HONG KONG
The ten-hour flight from Nairobi to Hong Kong passed unremarkably. At Hong Kong International Airport, I had expected to be allowed through with no more than the usual questions. But after the austere-looking immigration officer leafed through my passport, he motioned to a colleague standing close by. When the colleague came they conversed briefly in Chinese and I was asked to follow him. He led me to a small waiting area with a preponderance of Indian and African faces. Wait to be called, he said, and left with my passport. It became apparent that I was waiting to be put to interview. A few moments later a different immigration officer approached a middle-aged Indian man sitting behind me and told him he had been refused admittance into Hong Kong. The man--who had a wife and two small children at his side--was heartbroken.
"But visa okay, passport okay, why not?" he asked, choking back tears.
The reasons, she said, could not be disclosed. The most she could tell him was that they weren't entirely satisfied with the reasons that he had given for wanting to visit Hong Kong. He and his family would be held in the terminal till evening, then put on a flight back to Mumbai.
That episode made me contemplate a situation I had given little thought: being turned back. It was a possibility I was completely unprepared for and thinking about it made me rather nervous.
Not long afterward, my name was called and I was shown to a small office where three uniformed officers received me. Two stood to my left and the third one sat at a desk in front of me. At the start their questions had been routine. What brings me to Hong Kong? How long would I be staying? How much money did I have? But as the questioning progressed, their line of inquiry took a course I was not entirely comfortable with. Having looked at my itinerary, one of the things they were aching to know was why I was journeying through six countries alone—“alone” meaning without female company.
“You ton have a kofren?”
No, I said, and they looked at me as if I had told them I did not have a liver. For all their prying, however, they were good-natured and quite friendly. I did not get the impression that they doubted my story. When the interview wrapped up I was sent back to the waiting area and moments later my passport was delivered to me with a visa allowing my stay in Hong Kong for up to ninety days. I only had five. I lugged my bags to Bus number A11. Destination: Causeway Bay.
Causeway Bay is Hong Kong writ large: a residential and shopping district honeycombed with so many skyscrapers that you rarely see the sun. It has perhaps the most imposing assembly of fashion stores, malls, emporiums, and high-end restaurants in all of Hong Kong. If your tastes include $10,000 wristwatches, Causeway Bay is the ideal shopping destination. I located my hostel on the third or fourth attempt and after checking in, I went straight to the sack.
In the afternoon I got on a ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui. Tsim Sha Tsui is a district on the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula that is popular with tourists because of the dazzling views of Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline that its waterfront offers. The Tsim Sha Tsui promenade is also an important attraction. During winterfest (1 December-1 January), Hong Kong’s towers put on a synchronized lightshow every evening. The lightshow was just beginning when I stepped onto the pier. Across Victoria harbor, the towers danced, jostled, and tangoed. It was a spectacle of unearthly beauty.
An installment of the dazzling lightshow (Image by Hong
Kong Tourism Board)
I started off my third day at Hong Kong Park—an eight-hectare public park with a squash center and Hong Kong’s largest aviary. After a few rounds in the park I went to Central and took a train to Mong Kok.
Compared to Hong Kong Island, Mong Kok has an older and more oriental feel. It is in Mong Kok that you see Hong Kong’s famous neon signs, some reaching to several stories in height. This, I thought, was the Hong Kong we saw in John Woo’s movies. Mong Kok is perhaps best known for its vibrant dining scene and street markets. The good thing about Hong Kong’s street markets is that because hardly any of the traders can speak English, you never get hassled. But that also makes bargaining quite impossible. I purchased some memorabilia and returned to Causeway Bay.
December 23 was an unusually cold day, even minding that it was winter. I passed the morning at the hostel chatting with friends: Hiroshi from Hiroshima, Soo-jin from Seoul, and Andrew from Chicago (but living in some town in the Chinese mainland). Like me, Hiroshi was quite retiring so much of the talking was done by Andrew and Soo-jin. Andrew told politically incorrect stories about provincial China and Soo-jin lamented about the lack of Kimchi in Hong Kong. As I understand it, Kimchi is a popular Korean dish made from fermented vegetables. Soo-jin was taken aback to hear that I was from Africa. She said she had always wanted to visit Africa but did not know where or how to start. Also, there was the small problem of not being able to procure Kimchi whilst in Africa. She told me she’d be staying two more days in Hong Kong before flying to Kuala Lumpur to meet her family for Christmas. Curiously, I was also to be in Kuala Lumpur over Christmas.
