I'm back at work now after a nice long winter vacation. Last winter I spent a lot of time hanging around here in Hokkaido, which turned out to be quite boring actually. So, this year I decided to go somewhere, and that somewhere turned out to be China. Originally I had planned to spend about 5 days in Hong Kong. But then I realised that if I was going to take a vacation, I may as well make it a good one, so I added another ten days or so to my trip and included Shanghai and Beijing. Here's what happened.

My last day of work was Dec. 21st, which was a relief because I was physically and mentally exhausted, but I didn't have much time to rest as I had a very busy schedule that started the next morning. On Dec. 22nd, I went to an overnight end of year party with the junior-high school teachers at an onsen hotel about an hour and a half from my town. We had a great meal, drank, got in the onsen, drank some more, had something to eat, got in the onsen etc. At about 2:00am I decided to turn in for the night, but one of my roommates kept me (and the other 2 teachers in the room) up all night with possibly the loudest snoring I've ever heard. The only sleep I got was from about 8:00am to 9:00am, after the guy had gone to get breakfast. On Dec. 23rd, I drove straight from the hotel to the other side of the island to spend Christmas with my girlfriend. We had a nice couple of days together, then on Dec. 25th I drove all the way back across the island to Sapporo, where I caught an evening flight to Tokyo. I had to travel from the domestic airport at Haneda to the international airport at Narita (where I had booked a hotel for the night), which usually involves a 75 min bus ride, but as it was fairly late at night I had to take a train. The train was a partial express and went right through Tokyo (instead of skirting around it, as most airport trains do). The train was very slow and crowded, and somewhere along the way my drink started leaking in my backpack. Not happy Jan. It took about 2 and a half hours, and by the time I arrived in Narita (about 11:30pm) it was so late that there were no more shuttle buses, so I was forced to take a taxi from the station to the hotel. Ten minutes and about $40 later, I arrived, checked in, cleaned my bag and went to bed.

On the 26th, I woke up at about 7:00 am and took the morning shuttle bus to the airport. I was flying ANA, which has now automated pretty much every part of their check-in system, so check-in was a very quick and painless affair. You wait in line for a few minutes, walk up to the counter, scan the barcode on your ticket, scan your passport, choose a seat on the touch screen computer, hand over your bags and finished. At the security points in the airport and at the gates, all you have to do is scan your boarding pass, wait for a green light and you're through. Pretty easy.

The flight to Hong Kong was about four and a half hours and was a typical flight. Bad food and mostly bad in-flight movies. I think I slept for most of it. At about 1:00pm I arrived in HK, went through a particularly slow immigration, and exited to a nice warm airport. The first thing I saw as I exited the immigration hall - Burger King (or Hungry Jack's, as we know it). This may not excite most people, but for me it was pretty exciting. One of the goals of my trip was to eat a whole lot of food that I can't eat in Japan. In Australia, Hungry Jack's is not exactly high on the list of Australian gourmet restaurants. But when you live in Australia, where there are great restaurants all over the place that you can visit any time, you end up taking places like Hungry Jack's for granted. The nearest Hungry Jack's to me is about 1000km away in Tokyo where they recently reopened a few stores after a long absence in the Japanese market, so seeing and smelling their food was rather exciting. Unfortunately, I wasn't hungry, so I added it to my mental list of things to do.

I went to the ATM, got some cash, and then jumped on the Airport Express train. Fifteen minutes later I was getting off the train in Kowloon. No matter what anyone thinks about Hong Kong, it's very hard to criticise their public transportation system. Fifteen minutes from the airport to downtown in a cheap, clean, air-conditioned express train is something that most cities would love to have.

Exiting Kowloon station I found myself in a shopping centre. Over the next few days I discovered that a fair percentage of Hong Kong is simply shopping centres connected to more shopping centres. A typical shopping journey goes something like this: you get off the train at the station under the shopping centre, walk through the shopping centre to the next shopping centre, exit that shopping centre, cross the road to another shopping centre, walk through that shopping centre. and voila!, you've arrived at the shopping centre you wanted to visit. It's all a bit silly, especially for someone that doesn't particularly like shopping.

Anyway, I decided to wander through the shopping centre to stretch my legs. I was carrying all my luggage, but fortunately it wasn't too heavy. Actually, this is probably a good time to explain about my luggage. Every time I go somewhere, I always end up packing too much. So this time I decided to travel as light as possible. I had the clothes on my back, 2 extra pairs of socks, 2 extra pairs of underpants, one extra t-shirt, one extra jumper, a few odds an ends (ike my camera) and that was it. Usually when I'm travelling to or from Japan or Australia I'm carrying most of my belongings with me, so my baggage is way over the airline baggage limit. This time it was something like 5kgs, which (considering my bag weighs about 4kgs) was extremely light. The down side of this was that I spent the next fortnight in basically the same outfit, which meant I was pretty dirty by the end of the trip. Oh well, when you're travelling alone this is one of those things that is acceptable.

After wandering through the shopping centre, which was remarkably like a Hong Kong version of Chadstone, I decided to go find a taxi and go to my hotel. While trying to find my way through the shopping centre I made my first useful discovery about travel in Hong Kong and China. Chinese maps are, in general, not very well designed. In my opinion, when you are designing a map there are only two sensible ways to orient it. The first is to orient the map to the direction that you are standing. What I mean is this: you know how when you look at a map in most Australian shopping centers, if the shop you want to go to is up and to the right on the map, that means you walk ahead and then turn right. Easy. The other option, which is more useful for outside maps, is to orient a map to the north, ie. north is up. For some reason, many maps in China are drawn in a completely random way, so "up" is neither north nor the way you are facing. This makes navigation very, very annoying. You have to spend five minutes turning around in circles, looking for landmarks, moving the map around.. 'ok... this shop is here, and this exit is here, and this bathroom is here, so I have to go.... that way!... maybe....'.

