Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong from above

I should not have waited this long to recap all of this stuff. I'm struggling to remember everything that happened on the trip and at this point, after a long weekend of partying in Prague, I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out. But anyway...

Hong Kong
We arrived in Hong Kong on Friday afternoon ready for anything other than Shanghai and cold weather. The train ride into the city from the airport looked like Southern California with sunshine and hills rolling down into ocean. It was immediately 1000% better than Shanghai based solely on the warm weather.

Hong Kong itself is divided into roughly two areas, Kowloon, and Hong Kong Island. Kowloon is the grittier, more Chinese part of the city, and Hong Kong is the more glamorous, high-end, British section. We decided to stay in Kowloon because it was cheaper and its bay is where Cassandra from Wayne's World is from.

We got to our place, the only hostel of the trip, and immediately got ready to go out on the town. That night we went to Lan Kwai Fong which is a big street of bars and clubs that is really popular with expats in Hong Kong. It was Friday night so it was really packed with lots of douche scrotes in suits pretending to be important. At any rate it was really fun. At some point some crazy girl told Gunmetal to close his eyes and open his hand and she dumped a load of pills in it. I don't remember the rest of the night.


The next day we moved to a better hostel (the AMERICAN hostel) and covered a lot of sightseeing activities. We did the old double decker bus tour of Hong Kong which I have no pictures of because I forgot my camera that day. Toward the end of the day we rode up the side of a mountain in a cable car to check out the view from the hills. It was sick.

On one of the nights we were in Hong Kong we decided to check out their "world famous light show" that happens every night at 8pm or so. We were all very excited for a sweet lazer light show to blow our minds Pink Floyd style...We were sorely disappointed when we realized it was just a series of slow blinking lazers coming off of each building on the Hong Kong side while terribly cheesy chinese music played and announcers chattered in Cantonese over some loud speaker. Even the 3 year old asian babies were underwhelmed.

As a final assessment of Hong Kong I have to say that it is an amazing city. Despite the shitty light show (it had to have at least one flaw) it is the perfect mix of Asia and London or San Francisco. It is beautiful. It is surrounded by rolling hills and has a skyline that is really cool. The people are pretty nice and it's very vanilla face friendly. The weather is awesome - in January it was 60 - 70 degrees the whole time. Even the language, Cantonese, sounds way better to me than Mandarin. Hong Kong has everything anyone could ever want in a city and I could see myself living there for an extended period of time.

Macau

Some Macau Church Ruins

We hit Macau for a day after we covered Hong Kong and Kowloon pretty thoroughly. Macau was also a pretty interesting place. I had heard bad things so my expectations were low, but it was well worth seeing in my opinion.

Macau was a Portugese colony for about 400 years. It looks like a European city and actually has a few sites to see. There is one area in the center that has ruins of an old church. Here you can walk a street and sample 50 types of jerky meats ranging from pig to cow to chicken...or so it is advertised. I'm pretty sure it's all either dogmeat or human meat from casino workers who weren't pulling their weight anymore. Aside from the jerky there is also good Portugese, African, and Chinese food.

Looking down on Mystery Meat Street

We hit the casinos for a while and I made 700 HKD (100USD) at the blackjack tables. The casinos there are weird because there are literally 5x more workers than there are patrons. If you've ever been anywhere in Asia outside of Korea or Japan, you probably realize that this does not automatically translate into a more efficient operating system. Getting a drink was nearly impossible.

Overall Macau was cool because I made money and got to feast on jerky. Go here if you like to do these two things.

Shanghai

Oriental Pearl Tower - a shaft with some balls

For the second leg of my Asian adventure I met up with my two good friends from work. I will call them Gunmetal Gary and Colonel Canadia. Both had been in Shanghai for a day by the time I met them and Gunmetal had the same death disease I picked up in Seoul. I got in at around 10pm on Tuesday to a surprisingly nice hotel. After a confusing and frightening late night meal where we pointed at a menu while a chef hacked turkey necks 5 feet away from us with a giant knife, we all decided to take it easy for the night.

The next day we toured around the city and covered pretty much every major site there is to see in Shanghai. I was disappointed to find that nothing was very impressive. One of the most impressively shitty things I saw was the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel pictured below.

"METEOR SHOWER!"

If you like to move slowly through a tunnel of blinking lights while a cheesy 1970s computer sound effect plays, you have to check out the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. Suffice it to say there are absolutely no real sights to see in this stupid tunnel. If you're having trouble falling asleep check out the youtube clip.

