Lord, I was lost. In Asia. I was out of my element completely. After a 9 day stay in Seoul (where BTW, I truly learned the meaning of smog and how to fasten my seat belt when I was in a taxi) I found myself getting off of a plane in Hong Kong. In the middle of the night. On the tail end of Typhoon Ruby. Talk about a brown trouser sort of landing...
OK, so I didn't really step off the plane in Hong Kong. It was Kowloon. Get over it. I'm telling a story here.
Hong Kong and it's surroundings drop kicked me across the street. OMg!!! That place is insane. I shopped my brains out, drank my liver into oblivion, ate like a starving man and shot over 120 rolls of film. I had a fling with a waiter. I dumpster-dived at 3 AM in alleys I wouldn't otherwise be caught dead in at high noon. I was threatened by a duck. I swapped spit with some English guy in the back row of a multi-plex while we tried to ignore the incredibly bad American movie playing that had been dubbed in Mandarin. I think it was "You've Got Mail".
So, two weeks later I'm hopping on the hydrafoil and taking a 90 mile skim up the river into actual-factual CHINA!!! I was in trouble from the word go. The questions I had to answer on my visa application that they gave me on the boat scared me. Of course, I lied on all of them. Then I step off of the boat and head towards Customs and Immigration. I get stopped immediately. Guess who doesn't look anything like the picture in their passport. The picture in my 5 year old passport shows a guy with short hair, parted in the middle, large aviator style glasses and totally clean shaven. Yes, you could actually see my upper lip. I, on the other hand at the moment, have shoulder length hair, it's highlighted for christ's sake, I have a full beard and mustache (dark at the time) and I'm wearing what can only be described as taupe colored Sally Jesse Rapheal glasses. So, off I got to that small window-less room surrounded by the worst fitting uniforms and the biggest ass guns I have ever seen. I just immediately resigned myself to the upcoming strip search and anal probe. So the interrogation begins. They ask me questions in Cantonese, which I don't understand. And I give them answers in English which they don't understand. Can this possibly get any better??? Finally, thank god, a woman walks in that could not have been more that 3 feet tall. Oh, shit!!! I'm going to be tortured by a little person!!!
She speaks perfect English. Oh, shit!!! She's going to curse and threaten me in perfect English while she tortures me!!! I think to myself, "China, you are a wicked mistress!". Ten minutes later I have bowl of hot water and a mirror in front of me and I'm digging stuff out of my shave kit and I'm shaving my way into the Glorious People's Republic of China. Half an hour later I am liberated and I am in a taxi and on my way to the White Swan Hotel. Damn nice old colonial style hotel!!! A couple of days later I started bouncing my way around China. Always escorted by a guide and driver. I spent damn near a month in China and took trains, buses, planes and barges. I sailed down river from Guilin to Yangshou. Went to X'ian. Coughed my lungs out in Beijing and marveled at Shanghai. BTW, just to get you up to speed... livestock of varying sizes is considered acceptable carry-on luggage in China, ALWAYS book "soft seat" on ANY trip longer that 3 hours on a train, NEVER eat off of the foot cart on a train, never turn down a couple of dozen shots of moatai . Trust me, moatai will fuck you up so royally!!! Yes, I had fun in China.
Next stop Hong Kong. Again. Oh, just bite me, I knew a really hot waiter there... I had a week to kill. So I went to Macau for few days. Macau at that time had a footprint smaller that Lake Kegonsa. Now, Hong Kong was England and China. Macau was Portugal and China. A short hop on a hydrafoil but truly worlds away from each other. Again, I was lost. But I was in heaven. I was a day short, literally. A pesada short of a taxi ride back to my hotel. And a world away. From everything that was me. And so many time zones I couldn't even begin to count them.
Ahh, yes... the other side of world. I highly recommend it.
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