As the day warmed up I left the hostel to ride the Central-Mid-level escalators—an outdoor escalator and walkway system that extends more than 800 meters. At the time of writing, it is the longest outdoor escalator system in the world. But it turned out to be seriously anticlimactic. I roamed around Central and ended the day’s ramblings at Cheung Kong park, a small patch of greenery off garden road, in the shadow of the iconic Bank of China tower. I stayed here till nightfall then decided to get a taste of Hong Kong’s nightlife at Wan Chai. I was none too impressed.
Christmas is a big deal in Hong Kong and the Christmas whirl was in full tilt on Christmas Eve. Daybreak had found me at the Tsim sha Tsui waterfront, where I had gone to capture the sunrise over Victoria harbor. It turned out to be an overcast day so I got no sunrise shots. I passed much of the morning shopping for souvenirs in Mong Kok.
At the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront
When I returned to Causeway Bay that afternoon, I had a change of clothes and left for the Peak Tower. The peak tower is a multi-storey shopping and entertainment complex with restaurants, gift shops, and even a Madame Tussauds wax museum. It is something to behold in its own right, but the view from its Sky Terrace takes the biscuit. From here, Hong Kong spreads out before your eyes, from the hillside forest of Victoria Peak and all the way to the Kowloon peninsula. The view is even more impressive at night, when Hong Kong breaks out into a riot of light and color.
When I returned to Causeway Bay that afternoon, I had a change of clothes and left for the Peak Tower. The peak tower is a multi-storey shopping and entertainment complex with restaurants, gift shops, and even a Madame Tussauds wax museum. It is something to behold in its own right, but the view from its Sky Terrace takes the biscuit. From here, Hong Kong spreads out before your eyes, from the hillside forest of Victoria Peak and all the way to the Kowloon peninsula. The view is even more impressive at night, when Hong Kong breaks out into a riot of light and color.
I left the Peak Tower just after nightfall. From the
tram station at Central, I drifted to Wan Chai, where I had my first
(and no doubt my last) experiment with Chinese food. The dish I
ordered—Yangzhou fried rice—looked appealing enough on the menu, but it tasted
like death warmed over. I only put it away because I could not stomach the thought
of throwing away a hundred dollars.
I returned to Tsim Sha Tsui after leaving Wan Chai.
The waterfront was packed to the rafters--it was the crest of winterfest. There
was such heavy foot traffic that it took me almost two hours to reach the Tsim
Sha Tsui promenade. The promenade was a sea of Christmas hats and glowstick
balloons. But apart from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, Tsim Sha Tsui had
nothing new to offer. I took in the glowing harbor for the last time and walked
back to the station to catch a train to Mong Kok.
Christmas Day found me on a queue outside Mong Kok’s
CinemaCity waiting for the 12:50 am
screening of Jumanji. Cinemacity is arguably Hong Kong’s best
cinema, and among the world’s most advanced. The auditorium opened at a half
past midnight, with the film beginning as per schedule. For the next two hours,
I was immersed in the novelty of 4DX cinema.
It was getting on 3:00 am when I left Mong Kok, and
almost 4:00am when I arrived in Causeway Bay. Because of going to bed so late
and so fatigued, I overslept and missed my 1:10 pm flight to Kuala Lumpur by
minutes. I ended up paying four and a half times what I had paid for the
original ticket, and having to vegetate in the terminal for hours as I waited to
check into the 8:50 pm flight. In the diminutive terminal seats I cycled
between trying to fall asleep and looking at funny dog videos on You Tube. I
was starved but I could not even purchase snacks in the terminal because I had
converted all my Hong Kong dollars to Malaysian Ringgit and none of the shops
would take Ringgit.
You cannot imagine my respite when the AirAsia check-in counter opened. Moments
later, I was at my seat inside the Airbus A320 that would carry me to Kuala
Lumpur. It had been the worst Christmas of my life but in the main, Hong Kong
had been edifying, exciting, sobering, and a lot more. I was eager to see how
Kuala Lumpur would compare.
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