Monks at the Jade Buddha Temple

This is a famous tourist site which was actually alright. Those are monks doing monk stuff. I should know more about what these monks are doing but I was too busy throwing coins at these statue things that Gunmetal and Canadia thought you were supposed to throw coins at...I'm still pretty sure you were supposed to place the coins gently on them.

That night we met up with a friend of a friend to go out in Shanghai. We went to the safe, vanilla face portion of town where we sat a table with this Chinese girl and her boyfriend and had a serious cultural exchange. We taught each other how to play drinking dice games with whiskey.

After this place we went to an after hours bar where the Chinese girls made it no secret that you were to buy them drinks before talking to them. I made some sarcastic comments to them which they didn't like. I think sarcasm is a few years off there...Anyway, my normal superb A game was turned into Z game by my death disease. So after an hour I left Gunmetal and Canadia to make very regrettable decisions while I went home to get an awesome night's sleep. But my sleep was ruined by Gunmetal and Canadia returning to the room and raiding the not-so-cheap minibar for the rest of the night.

The next day (Thursday) we woke up at 11am, went and got food, and proceeded to sleep until the next day at 9am. There was nothing left to do in Shanghai. Also we were all either sick with the flu or sick over decisions made the night before.

We were all very happy when it was time to leave Shanghai for Hong Kong on Friday morning. We wanted to take the Maglev train to the airport but our taxi driver convinced us to take him all the way to the airport because of traffic going to the maglev station. We were all too tired and sick to care. He didn't disappoint though and after the scariest taxi ride of all time we agreed that he was just slightly faster than the maglev.

Seoul

Popular Korean Car - the "Korando"

This will be a relatively quick post since I don't remember the bulk of this stop. This is not for lack of time spent there...I was in Seoul for the most days (5) out of any of the destinations. It has more to do with hanging out with one Paul Withrow who drinks alcohol every night like a camel stocking up on water for the next 2 months in the desert.

My Seoul adventure began before I even got there when I partied all New Year's Eve night and into New Year's Day in DC. I got about 30 minutes of sleep (a sign of things to come for the next 3 weeks) and headed for the airport at 9am to catch what I thought would be my cakewalk 15 hour direct flight to Seoul. Little did I know that Korean Air would sit me in the crying Korean baby section.

15 hours later with about 30 minutes sleep again, I arrived in Seoul. Upon landing I was given a Korean landing card along with a pamphlet on how to find God from the uber religious Korean lady sitting next to me with her admittedly cute and much-better-behaved-than-the-rest Korean baby. Her baby daddy probably left her cuz she is batshit insane religious. I thanked her and avoided her questions about being saved and went to gather my bags and sanity.

Once I made it into the city I met up with Paul and we proceeded to the nearest Korean BBQ place (there are about 15 to choose from on every corner) and started drinking beer (mekju) and soju (worst hard alcohol drink ever) in massive amounts. We then went on to a few Korean bars (Hofs) and got wrecked. I think the night ended after I got in a belligerent drunk verbal sparring match with some Canadian douch scrotes.

The next 3 nights went on in a similar fashion (sans the fights with citizens of America's hat). I don't really remember much of what happened but I'm told one night I helped to breakup a fight amongst some tiny Koreans. I can only imagine it was really easy since Koreans are half my size and usually never come to blows.

Anyway, I was deathly ill for most of this leg of the trip and it definitely put a damper on the visit. I would like to go back to Seoul when it is warmer and see more of the city and maybe some cultural things. I'm sure it is more than just Soju and Mekju and fighting.

about 20 soju shots deep - barely remember this

Back...

In Western Europe...yay.

I've been traveling since New Year's day and my clothes and assorted belongings smell like they were buried in a river of garbage and rotting food.

I arrived in Vienna Saturday night and I'm still recovering but I'll have an update on all of the places I visited (in different installments) within the next few days. I'll also fill you in on how much Vienna blows and how badly I want to leave. Check back tomorrow.

Forgive me for being negative about living in Vienna but I just came from this (not a postcard).PS - sorry to those I missed while at home. I was there for 10 days but away for 2 visiting family and sick for 3. Basically it was too short of a break from Europe...what a horrible life I lead.

Poland

I'm going there this weekend. Warsaw to be specific. It should be sweet because I'll have a bunch of friends there and because of this.

I'm wearing my best Abercrombie clothing all weekend.

Vacation Plans

Once a year from mid-December until mid-January I get time off from my job (unpaid). Thanks shitty fake scam company! It's like I get spring break again but I'm grown up and I have money (for now). So for anyone who is interested, these are my plans.

December 20 - I fly into DC very late at night. I am most likely going to go straight to the bar and get drunk (if I'm not dead from my flight), hopefully with lots of people I want to see. I will be home from December 20 - January 1. If you are around let me know somehow. I won't have a phone so email or facebook would be a good way.

