June 25: Hong Kong Day 1
My first impression of Hong Kong was WET. As the plane made its descent, I could see the rain streaming down the windows. The island below was green and misty. After Kathy and I landed, we went through a long immigration line, got tickets for the airport express train (24 minutes, 180 HK dollars round trip), changed some money, and got on the train. We were shocked to see a poster advertising our conference at the airport! Kathy got a card for 300 HK dollars which gives you a round trip Airport Express ride plus unlimited MTR (subway) rides for 3 days (it’s actually 250 plus a 50 dollar deposit). I wasn’t sure how much we’d use the subway, so I didn’t buy it.
When we got off at Hong Kong station, we decided to take a taxi since it was raining and Gen had warned us the bus stop would be hard to find. Although Hong Kong’s official language is English, we managed to get a Taxi driver who didn’t speak or read English. So when Kathy showed him the map of the university and where we wanted to go, he didn’t understand. Fortunately, a worker at the taxi stand could be our ‘cultural broker’ and explain to the taxi driver where we were going. We drove past skyscrapers owned by major Western and Asian corporations (including Bank of America) and then journeyed up a narrow winding road until we arrived at Robert Black College on the Hong Kong University campus. We registered, then sat in the office for about half an hour until our room was ready. Apparently, there had been a delay getting things ready because of the typhoon earlier in the morning.
We got into our room and tried to use the Internet. There was a form we had to fill out with the physical address of our computer. The instructions for finding the physical address included using the MS-DOS prompt! It took me a while to even find that on my computer; Kathy’s computer, which runs on Vista, had it but didn’t recognize the command. We handed in a form for just my computer, and kept trying the various open wireless connections with very limited success. Even the DSL cord didn’t seem to fit or work. I realized how spoiled we had been in Korea.
We wandered around the campus a bit, stopped in the canteen (cafeteria) for a bun and a drink, registered, and then went to the welcoming cocktail hour at the top of the K.K. Leung building. The restaurant had a lovely view of the Hong Kong Island harbor, but the tables weren’t set up for mingling. Oh well. We went back to the canteen for a very cheap dinner. I had soyed chicken and rice for 19 HKD (less than $3). I thought it was okay, but Kathy wasn’t happy with her dinner. We agreed not to go back there again.
We walked back up the hill to our room, and waited for Gen to arrive. She showed up around 9 p.m. We let her settle in, then she called her uncle (her dad’s friend), who picked us up at the bottom the campus hill and drove us to a Shanghai-style restaurant. We ordered 4-5 kinds of dim-sum like dishes, including a couple of kinds of steamed buns, a fried and puffy scallion pancake, and green beans with pork. They got a good laugh out of the fact that I mistook the finely minced pork for peanuts; it became a running joke for the rest of the trip.
Tags: Asia, Hong Kong
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