Marching to the beat of a different mandolin

I'm really glad we got the extra time in Hong Kong. I wish we had more time, in fact, but I won't miss the weather. It'll be nice to return to autumn in Oregon. I accidentally turned the fabric headboard of our hotel bed purple (my hair still rubs off on everything, even though the dye is permanent), so we're getting charged for that. Hopefully the fee will be something reasonable and not the cost of a whole bed. If they insist on charging us for the whole bed, fine, but I'll insist on having them send the "damaged" bed to us. It was by far the most comfortable bed I've ever snored in.

We're at the airport now, hanging out in the United lounge. We're pretty well beat from five days of intense tourism, and didn't feel up to doing much more with all our luggage in tow, so we're just taking advantage of the free food and drinks and wifi and electricity to charge our devices as much as possible before we take off on our 24 hours of flight. McKenzie got upgraded to Guam, but I'm still in coach, then we're both coach to Honolulu and then first class the rest of the way (HNL-SFO, SFO-PDX). I think I'm tired enough that I'll be able to snooze most of the way to Guam anyway, so no big deal.

Michele is mercifully working for me on Thursday so that I don't have to rush from the airport to the office. We land at 8am, so I have the whole day to recover before working on Friday. Then Hanson on Saturday, drop Z off in Seaside on Sunday (maybe a hike on the coast if I have any energy?), work Monday-Wednesday, play in Seaside with Dee through the following Sunday. Maybe sleep again one day, but probably not soon :)

We spent our last night here on the peak with Adam. "The peak" is the high point on Hong Kong island -- at least the highest public point. Property in this area is the most expensive in the world. There's a mall up there -- like all the malls we went to, it was nothing but super high end stores, and, inexplicably, a Bubba Gump restaurant at the very top, basically the most prime commercial real estate in the world. Anyway we went out on the viewing deck about an hour before sunset, took pictures, then went back out at dark. Here's the view from each -- amazing what a change takes place in about 30 minutes' time:( Cut for bigness )

The architecture here is amazing. All the buildings are super tall and super skinny, unlike NYC where they're super tall and wide. Our hotel was 32 stories (one of the shorter buildings in the city), and there were only 9 rooms on each floor. That's how all these buildings are. Adam pointed out a house on the peak that was 10 stories tall, but just one room per story. The cost of building and living here is astronomical, but everyday purchases were totally reasonable. The exchange rate is fixed to the dollar, and prices were by and large comparable or better than you'd get in the states. Most of our meals were way cheaper than American restaurants would be, and public transit was just a few cents each trip. Taxis were only a few bucks, too.

We spent a couple of hours yesterday shopping the street markets. The malls are all luxury goods, but the street markets are where you can get super cheap (and yeah, cheaply made) souvenirs. McKenzie got a bunch of silk ties for $2 each, and I got a silk dress, and then a few random items that I could just as easily get in the US but not as cheaply. (I added three new wigs to my collection from a costume shop -- $10 apiece for purple, green, and red bobs.) I got a pair of fake Chucks for $12. They look exactly like the real thing, but they have a different label. And I got lots of ridiculous Engrish shirts. I'll model them in the coming weeks and post photos when I do. The street vendors had all kinds of fun stuff for sale, but for some reason, about half of the vendors sold underwear. Just piles and piles of underwear on tables, not in packaging of any kind. I found that interesting.

More photos are on Facebook for now. 

We are having a grand time here in Hong Kong. When we arrived, we were warned that a typhoon -- no, a super typhoon -- was headed straight for us. United offered to change our reservation for free, because it was unlikely we'd get out as scheduled on Monday. So we extended our visit by two days. I'm not complaining!

Yesterday was a day of getting our bearings. We both woke up kind of insanely early, and I tried to sleep until a normal hour but eventually just wanted to get up and get going. We walked about 2 miles to the zoo and botanic gardens. This city is steep like San Francisco. I had no idea. It was a very challenging walk. Many of the streets are so steep that instead of sidewalks, they just have stairs. Watching buses drive up and down is enough to make my heart jump. It's also hot as fuck here -- around 90 degrees, with insane humidity. We were both drenched in sweat by the time we reached our destination.

It's beautiful, though. There are banyan trees everywhere, and even though this city has a population of eleventy million (not an exact figure), it doesn't feel crowded. There's a lot going on for sure, but the streets aren't jammed the way they are in NYC. There's not really anywhere to park a car, and my guess is very few people have them. The public transit system is thorough -- I don't think there's ever much waiting for a bus or street car, and there are also lots of taxis. So far we've just been walking, though, with the exception of the bus ride from the airport when we arrived.

The zoo was really cool. It was small, but the displays were rad, and they had animals I had never seen before. It's funny because you think of zoos as collections of rare and endangered animals, and American zoos have plenty of Asian animals, so I guess I kind of expected this zoo to have the same animals I'd seen in our zoos at home, with perhaps a heavier focus on local species. Not the case at all. They did have a raccoon display, which I don't think any Americans need to see in a zoo, but other than that, the animals were almost all new to me. The lemurs were really beautiful, and they had these completely acrobatic monkeys that put on an awesome show. I don't remember what species they were, but we sat and watched them bound all over their enclosure for several minutes.

By the time we walked back from the zoo, I was pretty exhausted. My feet hurt a bit and the time change/lack of sleep on the way here were really affecting me. We had a room service lunch and I spent most of the early afternoon in various stages of nap. We ventured out again around 2 or 3 to walk to the IFC mall. Holy shit, y'all. This mall was fucking huge, and it was nothing but designer store after designer store. In Portland, True Religion Jeans is probably the most expensive retailer in our main mall, but here, they were definitely the cheapest. I felt very unwealthy there. But it was neat to walk around and gawk at all the crazy expensive stuff. My plantar fasciitis was giving me hell, though, and I wasn't really interested in lingering much. We walked along the waterfront back to our hotel and called it an early night.

We're not sure what kind of effect the storm will have on the city, but we're not going to be so foolish as to try to play outside while it's hammering down. We're just going to hang out in the hotel all day tomorrow and let it do its thing, and then hopefully stores and sites and whatnot will be open again on Tuesday and we can get out and see some more stuff. We're hoping to go to Macau for the day then. It's not due to make landfall until this evening, though, so we'll have the day to run around the city with Adam. No idea what we'll do, but I'm really excited about it :)