Last Day in Shanghai. I packed and checked out of my room and then hung around the city eating dumplings until it was time to get my train. I had a sleeper to Hong Kong and I'm tired of the small cramped bunks, so I got a first class one. Sooo comfortable. I went to be early since I hardly slept the previous nights.
We got to Hong Kong around 1--I never even noticed us crossing any water, but whatever. Its Hong Kong--land of John Woo and Chow Yun Fat right? Didn't really look like it. I mean seriously, I was expecting to be greeted by an acrobatic gunfight.
I helped some lady from Canada get a taxi with her 4 GIANT suitcases that she brought for her and her Mother to travel China for 1 month. I couldn't believe how much stuff they had , but she seemed really paniced and kept saying how much she hated China (she was actually Chinese born) because they make it so difficult to get around with 200 pounds of luggage. Next I took the subway (also connected to the train station) to my Hostel, which is on Kowloon Island in a place called ChungKing Mansion. Its not actually a mansion, but a 26 floor building that might be built with egg crates and old he-man toys. The bottom floor is small stalls of shops selling anything from cameras, indian food, and prostitutes. The people range from Indian, Chinese, African, and Backpacker. There are maybe 100 different hostels in here, but they aren't really hostels--more so just hallways of closet sized rooms that are owned by different people.
I got to my hostel, Ashoka Hostel, which was run by a way to nice its creepy Indian family. Upon arrival they told me my 'friends' were waiting for me. It was my friends Jo and Luke from Xi'an. We knew we would be in Hong Kong around the same time so I emailed them to say where I would be staying--they sure surprised me there; it was so wonderful to find them.
We went out for overpriced Indian food togethor at a restaraunt that had a key code to get in and a security camera with a monitor in the main dining area that showed people walking down in the hall outside. Is this style of Indian food illegal here or something? It's like the Taj Speakeasy. The food was still good. After eating we took the train to Hong Kong island and walked up to Soho. Soho is on a hill that touts the longest escalator in the world. Its actually a series of escalators, but yea--there is a lot, and apparentally if you take the stairs instead you can get credits to your public transport card. Soho was like a yuppie NYC neighborhood or 5pm in the Financial District in SF. I didn't care for it.
We didn't know what to do for the rest of the evening until we saw a many storied shopping center. "What building looks like that and doesn't have a movie theater on top", I wagerd. Nobody took me up on it, as they agreed, so we ascended it and politely demanded tickets to the new Harry Potter movie, but it wasn't how. How does a Harry Potter film get released in China before Hong Kong? We went to Skyline instead and it was so terrible we left the theater with permanent mustaches on our chins.
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