Well, Hong Kong day 2 was a bit more hectic, believe it or not. I decided that since I have 4 days in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong has 4 districts, I'd do one day in each. I'm going to have to adjust more than likely, as some are pretty sparse on stuff to do. But anyway, today was Kowloon, or 九龙. Before that though, I needed lunch. There's a large transfer station called Admiralty, so I figured i'd stop there. Surely they have something?

And have something they did. This place was huge, so I walked around and saw a lot. I also saw a very amazing looking McDonald's. It's hard to describe, but little did I know I stumbled upon the first and I think only, McDonald's Next in the world. It was full of stainless steel, had a massive salad bar, and an open kitchen. I was confused. So I got the grilled chicken pasta soup and became more confused. It was loaded with carrots, onions, and corn. It was actually good. Not fast food good, like they actually cooked it good. And cheap. I was a bit shocked. So much so I stopped at McDonald's again for lunch. (what's wrong with me!?) This time I got a pulled chicken BBQ sandwich and steak fries. McDonald's is weird here. That was pretty good, but fast food good. Meaning I felt sorry for myself after. But it was also cheap. Well, I think it was super expensive, but still a few dollars less than local food. The food situation here continues to vex me.

I went to Kowloon Park, and within was the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Center. Sort of an interesting museum about preserving Hong Kong's history. It reminded me of Taiwan, the painstaking effort they go to to preserve their heritage. In contrast to the mainland, where nothing stays in the way of progress. I think they'd bulldoze The Great Wall if Ikea wanted a store there. But as far as Hong Kong, I was pretty impressed by the large archive of stuff they had, each documented by the discovery site and full description. And you could just go and get the stuff they found. Not touch it of course, but it was all organized in this big filing cabinet sort of thing. I also liked their room with a floor of pottery. It was probably fake, but looked awesome.

After the park I walked through the Avenue of Comic Book Stars (comics I'm not familiar with) and onto the Hong Kong History Museum. I found this to be a bit dull, despite good reviews online. The end little bit, focusing on say, 1850 to present was interesting. But ya know, every civilization had a really long line of pretty much the same stuff. Here's some pots, here's some arrowheads. Yeah I get it. I know this was the overwhelming majority of human civilization, but it's the same as every civilization in Asia, the Americas, Africa, you name it. Show me the stuff unique to Hong Kong. Anyway, pots and arrowheads were 75% of the museum, and I say... "meh".

Back on the way, I stopped at the Hong Kong Cultural Center. It started to rain by now, so I didn't care what I saw except that it was inside. I happened upon on an art show, and some people very surprised that I was there. They tried to ask me questions in English, but sort of stumbled and just chuckled. Nice folks. The art show was okay but small. I don't know, I don't get art. I need Ella to tell me what's good. Here's a pic, like whatever.

So the next destination was another place sort of high on the Internet ratings, and it sounded good to me: a tomb they unearthed while building a new apartment. Sweeeeet, dead things. I'm in. Except the tomb is the size of a cubicle, and you can only see it through 1 window. So, that took all of 30 seconds. Interesting, but hardly worth an extra trip.

Kowloon (and Internet), you disappoint me. But it was able to redeem itself. Back at the hostel I met some folks, and we went out to the Temple Night Market. By itself, soso. A pretty small night market, about 2 blocks in length with no side streets. It was clearly aimed towards tourists, selling "I love HK" T-shirts and whatnot. We went to get food, and found a place selling dishes for $40 and beers for $20. Eh, well, not super expensive but more than I'd like to pay.

Except the dishes were clearly for 2 people, maybe 3 if you want to stretch it. I ate about half of mine, and that was a challenge. The beers were probably a liter, so it was definitely a healthy amount. If I go again, which is possible, I'll make sure to keep the portion size in mind. I can clearly see this being a place where locals hang out. I dig it, and wow, beer is cheap here. Why isn't everyone drunk all the time?

And that's about it for today. Not too crazy, but it was nice to see. So, onto the third day! I met up with some of the crew from last night, and after a very late start, we decided to go to Lantau Island. Not before breakfast of course, at a small noodle stall in a vegetable market across the way. At $20 a bowl, I think this is the cheapest food to be had in Hong Kong. This place was super local, did not pass any health inspections, and had the simplest menu ever. Well. I have a baseline anyway.

