As my plane approached Hong Kong, my first impressions were of brown mountains and lots and lots of high rise apartments and office buildings. In Singapore there had been high-rise buildings too, but not as many and as dense as in Hong Kong. The high rises in HK seem to be slowly climbing up the mountain sides.
One thing about travelling to the Far East, or probably anywhere overseas, it's better to get someone local to make your hotel reservations because you can get much better rates that way than by making reservations through a travel agent. The local AT&T people also seem to have a good idea as to where's the best place to stay and are better able to get a room there.
In the afternoon I went to visit one of our OEMs with Chew, our department's representative who is based in Hong Kong. We took the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) part of the way, and walked the rest of the way. On the way back we took a taxi and a ferry to the AT&T Hong Kong office. It seems I took all forms of transportation that day except bus, (not counting unusual things like ricksha's, balloons, gondola's and burros.)
In Hong Kong (and China,) I was very happy to be able to understand and converse a little in Cantonese, the native language. I had to ask Chew for translation at times when I didn't understand. I presume it's because they were using technical language, which was something I didn't learn at home from my parents.
I had dinner with Chew at a Cantonese cuisine restaurant. It was excellent. In my few days in Hong Kong I could see why people say you go to Hong Kong to eat and to shop.
Chew drove me up to Victoria Peak, from which the most well known pictures of the Hong Kong skyline are taken. It was impressive. All those lights shining out over the harbour. It made me a little homesick for the US Eastern seaboard. The road to Victoria peak was twisty and winding, another thing I don't get to enjoy in flat land-locked Indy. Chew sure took the curves fast. He asked me if I was scared. I don't think I was afraid of the speed, but it was unsettling to see oncoming car lights in the right lane, and keep reminding myself that we were driving in the left lane.
The next day, Friday, we went to visit the factory which makes answering machines for us in Shenzhen , just across the border from Hong Kong into China. There were lots of stops and forms to fill out at the border. Show my passport, fill out and turn in a HK departure form. Walk across a bridge over a river that is the border between HK and China. Show a passport, fill out a health form, show a health form, walk some more, get an entry form. Fill out the entry and departure form. Turn in the forms and wait for a China visa, stamped into the passport. Walk out, turn in the health form, get and fill out a customs form, and turn in one copy of the form. Then we're finally through and walking past a row of stalls selling food and wares. Then there's another line to wait for a taxi.
Chew said that Shenzhen is like Hong Kong since it's a special economic zone, and I suppose it is, compared with the rest of China, but I thought it was definitely different from Hong Kong. Shenzhen is dustier, more littered, fewer English/bilingual signs, fewer tall buildings, more bikes and things generally looked older, like from the 1950s. Not too surprising, since that's when the communists took over China.
People drove on the right side of the road, and most cars had the sterring wheel on the left, but some had it on the right. People drive more erratically or with seemingly less caution. Some honk as they enter an intersection.
Construction scaffolding is made of bamboo. I saw some brick buildings being put up. The bricks didn't look well-shaped, giving the impression that they were being reused. But I suspect they are actually new. The bricks were not laid quite straight and the mortar not well applied. It looked terrible. I guess communism also destroyed pride in workmanship.
The factory was old too. Old equipment, very little safety. People working amid solder fumes and even gasoline fumes.
Near the factory there was an area that was about to be turned into more factories. There were still some small rice patties along the edges, maybe 10' square. We went to a hotel restaurant for lunch, and it was the nicest place I'd been to in China. Even there, the toilet had no toilet paper or soap. I was glad that my officemate had reminded me to bring lots of Kleenex for just such purpose. I used about a pack a day in Taiwan too.
On the way back to Hong Kong, Chew pointed out a cemetery on the Hong Kong side of the border with all the headstones facing China for all the people who couldn't return to their homeland.
I was staying at the Sheraton Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon near the waterfront facing Hong Kong Island. It is the tourist section of Hong Kong Colony with lots of stores nearby, art museum, space museum and performing arts center along the waterfront. I walked up Nathan Road with all it's shops and saw a mosque. Next to the mosque were some stairs with people climbing them. I decided to see what was at the top and was surprised to find Kowloon Park. It turned out to be a much larger park than I expected, and a very well laid out city park. It's broken up into lots of little sections with different themes including gardens, wooded walks, fountains, a maze, waterfall, aviary, running trail, maze, children's playground, sculpture garden, etc. Everywhere there were lots of benches to sit on and be treated to a nice view, without feeling too exposed to the hundreds of people in the park.
Friday night was the first time since Saturday night that I got more than 3 hours of continuous sleep. I'd wake up after three hours and then sleep fitfully the rest of the time. It was a symptom of jet lag. I think Scanner had a rough time of it being with me the first week I was back from the other side of the world.
Saturday it got cooler and drizzly, and it was like that for the remainder of my trip, including in Taiwan. I wasn't really interested in shopping for things I could easily find anywhere else, so I looked in the tourist brochures and found a Chinese products store and spent part of that morning and the next morning there. I got one of those carved ball within a ball within a ball, some embroidered shirts and stuff, a cotton kimono robe for Scanner, and a robe with a dragon embroidered on the back and fire pots on the pockets for me.
For lunch I went to the Celestial Palace restaurant in the Sheraton Hotel to yum cha and eat dim sum. B-9 Delicious. I got to have four tiny of the little egg tarts that I like so much and have a hard time getting when we have dim sum in Queens, NY.
I went to the Space museum and tried to get a ticket to see The Ring of Fire at the Omnimax theater there. Unfortunately the first two shows were sold out and I would be gone, visiting my relatives for the other showings. So instead I wandered around the waterfront taking pictures.
Then I took the MTR to Tai Koo Shing to meet my Aunt Jenifer and Uncle David. It's a relatively new development area. The MTR station exited directly into the Tai Koo mall, the biggest mall in the Far East. It was six stories high with stores from many different countries. My aunt and uncle lived in a flat across the street from the mall. It seems to me that every building in Hong Kong has a view of the Harbor. That's probably not too far from true.
My aunt showed me some old photos from when she visited us in the US when I was in junior high. It's strange seeing photos of myself at that age. And she took some new pictures too. I saw an old photo of my mother and her siblings from when my mother was about 19. I think it's the prettiest picture of her I've ever seen.
At dinner, they fed me so much, I was stuffed to the gills with seafood... shrimp, crab, scallops, and steamed fish. I know it's hard to get good seafood in Indy, but I think this was overdoing it a bit. They also served me muskmelon, which I'd never heard of before, but which the Japanese apparently consider a delicacy. Seemed like a typical melon to me. My uncle didn't seem to think we could find kiwi fruit in the US. I said we could even get mangoes in the US. When they heard I liked mangoes, they insisted on buying me two ripe Philippine mangos for me to have for breakfast the next day, saying they were the best mangoes in the world. They were quite delicious. I must say the mangoes I can get at the supermarket in Indy aren't really worth buying.
Sunday I finished my shopping, photographing in Kowloon park, and packing. I had lunch at the Bukhara, and Indian restaurant in the hotel. As usual, it was good. Then it was off to the airport to go to Taipei, Taiwan on a Cathay Air flight, which wasn't quite as nice as Singapore Air. On the plane I got to chatting with another American who was seated next to me on the flight. It was nice talking with another American after a week of traveling in the Far East.