Welcome to Freedom! The quest for a Visa. March 16th – 19th Hangzhou – Hong Kong – Hangzhou Saturday, March 16th finally came and we got our stuff together and left the Hofang to head to the South Station. During the walk I noticed my favorite necklace had broken, so I went back 3 times to check if I could find the missing piece. Alas, no such luck so I was in an especially foul mood. We got at the station nice on time, had some food and went to the waiting room until the train came. Then we looked for our beds in the correct car. Oh joyous joy, three beds high, 6 beds per compartment, and I guess somewhere between twenty and thirty compartments per car. So there I was, a mood on storm (cat. 5) in a crowded cramped car full of loud Chinese, each with their own color and smell. It wasn’t very cozy, but we would have to make the best out of it as we would be stuck with them for the next 16 hours. It was a world of farts, burps, gurgling and spitting. It’s one of those things you have to do when in China. A few extra words on the overnight trains. There are two major categories: seats and sleepers, which are subdivided in hard and soft. Hardseats are getting rare, as nearly everyone gets a Softseat. It’s the cheapest way of travel, but sixteen hours through the night with a fat man snoring on your shoulder? Better get a sleeper. As I said, with Hardsleepers, you have little compartments with six beds each, stacked three high. They’re pretty small, crowded, and kill your back. Also, no privacy whatsoever as you don’t have a wall or a door between your bed and the hall. The Softsleepers are the most expensive option, but you get a bit extra: more space, walls and doors, only four beds per compartment, a reading light and a power socket. A little tip: if you go for a Hardsleeper, always take the middle bed. The top ones are claustrophobic as the ceiling is very close to the bed and getting up there on those little ladders is not too easy in a moving train. The bottom beds are use as seats by everyone, so if you take those there will soon be a merry gathering sitting on your bed. Middle ranks are too high up to serve as seats for unwanted guests, and you have some breathing space between yourself and the next bed. The journey passed swiftly, and every now and then some vendor would pass by with a little cart shouting through the wagon to sell his fruit or food, or even batteries to charge your cellphone. A few hours of reading and a few less of sleeping I was woken by the typical sound of Chinese gurgling and spitting. You read right, no crowing cock hear, those are for consumption. Here the dawn breaks with phlegm. The Chinese have the habit of cleaning their airways, and they do it profoundly and in group. Luckily the sun was rising on that Sunday morning and Shenzhen loomed close at hand. In Shenzhen you have to get through dense security, and for a second I had an idea of how a prisoner felt. I looked outside a window, and saw concrete walls, watchtowers, barbwire and even a moat. But two stamps later and we were on a subway headed for Hong Kong. The further we rode, the less we heard the word ‘laowai’ and the fewer people turned to stare at us. We booked a hostel very close to a subway station, smack in the middle of Kowloon Island. The location was perfect, though it was situated in a ‘Mansion’. The bottom floor was crowded with what looks like a ‘nightshop’ back in Belgium. You find people of all sizes and colors here, hawking their fake Rolexes, Gucci-bags, cellphones and Shiva knows what else! There was also quite a bit of ‘blue’ present in the ‘nightshop mall’. Which came in handy, because a friendly police officer pointed us in the right direction through the small walkways to the correct elevator. The hostel turned out to be very nice, especially compared to the grubby and fragrant bottom floor. We were a bit early though and would have to return after 12 o’clock to move in to the room. So we had a chance to get some breakfast En route we found a lot of international restaurants: Swiss, Turkish, Belgian, Indian,… but the most memorable was the Indian restaurant called ‘Gaylord’. We found a bakery where we got ourselves some cookies and croissants and headed out to the ‘Avenue of Stars’. It’s like in Hollywood: a walkway paved with marble stars signed by movie stars. Here you can find names as Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Wong Kar Wai. We had our breakfast there while wandering over the stars enjoying the peace and quiet, for no one took pictures of us nor shouted at us. As soon as it was twelve o’clock we headed back to the hostel to dump our luggage in the room. We faced the pushy vendors once more and arrived at the clean and quiet 18th floor The door to our room opened itself and… I started laughing. There’s a bed of the size somewhere between a single and a double in a room of roughly the same size, a fan on the ceiling, a TV against the wall, and no windows. The bathroom was even better: a sink, a toilet, a boiler and above the toilet the shower. Also the aroma of the room was rather interesting, but we had air-conditioning to get some air moving through the room. We had a quick shower and headed to a nearby Irish Pub. The establishment showed no more than small stairs heading into a basement, but we heard the Irish music blasting through the speakers and the balloons next to the door grasped enough attention. I had forgotten all about St-Patrick’s day, as I gobbled down a delicious Pie with fries and a pint of Cider. We laid plans over a second pint. First of all: could we get a visa that same day? We headed for the company, and they turned us down, I would need pictures first: “blue background, no smiles, come back tomorrow before 9.30 with passport and 1800 Hong Kong Dollar.” So that was settled, I got some pictures taken (I looked horrible after a sleepless night on a hard bed in a shitty overcrowded train)and we headed off to ‘the Peak’, Hong Kong’s highest viewpoint. To get to the Peak we took a Subway first and to get to the top of the hills we had to take a ‘cable tram’. You can get there on foot or by cab, which are exhausting and expensive options plus, the cable tram is more scenic. The tramline was built by the English, when Hong Kong was still their colony. The city was getting too crowded, so the hills were looked upon as a new site for new neighborhoods and the tram was built. We barely walked out of the subway on Hong Kong Island and we were already invited by some boy scouts to join in their games. It was crowded, we didn’t get it, I was stiff and sore and we had plans so we sneaked away through the