Lantau Island is actually connected by the metro, because Hong Kong is just awesome in that way. The route up to the site of note, a really really big Buddha, is by cable car. But at $100 a head, nooooope. It was foggy anyway. So instead we took the bus for $17, which had an amazing view of some local villages and beaches on the way. And cows in the road. I've seen that before, and don't really understand it. Do farmers just not care that their cows wander off? Don't they need them for milk or something? Do cows know how to get back home? I can't imagine they do, they're pretty stupid. Anyway, we made it to the Buddha. It's really big. But, if you've been to Thailand you've likely seen bigger. Still, the largest seated bronze Buddha in the world. And I'm a sucker for world's blankiest blank. We checked out the temple (nice), and saw a canteen. You could eat with the monks for $98. Vegetarian meal, of course. I'm not sure why anyone would ever pay that much to not eat meat, unless they view it as a donation. Instead we got sausages, which at $20 were massive enough to be a meal, and ya know, not vegetarian.

Back at Central I split up with the other two to go to a museum. Before that I noticed I was near the botanical gardens, so I stopped by. More like a mini zoo, they had some monkeys (my worst enemy), other monkey-like creatures, some turtles, birds, etc.. Nice if you're in the area. The museum I was going to was Dr. Sun Yat Sen's house while he lived in Hong Kong. As a reminder, Dr. Sen was a revolutionary that ended the Qing Dynasty in China, and founded the Republic of China in 1912 - now the current government of Taiwan after they lost the war to the communists. He's one of the few people that both the mainland and Taiwanese look up to. But more importantly, his house is super swanky. Kind of a Victorian Mansion, and no photos were allowed inside. Why? I dunno, they're jerks. Unfortunately jerks with guards and cameras in every room, so I couldn't even sneak one. Lest they lose their $10 admission ticket because someone saw a photo on Facebook. Pfft.

After, I wanted to get across the river to see The Symphony of Lights at 8. Essentially a laser and light show for about 10 minutes every night synchronized to music. I did make it, but wasn't terribly impressed. I mean, the view of downtown was great. But only like 4 buildings participate, so it's kind of lackluster? Still, for free it was impressive enough. Before that I looked for dinner, and found an Indian market. Ohhhh yes, I have arrived. Indians know how to do cheap, and cheap they did. I was aggressively hounded by touts asking me to buy a SIM, eat their food, or tours to various places. All at cheap cheap prices. I loved it. It felt like Asia again. I eventually settled on a bowl of curry and a salad big enough for 2 people, for less than it cost in Bangkok. Jeez, why is Indian food so expensive there? Anyway I almost definitely could have gotten cheaper than what I paid if I looked around too. Kowloon, you've redeemed yourself. I'll definitely be back, for the haggling and the deals.

I took a boat back, because at $3 a pop it's cheaper than the $10 the metro costs when it goes under the river. And it turns out the boat stops at a dock pretty close to the hostel. After a beer from 711 and a shower, it was an exhausting day. Tomorrow it's off to the New Territories for my last day in Hong Kong.

And so the travels continue.

I said I was going to Malaysia. That was a lie, sort of. I was all set to leave, about to book my flight. So I decided to reserve my spot on the mountain. 17000 baht to climb the damn thing. 485 USD. From the National Park Service. Are you kidding me? On their website they have a much cheaper rate. "Oh that's for when you book far ahead."

"It doesn't say that."

"Well also it's for Malaysians only."

Argh! The dual pricing bullshit rears its ugly head again. I don't wish to patronize a place that does that, so I won't. It's not like, an ultra special mountain. There are others that people can climb with no skill, that are higher. So screw you mountain, unless you want to give me a reasonable rate, I will not be seeing you. So now I have time off and nowhere to go. Looking around the map, where haven't I been? On the list were Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. Bangladesh requires an expensive visa. Indonesia and Sri Lanka weren't bad. But what's this? Macau Airlines, round trip, for about $100. When I want to the price breakdown, the ticket was only 100 baht. ($3). Everything else was taxes and fees.

Ok, let's go to Macau and Hong Kong. Ah, but it's too good to be true. It's a red eye both ways. No worries, I am skilled at falling asleep in things. On things? So I took some melatonin, and got an exit row for being white. Because that racism goes both ways. Anyway the flight was mostly empty, no wonder they wanted to offload those tickets. When I arrived, I went for the boat to Hong Kong. I figured I would do Macau last, so I would be close to the airport. Except the boats don't run at that time of night. Damn. So I had to enter Macau, and then had a lovely 4 hour nap on chairs with armrests (my mortal enemy!)

Come 7am, I went over to the pier and went to Hong Kong. Super easy immigration process, they have. They don't even stamp your passport. Like yeah whatever, don't care, in you go. You get a receipt with how long you can stay. (30 days for Americans) Wow, so easy. It's taken me longer to buy a soda than to enter a country. And the boat to Hong Kong is a freaking hydrofoil. I've never been on a hydrofoil before. Turns out it's awesome. I was sitting there thinking "Wow, they're taking a long time to board people." Then I look out the window. That water looks awful movey. Turns out we've been sailing for like 10 minutes and I didn't realize. Neat.

