the actual Customs check is just a wave-
through. We got out, exchanged enough money to pay for the room, then
grabbed a bus to the Peking Guest House, part of the Chungking Mansions.
I wasn't sure what it meant that our hotel was part of another building.
The bus has a pre-recorded message telling you what hotels you were
getting to so the driver didn't really need to know English but he knew
enough so that when we got to our hotel he could call out the name.
What we could see from the bus made Hong Kong look a lot like
Manhattan, but it was after 11 PM and a lot of stores were still open.
When we got off the bus a Mr. Ng was waiting for us. The Chungking
Mansions is a sort of dingy building in the downtown of Hong Kong. Many
of the floors are just like big apartments a floor big. They will have
living space for the proprietor's family and four or five spartan rooms
for guests. The room is about 71/2 feet by 12 feet with an adjoining
shower stall that has shower facilities, a sink, and a toilet. There
are two beds, one about 21/2 feet wide, one 31/2 feet wide, with about a
foot and a half corridor between them. At the foot of the narrow bed is
an inexpensive Formica-covered cabinet. At the foot of the wider bed is
a television facing the cabinet. There are two folding chairs so you
can watch the television. There is a floor lamp with no bulbs. The
walls are done in off-white, glossy lunchroom tiles with fluorescent
lighting. There is an air conditioner and a ceiling fan. The mattress
is three inches thick and very firm. This goes for US$34 a night in the
heart of Hong Kong. The value isn't great, but it is okay. The place
is clean. At about twelve minutes after midnight a baby started crying,
but was quickly quieted. Last time we were in Hong Kong we were
pampered at the Shangri-La, which was really fancy and probably very
expensive. This time we are going spartan and saving.
The hotel is, incidentally, listed in all the tour books. It is a
good place to stay is you want to meet an international clientele.
October 6, 1990: I woke up about 6:15 AM without any trace of jet
lag; unless I really zonk out later I will declare my formula a success.
We started planning the day. At about 7:30 we found a note from Binayak
saying that he and Barbara were up and inviting us to walk about 7:30
AM. We were ready about five minutes later and had to find them.
Barbara's room was very little bigger than a double bed and a bit of
floor space.
We wanted to leave a note for Steve whom they did not have a room
for last night and had a room for him about four floors up. The
proprietor, still in his underwear, took us up to his brother's hotel.
We couldn't get in so we left him a note and the proprietor--still in
his underwear--took us down to the street level. There are two
elevators, both slow. One goes only to odd floors, the other goes only
to even ones. The group decided when they were walking that they really
needed COFFEE and RIGHT THEN. I will swear you to secrecy on where we
went. I won't even tell you but the place was red and had two big
yellow arches and we could have gone there at home.
The streets of Kowloon--we are actually in Kowloon, not Hong Kong-
-look a lot like Manhattan. They will be more densely packed with more
signs, but that is pretty much like what they look like. Then suddenly
you see a big marble mosque. This is melting pot, like New York, but
the mix of nationalities is different. And this area certainly leans
more to the fantastic and wondrous. After this coffee we returned to
the hotel. Steve had shown up and went out again. We waited for about
ten minutes and he returned. We went out, stopped by a tourist agency
to pick up info, then went on for dim sum breakfast. Steve had never
had dim sum before. The building was sort of posh and I was expecting a
big bill. With tip it came to about US$5 a person. We were all pretty
much amazed.
Then back to Nathan Road (where our hotel is) and environs to find
a place to change money. We did that, changed money, and found a place
to buy a city tour. Lots of little things followed: returning to drop
things off at the hotel, going out to a very tight little grocery one
flight down from Nathan Road. Most of the group bought cans of soda. I
bought a bottle that I could take on the city tour and take hits off of.
Walking on crowded streets one thing stands out. You find a lot of
people trying to sell you a watch. Fake Rolexes seem to be the most
popular.
Our next locale was Kowloon Park. This was just a walk-through,
but it was worth seeing. It is broken into areas. There is a sculpture
garden; there is a children's playground complete with a maze. There is
a turtle and fish pool. There are gardens with Chinese architecture;
There are sleeping Chinese hobos. There is a bird garden. But for a
city park it was very nice.
About 1:30 PM we went to where we were to pick up the city tour.
We were being picked up from a sort of combination hotel and fancy
shopping center where we'd booked the tour. It's the kind of place
where everybody has kicked into the Hong Kong Merchants Association. If
you are a member, you supposedly fork over a certain amount of money and
agree to a code of ethics to be a part of the merchants association. I
think the code of ethics includes 'Never give a sucker an even break'
and 'Never steer a customer to a non-member store.' Anyway, if you
belong you have an official sticker in the window. It is a big red
circle and in the center a picture of a Chinese junk. This is so you
can tell the world you are officially a 'junk shop.' Generally the
sorts of stores that sport the sticker have leather goods, jewelry, etc.
Nothing I would want to buy. A couple have tried to sell me suits. The
code of ethics does not include restrictions against standing in your
doorway and making a pest of yourself to passersby. Anyway, most of the
stores in this expensive mall had junk stickers and very little to
interest me. One rather supposes used book stores do not generally
join. We waited in a sort of fancy sitting right in the shopping
center. It was clean and had Chinese statues of men riding dragons and
the like. Very impressive. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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