Asia - Volume Two: Southern China & Hong Kong

HCMC was like home base for us; once we arrived in the city, we never stayed for more than two or three days at a time because we'd always be coming and going from and to a plethora of other places. Our first trip was to a handful of cities throughout Southern China and Hong Kong. We made it to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Macau, Kowloon and went through one place that I can only loosely translate as either Pig/Pearl Bay/Harbour.

We had a stopover in HK two years ago en route to HCMC and I remember it well because I was entranced by the mountains that I saw peppering the sea. I couldn't remember the last time I saw a real mountain before that. Maybe I never had. Hong Kong is indeed a beautiful, mountainous landscape, but it is unfortunately covered in high-rise apartments. This was my first glimpse of the city as we were crossing the harbour:

  

And this is what I saw when we were on the bus:

 

Apartments. Office buildings. Condos. Apartments. Buildings. Buildings. No wonder they can fit almost 7 million people onto that little island. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and now I can see why, and how they do it. They just keep stacking people on top of each other. It boggled my mind to think of all the resources and electricity that each building must go through in one day, and how much waste is generated.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy our time in HK or Southern China too much. We were with a tour group and the guide spoke only in Vietnamese, so my brother, uncle and I didn't understand a word that was spoken for a whole week. My parents tried to translate, but it became too much of a hassle, so we stopped asking. Language is a wonderful, interesting and awfully isolating thing. The only thing that I thoroughly enjoyed about HK was DisneyLand (wahoo!) and the public transit system. It's so user and visitor friendly! Everything was easy to figure out, but I think I only say that because everything (street signs, instructions, etc.) are all in English first. After all, HK did belong to Britain until 1997.

I really only remember a few things about our time in Hong Kong:


A large temple on the shore where I bumped into a man who used to live in the small town that my beloved roomie currently resides in. "You know Welland?!" "Yeah! I've been there before! Twice!" The world gets smaller and smaller every time I talk to another stranger.

 
Left: A jumbo floating seafood restaurant where I dressed as Chinese royalty for a few minutes.
Right: A view of Hong Kong and Kowloon from one of the mountains I fell in love with. Mountains, mountains. Buildings, buildings, buildings.

  
Night shopping. Lots of neon. Hong Kong uses more electricity than any other city I've ever seen. (No, I haven't been to Las Vegas.)

Macau is delightfully Spanish [again with the influence of a previously occupying country] and is also the Chinese Las Vegas. Either the itinerary or the tour guide scheduled an hour and a half at a casino and fifteen minutes at a temple. I gawked at this and all I could think was: People have got to get their priorities straight. Macau is both a major urban center and rainforest, and is hot as all hell. Chris (a good friend from high school who coincidentally had nearly the same vacation as I did) so eloquently described it as "humid as Satan's crotch". He's right, you know. The sun is SO hot, so strong, so violent and harsh that I fear my cameras will melt. Yes, I was more worried about how my cameras would hold up to the heat as opposed to worrying about my own skin melting off or about putting on sunscreen to prevent the rays of cancer from penetrating my layers of clothing.

 
Left: Part Hollywood, complete with plam-tree lined roadways and mini-tour busses.
Right: Part historical rainforest. This is the most famous attraction in Macau, one wall of a church that was built while the Portuguese were still around. It has since burned down and I can't remember the significance of this place at all.

  
Left & Center: Proof that I went on vacation! ...to Rome? This was some touristy place next to one of their many big casinos that had Roman and Middle Eastern inspired structures and even a strange reconstruction of the Roman Coliseum, complete with a Roman soldier who stared me down as I tried to discreetly take a photo of him.
Right: This photo of my brother and uncle always makes me laugh. I told them to be 'natural' and this is what I got.

I pesonally enjoyed the more 'local' parts of Macau:

  
Left: Metal 'cages' protrude from nearly every window in Macau so that people's laundry can hang to dry without fear of it blowing away - no that there's any breeze in Macau to begin with. There's rust stains that run along the walls and a mildewy kind of smell about all of it.
Right: Umbrellas are the only thing that will keep you safe from the sun and cool while outdoors.

 
Macau at night. Again with the neon.

China, unfortunately, did not do a good job of committing itself to my memory. Guanzhou passed by without me even noticing it and all I can pick out from my journal is: We saw some stuff in Canton [that's really the name of the province, and not the city where we actually were] (most of which I had no clue about) [remember the language difficulties?]
- Mausoleum of 72 Martyrs
- Some important building that belongs to Sun Yen Fat...I think?
- tea tasting
- then lunch
- then off to Shenzhen!

Yeah, that was Guangzhou for ya. Overall, China is much cleaner than Vietnam. The cities here are much more urban - the streets are wider, the buildings larger, the standards of living and cleanliness higher. They even have greenery on the highways! Greenery! On the highways! Potted plants along the rails, ivy covers the support pillars, plants adorn the railings. There's shrubs and trees on the islands. Unbelievable. If only Toronto had the climate to sustain such GREEN!

 
Left: This is the fancy Sun Yen Fat (I think) building that we weren't allowed into.
Right: A view of Shenzhen from one of the parks we went to. You can see the miniature Great Wall of China running along the ground.

All I can really remember about Shenzhen is the mini-China amusement park we went to and the Window of the World, which was another miniature village. This time, however, instead of having small reconstructions of important buildings in China, they had small reconstructions of important buildings from around the world. Whoooo. Their advertising motto was pretty good though: "Give us one day and we'll show you the world" - it's not super clever or anything terribly original, but it made me kind of want to see it. Though I don't remember too much, I did write that Shenzhen is an awesome city and I can't wait to go back. It was like a Chinese New York or LA or Toronto; it absolutely bustled with life and lights.

Something that we saw often while we were in Asia: temples.

 
Left: A temple in Macau.
Right: These are joss sticks formed into spirals that burn while hanging from the ceiling. Joss is a type of incense typically used in the Buddhist tradition.

Upon arrival in HCMC, the whole tour group dispersed and I immediately felt a sense of nostalgia. In some strange way, I missed them. I fel uneasy without the security of having them around and knowing that we were all in it together - whatever 'it' was. We were alone to fend for ourselves at the airport, and that made me a little sad. I missed 'the gang' - I didn't get to say goodbye to the couple or the family - sigh. I'll miss you more than anyone will ever know. Thanks for the wonderful memories. Another example of how I get too attached to people too quickly.

Man, I'm such a mush.
5:28 pm