masses. We saw the tower that Batman dove of in ‘The Dark Knight’ and even the walkway where Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) had been chatting. Oh yeah, we also saw the Hon Kong Bank of China. Pretty famous buildings. We headed to the ticket office for the cable tram and I nearly choked: we needed tickets for the tram, and other tickets for the viewing platform. Luckily Tessa had been here before and informed me that the platform is positioned to ensure that the view from anywhere else on the hill is nada. Clever bastards. Prices were really okay, only 75 HK Dollar each. Before we knew it, our little tram was climbing the steep slopes, and it was pretty damn steep. You can’t really capture it in a picture, you have to see it for yourself. Once at the top we first let the crowds pass us by and went to the shopping mall for a little snack (Chinese put shopping malls everywhere) and walked around for a bit before heading to the platform. There it was, infamous Hong Kong at our feet. It is one of those views in the world you have got to see at least once in your life. Behind you lie the green mountains and the ocean, and before you rise the glass and steel giants of Hong Kong Island. The gods of weather found our fun had endured long enough and sent out some threatening clouds, plus we got hungry, and found a nice restaurant called ‘Bubba Gump’, where I wanted to eat some shrimp or at least a box of chocolates (google Bubba Gump if you don’t get it), but the prices halted me in my endeavor. Instead we went to a little Vietnamese place in the same mall, where the prices were small and the tastes great! With food in our bellies and a nice view in our memories we headed back down to head down to an antiques market I had seen mentioned on a map. As usual we arrived at the correct street to find nothing. Always investigate, don’t just head somewhere because road signs may be highly exaggerated. Ah well, I had a nice whisky and a trip through a ‘his master’s voice’ in exchange. We headed back to our ‘Mansion’ where the vendors had changed their sales talk. During the day it went “bag, phone, camera, copy-rolex” , but when the sun has set you hear “bag, copy-rolex, hash, marihuana” so we raced on to the elevator and went to bed. Hong Kong has many faces. Also worth to mention: if you want a camera, Hong Kong is the place to be. The real deal, no fake brands, all for a very nice price. Day 2 in Hong Kong we found out that setting the alarm hadn’t been necessary as the neighbors were so friendly to wake us up with their morning rituals. I had a quick shower on the toilet (you could multi-task if you wanted though I couldn’t see the functionality of it. We headed back to the Korean company, where the secretary took my passport and pictures, telling me to return in the afternoon to pick it back up. It’s a simple process: you walk in with your passport, pictures and money. They take it to Shenzhen, file the paperwork, put the visa in your passport and presto! New visa in record time. I highly doubt if it’s all legal, but hey, I made it out of the country so they never knew. I asked him if he wanted an advance on his payment as a warrant. He laughed at me and said: “Why? I got your passport.” That day we would go and visit the Big Buddha, but once in the subway station a note told us that the cable cars were closed for maintenance making it impossible to reach the top of the hill. We headed to the docks of Kowloon Island where the Queen Victoria lay docked in all her pride. She’s a big beauty: 2014 Passengers max., 900 crew, and 290 Meters long. From there we went into a decadent shopping mall: Master bakers, expensive watches, haute couture, jewelry with 5 digit price tags, they had it all. We only went to two shops: a bakery with acceptable prices and the Toys ‘r Us. Before long the hunger struck again and we headed back to the Irish Pub where I had myself a Guinness Pie (Pie with meat and vegetables cooked in Guinness). Time for action! We picked up my visa, payed the nice man and decided to take a ferry across the harbor. According to National Geographic, a ride on the ferry to see Hong Kong from the water is an absolute must-see. The Chinese Government seems to be stretching its clutches on the land of the free as hundreds upon hundreds of banners and posters warn people against the Falun gong, calling people to eradicate them. Falun gong is a spiritual movement striving to cultivate and refine body and mind. In China the movement is portrayed as a sect after a few members put a knife in their stomach or even poured gasoline over themselves and lit a match. They didn’t left it at suicide, they also murdered and tortured people. Members of Falun gong say that the Chinese government staged all those things and that their movement is peaceful. There’s a lot of pictures and writings circulating on the internet proving either point, even suggesting organ harvesting and the Chinese government torturing and killing members of Falun gong. I don’t know which story is the right one, I don’t care, but it strikes me to see how the government literally asks people to “Eradicate an evil cult”. Some lighter reading now! The ferry arrived: a green-white oval little ship with air-conditioning, which is highly needed in the humid and hot Hong Kong climate. We arrived on Hong Kong island where we would walk along the quay. Unfortunately the entire strip was turned into a construction site. All normal traffic was deranged and we had a hard time to find our way into the city center where the shops and restaurants were. We strolled along the stores in the shadow of concrete behemoths looming overhead and went for a nice bowl of ramen at ‘Rasupermen’. Decent and affordable ramen, and what a great name! Our final day in Hong Kong had passed and we headed back to the hostel to pack our bags for the long ride home the next day. March 19th we woke early, grabbed our stuff, checked out and took a subway back to Shenzhen. The security officer took her sweet time checking my passport and visa. Tessa was sweating bullets behind me, waiting for me to be arrested and thrown in some jail. I saw that the picture was causing the delay: on it I looked clean shaven and fresh, now in real life I had a beard and big bags under my eyes from exhaustion, plus I had lost some weight. They waved me through and the visa passed the test. We got on the train and raced back to Hangzhou spending our trip reading and sleeping as we would arrive around 6 AM the next day.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 14:23:59 +0000
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