Halfway down the Danube

Balikbayan guest blogging 2: still in Hong Kong

Noel is now in the Philippines, in lovely Makati City, after touring the lock-down garbage dumps of Payatas. We continue with his sojourn in Hong Kong:

Asian food. Isn’t. Asian. Although it seems to be food.

For dinner during my stopover in Hong Kong, Mike Chen and his lovely Malaysian wife, Joyce, took me out to dinner in Kowloon. We neither drove nor took the subway; rather, we hopped the old-fashioned ferry. And it’s seriously old-fashioned. Two decks of stomach-churning fun for the whole family. The upper deck is called “first class,” but the main difference seems to be that the seats are more comfortable downstairs.

Think the Staten Island Ferry with anorexia. Very much not like the rest of Hong Kong. Mike tells me that the ferry’s one concession to modernity is that they no longer roll down the doors and lash them to the deck. He misses the bells they used to ring. I told him that it was only a matter of time before they realize that they can charge more if they bring ‘em back.

Yes, it’s private. Hong Kong, you see, is a libertarian wet dream. Well, other than the government’s land monopoly and the tight business regulation and the strict zoning laws. And the social insurance scheme that pays single parents up to US$1100 a month should an industrial accident befall their spouse. (Yes, regardless of the spouse’s sex.) Oh, right, and the socialized medicine. So other than the monopoly and the regulation and the social insurance, it’s a libertarian paradise. I am reminded of the Monty Python bit about the Romans.

And this despite my attempts to keep HDTD a Python-free zone.

Anyhoo, the ferry got us to Kowloon across what’s left of the harbor. They’ve been filling it in the way American coastal cities used to, before we decided that it was easier to build freeways out to the horizon. Not that I’d notice, but Mike complained about it.

And so, Kowloon, with its Blade Runner ambience. Neon, crowded sidewalks, slow-moving bubble-shaped cars, kids playing handball despite the crowds, and teenage girls with brightly-colored gravity-defying hairdos and really weird patterned stockings. Actually, a lot of it really does seem like lower Manhattan, only shinier. I asked Mike if I could catch the subway uptown to see where the Puerto Ricans lived, and to his everlasting multicultural credit, he laughed. We went to a restaurant atop a mid-rise building that overlooked the skyline of Hong Kong Island across the bay. The restaurant itself was meant to evoke a traditional Chinese alleyway, but never having been in a traditional Chinese alleyway myself, it was lost on me.

Pigeon. Avoid. Especially the “drunken” pigeon. Apparently that means you should only try it if you are drunk. Which I may have become, since I quite literally had to swig my Tsingtao and swallow it whole to keep from experiencing the joys of reverse peristalsis. Of course, it was my own damn fault. I ordered the stuff. Having grown up in New York, getting my revenge on one of those sky rats seemed eminently satisfactory. It wasn’t, although whether it was the gamy taste or the fact that the eyeless cooked head seemed to be oxymoronically staring up I me, I couldn’t tell.

Snake, not so bad after the pigeon. But not to be repeated.

Meanwhile, the other dishes, while more edible, lacked that “Asian” flavor you get in Chinese and Thai restaurants back in the U.S. of A. I asked: they use MSG, so that’s not it. Everything just seemed to vaguely taste like shellfish, except the crab cakes, which tasted like meatloaf. I have no explanation.

The next day, it was off to Chep Lap Kok and Manila. Getting to the airport: smooth. (That train. Wow. US$23 round trip, but still wow.) Getting through the airport: smooth, except for the fact that I’m me. My carry-on, you see, was too large, and the very official woman at the gate would not let me take it through without checking it. “It’s for your safety, sir,” said the little luggage fascist. What was I to do? I checked it, a remarkably painless procedure … and no, the people at Cathay Pacific never asked what class I was flying before directing me to the right counter. They smiled, took it, and yes, it showed up in Manila with no problem. That said, the Latin in me ranted and raged all the way through emigration and the security check, and the American in me wondered why the AC wasn’t turned all the way up to meat-locker like at home.

Both the Latin and the American have found Manila mucho mas gemutlich, on both counts.

I killed time in the Cathay Pacific lounge talking with a German-American fellow on his way to Bangkok on an assignment with an environmental cleanup consulting firm—based, unsurprisingly, in Buffalo, New York, and perhaps that city’s last export industry.

Mañana I will discuss my impressions of Manila—and the food, and the airport, in which I did not thankfully have to sleep—but here I’d just like to leave you with a picture of the bay I snapped as we landed. Anyone know what those squares are?

Noel, I've wondered about those squares myself. Anyone?