January 1st I leave again and return to Asia for some traveling before another "summit" in Boracay, Philippines.

My rough itinerary for January is:

Jan 1 - fly from DC to Seoul, Korea
Jan 6 - Seoul, Korea to Shanghai, China
Jan 9 - Shanghai, China to Hong Kong...hong kong?
Jan 12 - Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Jan 16 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Manila, Philippines

I'm hanging out with my buddy who is teaching English in Korea first, then meeting up with my two good friends in the company from Shanghai on so it should be a mildly entertaining trip.

The "company" "summit" (I put both in quotes intentionally) will involve me and all of my coworkers aged 22 - 28 getting fucked up every night in paradise. A lot of these employees are Filipinos (or Flips/Filos as I affectionately and racistly call them) who are "high society" there. They all have more money and servants than God and they only hang out with models and coke dealers so it should be fun.

Actually I think it's a fact that every girl in high society Philippines is or was a model...looks don't really count. In fact, the girl I'm working with next project in Austria is one of these Filo models.

After a week in paradise I leave for cold ass boring ass Vienna for four months where I will try not to get imprisoned, raped, and impregnated against my will.

Dutch/American History Lesson

Did you know Martin Van Buren, The United States' 8th president, was the only president to not speak English as a first language? Did you care? Me neither. But read about it anyway from Wikipedia:

Martin Van Buren (December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Before his presidency, he served as the eighth Vice President (1833-1837) and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson. He was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the first president who was not of British (i.e. English, Welsh or Scottish) or Irish descent. He was the first president to be born an American citizen^[2] (his predecessors were born before the revolution); he is also the only president not to have spoken English as a first language, having grown up speaking Dutch.^[3]

Another fun fact involving Martin Van Buren from Wikipedia:

In a popular episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Van Buren Boys," Kramer and George are threatened by a street gang called the Van Buren Boys with the secret sign of the number 8 because Van Buren was the 8th president. They apparently picked that name because Van Buren was the man they most admired. The gang is apparently "every bit as mean as he was".

And even more about the history of the Dutch in America! Weeee!

The Dutch had settled in America long before the establishment of the United States of America.^{[nb 18]} For a long time the Dutch lived in Dutch colonies, owned and regulated by the Dutch Republic, which later became part of the Thirteen Colonies. Nevertheless, many Dutch communities remained virtually isolated towards the rest of America up until the American Civil War, in which the Dutch fought for the North and adopted many American ways.^[94]

Most future waves of Dutch immigrants were quickly assimilated. There have been three American presidents of Dutch descent: Martin van Buren (8th, first president who was not of British descent, first language was Dutch), Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd, elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms) and Theodore Roosevelt (26th).

Thank you Dutch people. Those are actually relatively decent presidents.

And now history about New York, or Nieuw Amsterdam as it used to be called in the 17th century:

On August 27, 1664, in a surprise incursion when England and the Dutch Republic were at peace, four English frigates sailed in New Amsterdam’s harbor and demanded New Netherland’s surrender, whereupon New Netherland was provisionally ceded by director-general Peter Stuyvesant. This resulted in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, between England and the Dutch Republic.

In 1667, the Dutch did not press their claims on New Netherland (but did not relinquish them either) in the Treaty of Breda, in return for an exchange with the tiny Island of Run in North Maluku, rich in nutmegs and the guarantee for the factual possession of Suriname, that year captured by them. The New Amsterdam city was subsequently renamed New York, after the Duke of York (later King James II) — brother of the English King Charles II — who had been granted the lands with the kingly stroke of an armchair pen (similar to the Spanish claim to the entire western hemisphere).

However, in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch recaptured New Netherland in August 1673 and installed Anthony Colve as New Netherland's first Governor (previously there had only been West India Company Directors), and the city was renamed "New Orange". After the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in November 1674 the city was relinquished to English rule and the name reverted to "New York"; Suriname became an official Dutch possession in return.

Talk about getting fucked. New York for Suriname? I bet you can't even name the bordering countries of Suriname. You're an idiot. Much like the Dutch guy who signed the treaty.

I've actually come across a lot of Dutch people who claim that if they hadn't lost New York that the world would be speaking Dutch instead of English as an international language. Well dream on Dutch-bags. No one wants to hock hard G's all over the place.

As a Japanese businessman in Holland told me in my first week here: "ahhhsooo I think ah you must have cricket in your throat to speak ah Dutch." And as with everything I have ever been told by the numerous Japanese guys I have met with on this job, it was true.