So after about an hour I arrive, and I've got a fierce hunger going on. I find what looks like a greasy spoon, with everything written in Chinese. No problem! The boss asks me what I want in Cantonese, but since I can't speak that I say it in Mandarin. It took a second to process it, then chuckled and took me to a table. He said something else to his staff, but I only understood "foreigner" and "mainland". Oh well, got ham and eggs.

So after dropping things off at the hotel, I set out. As in the pic above, Hong Kong Island has these really old trams that are like 100 years old. The local call them 叮叮, which just means "Ding ding". They're cheaper than the MRT, and amazingly still going strong. I'll probably put a video in here so you can see what one looks like. Anyway, the first destination was City Hall. City Hall was close, and on the way I saw the city gallery. Similar to the one in Singapore, it gives the history of the city and their plans for the future. I loved it. Maybe I just love city states since they have to plan so well, but I love efficiently designed systems. So I quite enjoyed the museum, and it gave me a positive outlook on the country.

Turns out city hall is not really city hall, more like a civic center. Across the street was a cool building though. Moving on to.. lunch! Mother of God why is everything so expensive here? I mean, I thought my breakfast was a fluke for the novelty of a Chinese-style American diner. Nope. The cheapest meal I saw from these street restaurants was $25 HKD. (7.75 HKD is 1 USD). Ffs I can get 2 slices of pizza and a coffee in New York with that kind of money. You know what is cheap though? Subway. A 6 inch and Coke is $21. What is going on? Am I in backwards land? Then I saw McDonald's advertising Double Cheeseburgers for $10.

WHAT IS THIS WORLD!? Why is American fast food cheaper than street noodles? What is happening? In Thailand, the minimum wage is $10 A DAY, and McDonald's there costs twice as much as here. There's some messed up logistics going on.

So, back on track, there's a moving walkway which carries you up this hill in a district called The Mid Level. It's not entirely pedestrian, but mostly. It has some interesting churches and temples I went to check out, but mostly full of families and hipsters drinking Kale smoothies and $145 coffee. Not a typo. Actually saw coffee being sold for $18 US. Who can afford to live here? Also, did everyone forget we're next to China? You could buy a coffee factory for $18. I really don't understand this place.

So, let me tell you who can afford to live here - the folks of The Peak! (I also went to a Maritime Museum.. nice but unnotable) Up on mountain is well, 山头 (Mountain top). True story, it is per square meter the most expensive real estate on Earth. Also, more terrible true story, until 1947 the Chinese were forbidden to live there unless they were servants to the Europeans. Holy shit. America, we're pretty bad. But we didn't smuggle in drugs. And then when China said, "Hey! No more drugs!", we didn't start a war to say, "Nah, you're gonna take those drugs." And THEN take part of their land as payment and say, "You people stay down there while we live in the nice houses. You can come up if you want to clean my toilet." Jeeeeez.

Anyway, politics aside, it's simply beautiful up there. You can see the entire island, and it's a steep mountain. So the view is phenomenal. In fact, I'd call it the 2nd most amazing view I've seen (Hot air balloons over Bagan still #1). It's just awesome. The pics really don't do it justice.

After waiting up there an hour for sunset, that was it for me. I stopped back for some overpriced street food, and went off to bed. At this point my phone was on its last legs, as I hadn't charged it in 2 days. And as for me, my legs are killing me too.

My oh my, where to begin? This is going to be a long entry, so buckle up.

It's been a surprisingly crazy few weeks or so, despite me being on my summer vacation. While I have had some work to do for work, my job ended in February and doesn't really begin again until mid-May. Why? I dunno. Thai people like to chill out. So there are some training sessions for work, but I'm mostly left to my own devices to work at home. Which means "work on my degree at home". It's coming along well, and I just finished all my work for this semester. A short summer semester followed by the fall, and I will be a master of something or other. It's going by so quickly!

