Day 3

5.1.11
I checked out of my hotel late and went toward the mid-level escalators in Soho. There you can walk up hill through different levels of bars and restaurants. This would have been the place to go to a bar or two. The restaurants were expensive and too classy for my raggedy ass backpacker mentality. I did end up in a Cuban cigar store.
Crossing Soho off my list I then wanted to buy some t-shirts in a shopping district in Kowloon. Coming out of the subway I found thousands of people clogged onto sidewalks in the soggy heat. Not what I was expecting, not what I wanted and on top of that, I was disablingly hungry. I found a back street Yunnan noodle shop that tasted nothing like anything I had ever had in Yunnan and was happy. It took me about 10 minutes of walking amongst the masses of people (the only place I had ever seen so many people in China was at the Expo) to realize that this was not my scene. I was tired and wanted a nap so I headed to Victoria Park to find a park bench or some grassy shade to rest on.
Again, not what I was expecting. This time I found that Victoria Park (it’s like New York’s Central park but a lot smaller) was invaded with South East Asian women. I mean completely taken over! I imagine most of these women are nannies or housekeepers on their day off, they were certainly having the times of their lives. Everywhere I walked I tried not to step on people or the plastic blankets they put on the ground to sit on. The women separated out into groups, probably by language and by religion—some had head scarves, some didn’t. Sometimes I could pick up on a few words of Tagalog—a Spanish crossover—or Indonesian—said to be the simplest language in the world to understand. I finally found a place outside the park in front of the harbor to collect my exhausted thoughts. Then another group of women smoking katarek cigarettes came over and joined me speaking loudly in Indonesian.
I walked around town until I found the impressive Hong Kong convention center and had an ice coffee. I walked around the largest glass window in the world and then set out for the metro. Abruptly my adventures in Hong Kong came to end, hopefully with the epitaph: to be continued.

The plane ride to Shanghai was simple and comfortable. I met some Americans, one guy who was on a holiday with his Shanghaiese fiancée and another pair of young doctors who worked at the clinic I go to. Back in Shanghai things were quiet on the May day holiday and part of me felt like I still wanted to be in Hong Kong, not heading back to my Chinese home.