Finally I found the taxi stand, got a taxi, sorted out where I wanted to go with the Cantonese speaking driver, and sat back for a relaxing 15 minute taxi ride. What was relaxing about it was the fact that it was costing peanuts. I'd forgotten what it was like to be in a country that has cheap taxis. Taxis in Japan are so ridiculously expensive that most people can't use them. During my travels in Japan I usually don't even contemplate using a taxi. For comparison, my Hong Kong taxi ride was about the same distance as my Narita taxi ride the previous day, but instead of costing about $40 it cost less than $10. That's what taxis in Japan should be like.

I arrived at my hotel, the Regal Oriental, and was pleasantly surprised. The hotel was actually really nice, certainly the equivalent of other more expensive hotels in Hong Kong. The only real downside was the location. It was right opposite the old airport, which is off in the north eastern part of the city known as Kowloon City. Back when the airport was still being used it would have been the premier airport hotel. Unfortunately, its one of the few major hotels in the city that isn't near a subway or train line, which makes it much less desirable these days. The nearest subway was about 15 minutes walk (which really isn't that bad) compared with most other hotels which are located within 5 minutes walk of a station.

The room was nice and big, much bigger than what I'm used to in Japan, had a decent bathroom and a nice tv with lots of English cable channels.

After arriving, I had a quick shower, got changed and went for a walk. One of my habits when I go to a new city (possibly a bad habit) is that I like to walk around and get a feel for the town. No trains or buses, just walking. Oh yeah, no maps or cameras either. No touristing, no visting famous sights, just walking around getting used to the sights and smells of a new place. I checked the map before I left, so I had an idea of where I was and what was around, but from there it was all up to chance.

As usual, I ended up doing much more than I should have on the first afternoon. I ended up walking from Kowloon City (which is technically not part of Kowloon but part of the New Territories), through some residential areas, down Nathan Road (the main north-south thoroughfare an shopping road in Kowloon), down to the harbour, back up through Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok and back to my hotel. Basically, I saw pretty much all of Kowloon in the first afternoon and evening I was there. I walked for about five or six hours straight, until I couldn't walk any more. As I mentioned previously, this was probably a bad idea. I ended up having muscle pains and sprains that lasted my entire vacation, all because of the walking I did on the first day. At first my left foot hurt, then the next day my right foot hurt because I was compensating for my left foot, then one knee hurt, then the other one. It was never ending. Just as one body part healed, another was injured. Part of this was due to the fact that I had done very little exercise over the previous month or so. My job doesn't really involve much physical activity, and when its -10 and snowing outside it's hard to find the motivation to do anything except snowboard and loaf at home. The other reason was that I walked A LOT. Not just the first day, but every day (as I will explain later). Not just a leisurely stroll, but many, many miles of pavement pounding every day. Even though it was painful, it was definitely worth it as I got to see a lot of China that the average tourist wouldn't get to see.

There weren't any particular highlights from my first evening in Hong Kong, just a few observations (no photos as I didn't take my camera).

First, Hong Kong is a smelly city, both good and bad smells. Walking down the street you might smell a roasting duck, then an open sewer, then some baking pastries, then some stinky dried products, then some incense from a temple, then some rotting garbage. Hong Kong is certainly a unique nasal experience.

Second, Hong Kong must have the highest proportion of luxury cars I have ever seen. Without exaggeration, I estimated that about 80% of cars on the road (not counting taxis and delivery vans) could be considered luxury cars. BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Jaguar... I saw them all and more on just the first afternoon. Furthermore, they were all really, really clean. I guess this is because the roads in Hong Kong are very clean, and most people wouldn't drive their cars outside the city. These cars are exactly the opposite of my car, which is always dirty. Five minutes after I've washed it it's filthy again. But, it's a rally car, so that's how it's supposed to be.

Third, the area that my hotel was in (Kowloon City) was a great area for seeing HK people going about their daily business without tourists around. Most tourists would have no reason to go there, except for the Thai restaurants (Kowloon City has a large Thai community, so it has all the best Thai restaurants). I could wander around without having to feel like a tourist, and without the locals having to perform for tourists, which is exactly how I like to travel. It's nice to visit the big attractions from time to time, but for me the best part of travelling is seeing how other people live and having a chance to interact with them in their real environments. Kowloon City was great for that.

Fourth, Hong Kong has an incredible number of convenience stores. I though Japan was bad, but HK was just over the top. You can't walk 100 metres without seeing a 7-11 or a Circle K. This is not a complaint, it's actually pretty good, especially considering the cost of things in HK. Using a can of Coke for comparison (not that I really drink Coke much anymore), a regular sized can costs about A$1.30 in Japan and about $0.70 in HK. I have no idea how much it costs in Australia these days.

So, after wandering around all afternoon and evening I got a big pack of delicious Thai satays from a vendor on the street and some drinks and snacks from the 7-11, and went back and watched a Premier League game on the telly. It was the first time I had seen my team play in well over a year. We won 5-1. Nice evening.

Continued tomorrow...