I have a pretty strict "no working on the weekend" rule, so there's still been some time to go out and do things. For our latest adventure, Ella and I hoped over to Thonburi. It's the district on the other side of the river, and really doesn't get too much exposure. It's not well served by mass transit, the bridges are always full of traffic, and there's not really much to do aside from Wat Arun. But we found a few places regardless, beginning with Wongwan Yai Railway Station. I guess there's no reason to go there, it's just the terminal of a completely separate railway network. A single track that runs about 3 hours away to the semi-famous train market. You may have seen it, where a train runs through and everyone pulls back their umbrellas. Maybe I'll throw a Youtube video if it in here. Anyway, the market just re-opened after a year long absence, so I'm sure we'll go check it out at some point. But after this brief pit stop, it was off to Princess Mother Park. I think the Princess Mother means the mother of the current King. Anyway, it's a small park, tucked back in some alleys. But it's actually really nice, and contains a small museum. If I lived nearby, I could see myself coming here a lot. There were some students hanging around studying, some joggers, and they even had a daycare for parents who want to ditch their kids and relax.

Across the street we saw a really big and pretty wat, which was Wat Phichaiyat. I was really impressed with this place to be honest, and think it should be featured on Bangkok travel guides. There's nothing too special about it, except it's beautiful and the view from the top gives you a great view of the area - which is enough. I suppose I'm glad it's not overrun with tourists, as we only saw another 3 or so people there. Still, wonderful place that I would take people to visit.

Continuing the interesting wat train, the next week we visited Wat Pariwat. This one is pretty far off the beaten path, but certainly one of the most interesting religious sites in the world. The entire thing is covered in broken dishes. It's exactly what it sounds like. They smash dishes, paint them, and place them onto the walls one at a time into amazing sculptures. Some of these sculptures are quite strange. Like Che Guevara. Or Mickey Mouse. Or Pandas. But they're all intricately detailed, and overall it's a pretty beautiful place. Their eccentricity doesn't stop there, though. The main assembly hall nearby has a large Buddha supported by a bunch of statues. Perhaps for fun, and because Thais love football, they decided to make one of the statues David Beckham. Why? Because they can. I've said before how I really like eastern religions over western, as western ones can be a bit... stuffy. I don't think a David Beckham statue would fly in any sect of Christianity, something about being sacrilegious etc etc. But I think it's great that if someone wants to make a church with Disney and football stars, go nuts. It gives it a lot of personality, and I'm a big fan.



But the eccentricity doesn't stop there. Oh no. This is Asia, my friends. We went to have lunch at an all-you-can-eat shabu shabu robot buffet. I know that's a lot of adjectives to process, but it's 100% true. You order your meat and vegetables, and a robot samurai will come out and deliver it to you. Also the robot dances to Lady Gaga. I absolutely love this place. It was completely unexpected, endlessly entertaining, and the best part? The food was really delicious. Perhaps one of the best shabu shabu buffets I've ever had, and much cheaper than some of the others I see around. My words really don't do this place justice, so here's two videos.

So, other things. We went out to an ice-cream shop that has an ice vodka room. Why in an ice cream shop? Because Thailand. For 300 baht, you get 10 minutes in a room covered in ice to drink as much vodka as you want. A bit steep, but, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. Heather and I went in together, with Dmytro acting as camera man. I probably did about 6-8 shots of vodka, which at around 80-100 baht each at a bar, I feel I got my money's worth. Also, the rest of the night was a bit hazy, so moving on.

At some point during a weekend, I also did an escape room with some coworkers. It's an odd sort of thing, and I've definitely not experienced anything like it. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, you basically get locked in a room and have to figure a way out. We had 45 minutes, but still lost. Although, I felt we got sort of cheated - we spent 30 minutes on some puzzle because of bad handwriting. Once we were past that, things went pretty smoothly. I think if we had 5-10 more minutes, we would've had it. Anyway, I'm counting it as a win. Because this is my blog, and I can.

As I said earlier I'm off from work right now, so I've been picking up some extra work to keep myself occupied. I recently finished up a contract teaching Pepsi's HR Department, which was fun. I also started teaching some Chinese students over the internet. But perhaps the most interesting, is through our Aussie neighbors we found out that some Thais were looking for foreigners to be in a commercial. So with Dmytro, our acting career began. Basically, we tailed this Iranian actor as we went around the city asking people "What is Songkran?" It was an extremely exhausting 2 days, but they took us all around the city to the famous landmarks. If I had just arrived, this opportunity would have been super sweet. But still, an interesting way to spend a few days and get some extra cash. Anyway, it's an advert for an English app. Here's the commercial if you'd like to see it.

