hongo kongo

OH.
MY.
WORD.

i love love love hong kong.
it is chaos to the bone.
we arrived in macau two days ago, took a fancy ferry to hong kong island and are now staying in the heart of kowloon...in an area called mong kok.
which translates to chaos or crazyness, or so i discovered today!
there are more people in one place than i have ever seen in my life.
you can barely move on the street.
the shopping is insane...but it's pretty expensive...
we met candy (my boss from para mix) and she took us out on the town yesterday.
dim sum for brunch (not a seafood fan...) they had a cute hedgehog custard thing. pictures soon...
4 storey H&M..sooooo tempting...
we took every mode of transportation that this city has to offer...
went to Lantau island to see the biggest buddah in the world (according to candy...)
came back to HK island and went to the train station to book our train to beijing.
for dinner we had traditional chinese food in a part of town i'm sure no tourist has ever stepped foot in.
more seafood...spiral snails...squid...still not a fan.
the best part of that dinner was that instead of keeping food you don't want to eat in your bowl you chuck it onto the table...
after dinner the four of us...candy her friend emily, derek and i went to a market close to our hostel, and then we hit they hay around 1:30 am.
this morning we got up around 7:30 to go back to the train station to buy cara a train ticket cuz there were only 8 left last night and we didn't have enough money on us...
got her a ticket and then went and rescued her from her jail cell of a guesthouse.
3 mcdonald's hashbrowns later, many emails trying to reach friends of friends that live in the area and we are back at our hostel which is in a building that cells ony cell phones. it's about 6 levels of cell phones. crazy. and it's really busy!

today is a national holiday...hong kong's birthday!
there's ah uge frieworks display tonight and we're gonna go watch it at the hong kong harbour...
more stories to come, and pictures soon...
i am happy...a little broke...but nonetheless happy as can be!
love love love from china...
fritz

to the max...

journal entry at midnight last night on a bus somewhere between suratthani and bangkok...

we're on a bus.
somewhere between suratthani and bangkok
this bus is a/c'ed to the max...
i will have a cold tomorrow for sure.

luckily we're at the back of the bus
so we can recline to the max and don't have to feel like we're bad people in doing so...

the inside of this bus looks like scotland.
red plaid to the max...

it's somewhere after midnight.
the flourescent lights just turned on...
did you know that if you slap on some gold-plated frosted-glass lightfixtures inside a regular bus, you now can go ahead and put a sticker on that same regular bus that says "VIP"? cool.
went the lights on a bus go on in the middle of the night it means one thing.
time to go stretch your legs and buy a sandwich from a local.
or a tube of pizza pringles in our case.
bus ride essential.

i got off and went the the bathroom. if you can call it that.
puh-retty sure i got the hiv
too dark to be sure...

met a cool german couple.
they both had rad shoes.

getting to our bus was an adventure...
left at 1 pm...boarded Titanic.
2.5 hours later, we were then herded like cattle onto a crappy bus to suratthani.
1 hour on that crowded bus...
(only one guy-our german friend with good kicks-sat in the aisle.)
then we parked it in the middle of nowhere, were told to run across the road and jump on a truck. we had no clue where we were going. nobody ever does.

all we had was an orange sticker on our shirt with a thai word written on it.
i think mine said, "please. rip me off" or perhaps, "bring me on a wild goose chase, thanx"

we rode like sardines and were dropped off couple by couple until finally we hopped off in the middle of nowhere and were told to wait 2 hours until our bus would comeand pick us up.
we were also told to buy food from them.

i started painting my nails pilon orange and the man at the shop came and parked it beside me and stuck out his pinky.
so i painted it.
he was pumped.
i won't even tell you what some asians are known to do with their pinky fingers.
just made me wish i had painted his thumb instead.

2 hours later, with only runts of puppies and the man with the orange pinky nail in sight, we were told to get on a truck once again.
a pack of chinese tourists appeared out of the woodworks and as we sat in the back of the truck, all of their hello kitty luggage was piled on our long legs. good times.
a short truck ride later and we arrived at our real destination.
some random spot where low and behold...all of the kids we met (germans with rad shoes included) were sitting on the curb laughing as luggage was hauled off of us.
the same thing had happened to all of us...just different random spots.
only in thailand.

we finally got on our final bus (the air-con/scotland/seats with metal pieces jutting in our backs one) and spent the next 10 hours making our bumpy way up to bangkok.

we are here safe and sound.
we just dropped a LOT of money on visas for china and vietnam.
i look like megadeath in my new pictures for the visas.

and i somehow how to make 240 baht ($8 canadian dollars) last till the end of the week.
not happening.
street pad thai for this face for the next 1o days.

all complaining aside, it was a very eventful night, and i'm looking forward to all the 1000's of miles we have yet to log.

over and out.
fritz.