Hong Kong Trip – part 2
January 14, 2010
Dec 29, 2009 to Jan 4, 2010
Here’s part 2 of my HK trip write-up. I found myself with very little time so I mainly jotted down notes of my thoughts before I went to bed each night. Here is the summary.
Family
So even though I didn’t happen to do much during my week in Hong Kong, I realize now that I didn’t have much time to do anything. I spent each day with my family and most importantly, spent time with grandma and other relatives. On weekdays, we mostly had a meal together and that was it. On the weekend, I spent the entire day with them. An entire day with family, even my very own, can be very tiring.
My grandmother’s health was not as bad as we were led to believe. She was physically quite weak and her body is unable to produce blood anymore. This means she is constantly getting blood transfusions. She seems to tire easily and she always looked very pale. Also, she is not very mobile anymore and she was hesitant to travel too far to meet people. Luckily one of my uncles has a car and graciously drove her.
Mentally, my grandmother is as sharp as a knife. She was yelling at my father, aunts, and uncles as if they were children. I was surprised to discover that my grandmother’s way of thinking is so similar to my own. I was even more surprised to hear her say the exact same thing to my father as I did just hours ago about him buying a cheap, fake watch. I said it in English but she said the exact same thing in Chinese. I see now that I got my looks from my grandfather and my mind from my grandmother.
I was happy to spend this time with family because during this trip I discovered many things about my family that I had never known. The highlight of my trip was finding a very old picture of my grandma and grandpa in their 20s. My grandfather’s picture immediately caught my eye because I saw so many of my own facial features in his face. It was like an instant connection to a man I met when I was only about a year old and whose face I don’t even know.
We found the picture in a rather strange way. We were at my aunt’s house when she was fumbling about with some photo albums and she dropped one. It split apart and all the photo pages came spilling out. In the process of going through these, I saw the picture on the second or third page. I don’t think it was mere coincidence that she happened to drop this photo album. Maybe my grandfather wanted me to find this picture.
I spent a lot of time at our hotel asking my dad about the family and speaking with my sister too. I find it fascinating that when I see the family together, everyone seems to make sense – everyone has a distinct role and the family would not be complete without each one. I’m glad I just have one sibling because it makes roles much easier to separate.
Food
Dining is probably my favorite part about visiting HK. I had dim sum almost every day and not only is the food ridiculously awesome tasting but it was much cheaper than Japan too. A full course dim sum meal for four cost about 1,500 yen – a tiny fraction of what it would cost for one person in Japan.
For my sister’s birthday, we went to the Shangra-La for their lunch buffet. The food is fantastic and it was very reasonably priced too. It’s never a real vacation unless there’s a buffet somewhere.
Shopping
I didn’t get much shopping done but I did manage to buy a lot of tea for giving away and for my own consumption. Tea is my drink of choice in the evening. Tea is my addiction. I brought a few kinds of leaves and a couple of very convenient tea pots that separates the tea from the leaves with a push of a button.
Aside from tea, I bought a few things here and there – some stuff for myself, a gift for the wife, and a Yip Man DVD! We visited “Lady’s Street” and I always regret going to places like these because all they ever sell is cheap crap that no one really wants. The worst part is the bargaining. My sister bought some useless trinket for $50 when the woman wanted about $100 for it. No matter how much you haggle, I always can’t help but wonder how low the price really is. Anyway, it’s all useless junk that no one should want anyway.
WiFi
People always seem to think Japan is so technologically advanced. While this is true in that Japan produces a lot of cutting edge technology, in reality, technology is adopted at a much slower clip. For one thing, free WiFi is very rare. I have to pay a nominal fee to use Yahoo’s WiFi service at McDonald’s and other places. Most people seem to subscribe to a mobile internet service instead of trying to find free Wifi.
Not so in HK. I found free Wifi everywhere in HK. This was very useful and I was able to check email on my Blackberry and use the internet on my laptop a lot more than I had anticipated.
Traveling
We didn’t go to many places but I got to spend a bit of time on Nathan Road and around the harbor at Tsim Sha Tsui – these two places are my favorite places in HK. They’re both much cleaner and more modern than the rest of the city. The rest of the city seems to be just filled with shopping malls anyway and dirty restaurants anyway.
Summary
So all in all, I had a great time with my family and meeting all my relatives in HK. Because of my grandma’s age and condition, it was good to see her while she was relatively healthy. I’m hoping to visit again soon, perhaps again this year, if my family goes and, well, frankly, if my grandma is still kicking.
I even felt people in HK were more polite this time around! I mean, they weren’t “polite”, but they were less rude compared to the previous experiences I’ve had.
Next time around I would like to have more time to myself so that I can visit some Wing Chun schools and see what they’re doing. I’d also like to have the wifey there so we can spend some time together too.