So now for more recent news, for the official Thai holiday we went off to Pattaya and Koh Larn. I've spoken about Pattaya many times - it's an odd sort of place, a party city with a reputation as a red light area, full of 50 year old white guys who think their 25 year old Thai "girlfriend" is super into his personality. But Pattaya definitely knows how to party. We saw an amazing cover band, where everyone kept switching between instruments and singing like it was no big thing. Really talented bunch of folks, they played some amazing classics and just killed it. There's not all that much to say about the trip though. It was a lot of relaxing, massages, eating, and swimming on the beach. For example, we went to a German Beer House which was an Italian restaurant. That was weird. But they did brew their own beer, and it was actually really nice. We rented motorbikes one day and visited a putt-putt course a little out in the suburbs. Of course, the police pulled us over and asked for our licenses. Despite my American one being valid in Thailand, they refused to accept it and fined me anyway. Or to be more accurate, they wanted a bribe. Because it's funny, how the fine can change so quickly depending on how much you want to argue. Anyway, the end result was 400 baht, which was a ripoff, but it could have been worse. And it beats spending all day at the police station while they "verify" my license. Despite the gloomy mood, we did make it to putt-putt, and it was one of the better ones I've played at. You even got to hit a ball of a roof. Heading back to town via a detour to avoid the police stop, there was also a visit to Ripley's Believe it or Not, which the ever skeptical Blueberry chose to not believe anything. Hey, I have faith that a 3 headed snake existed at some point. Probably. Maybe.


Or not.

So now for something completely different. About a year ago, I remember speaking to some friends back home and the subject turned to Thai politics (because of the coup). I wrote a quick summary of Thai politics from the last 20 or so years, which I and a few other people thought was interesting. If you missed it, that entry is here.

A similar situation happened, where someone asked me if I had been eating a lot of Pad Thai recently. And actually... no I haven't. This may be a shock, but Pad Thai is pretty uncommon in Thailand. You may find it at a restaurant here and there, but those restaurants are almost exclusively around tourist areas to capitalize on its reputation. It's really uncommon as a street food, despite it being believed as such. There are no shortage of noodle stalls, but they're always boiled, not fried. So what the heck is going on?

It's actually an interesting piece of history, that started back in 1938. At the time, the country was still known as Siam. And this general, Phibunsongkram decided to overthrow the government via a coup. At the time, Thailand was surrounded by European colonies. Laos and Cambodia were French, while Myanmar and Malaysia were British. In the middle was Siam, which had really not changed at all despite the advances in technology. Most of the population was rural and uneducated, and Phibunsongkram was afraid (in retrospect, probably rightfully so) that Siam was going to become the next colony of some European nation. So to shake off this reputation as some cultural backwater, and to establish a sense of national identity, he came up with 12 Cultural Mandates. We'll come back to that in a sec.

Sidebar, military leaders in Thailand have had a really endearing, somewhat adorable sense of care for Thai people. Our current leader, Chanocha, used one of his news conferences to tell everyone how great this Korean soap opera he's been watching is, and we could really learn from the characters on it. (Seriously) And recently, he gave a speech about how we should let tourists do homestays on rice farms, because they'll love working and learning about how rice is made (Although honestly, I'd probably do that). So it's not totally out of line for a military leader to suggest something like this.

Anyway, these 12 Cultural Mandates are mostly what you'd expect. Honor the flag, help the elderly, choose domestic goods over foreign. Notably, one of them was to change the name of the country to Thailand. Some also got a little... personal. For example, immediately after work you were encouraged to play an hour of sports before going home. Also, in public men should always wear hats (yes!). Many of those have been ignored, but most of the nationalistic ones stuck, notably of course changing the name of the country. But lumped into those nationalistic mandates, was food. Thai people ate noodles of course, but they were usually wheat, and were sold by Chinese vendors. Thailand had a lot of rice. If people wanted noodles, why not make a dish with rice noodles?

And so, open source Pad Thai was born. Phibunsongkram gave everyone the recipe, and encouraged them to make it. The argument was, throw in some veggies and meat, boom, well balanced meal that was fast and delicious. But the name Pad Thai doesn't even really mean anything. "Pad" means "to stir fry", and Thai just means that - Thai style. The actual name of it is a shortened form of a local Chinese dialect, which includes the "noodle" part. Pad Thai was adopted by the people, especially this being the start of WWII. The cost of wheat had begun to shoot up, but rice was still cheap. This was also around the same time that foreigners started to come into Thailand, especially Axis powers. Pad Thai sort of got lumped into this time of "foreigness" And then after the war ended, people kinda just forgot about it. In class, I've often used Pad Thai as my stand in, "I need an example of a Thai food", but I'm learning my students are surprisingly unfamiliar with it. They usually claim it's not even a Thai dish at all - it's Chinese, or something foreigners made up. They're not exactly wrong, but nevertheless Pad Thai isn't really something Thai people eat very often. But it is sort of a Thai invention, albeit one that seems to be much more popular outside of Thailand rather than within.

Anyway, we'll be back next week with a regular blog entry, including some amazing stuff I've been up to recently.