My Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

I mentioned in my last post that one of the reasons I didn’t go to Disney Land is because of the cost. What I didn’t mention is that there was another option unique to Hong Kong called Ocean Park and they have panda bears so that is where I spent my Saturday.

I took the metro part way but needed to switch to a bus in order to make it to my destination. When I got off the metro I noticed a booth selling discounted tickets to Ocean Park so I scooped one up and hopped on the bus. During the drive I read the ticket, the date on it had passed quite some time ago and the fine-print said that if the ticket was defaced it would no longer be valid and the lady who sold it to me drew a line across the entire ticket so I started to panic. I just got ripped off, this ticket is no good and I fell for a stupid scan. I tried to think positive thoughts but I was quite stressed until I made it through the park gates.

Ocean Park is a pretty interesting place, it’s located next to the ocean (what a shocker right?) but it also built in a hilly area so it was really spread out and you had to take a cable-car or a tram to get to different areas of the park. They had a fair few rides (though I only went on two because I didn’t want to spend my day feeling like I was going to vomit), and a lot of animals. One of the animals they had on display was the pygmy marmoset, which was cute and creepy all at the same time.

Shortly after arriving at the park I hopped on the cable-car to journey to the part of the park where most of the action is. It was at this point that I stopped being bitter about the crap view from Victoria Peak the day beforehand. If the sky had been clear all I would have see was a bunch of buildings. I’m really not all that interested in city skylines. I do enjoy picturesque views of the ocean and the landscape and that is exactly what I got. I picked a good day to visit Ocean Park. The visibility still wasn’t perfect but it was good enough.

After I got off the cable-car I made my way to a ride called the Ocean Park Tower, it was basically an observation tower but you got on it at ground level and it slowly elevated itself and rotated a few times before return to the ground. I was pretty stoked about this because there was very little risk of motion sickness and I got to take in more stunning views. The only downside was the obnoxious family sitting next to me who were shouting a song at the top of their lungs. When we got off the ride I watched what way they went and ran in the opposite direction.

Next I visited the seals, sea lion, and dolphins. The pool for the seals and sea lions was bigger than the one for the dolphins, which just seemed wrong to me.  There was a breeding area for the dolphins and there were 4 dolphins in a pool smaller than the one that I took swimming lessons in as a kid. It was heartbreaking. And that wasn’t even the most depressing part. There were signs posted about IVF treatments on the dolphins, one of which said that the treatment was voluntary. Umm really? The dolphin swam up to you and said, “hey I really want kids, my partner and I have been trying for years but it’s just not happening for us. Is there anything you can do to help me have a baby?” No. That didn’t happen.  You just decided to play God so you could over populate your tiny little swimming pool you jerk! I left the dolphin area immediately after reading that sign.

I went for a ride on the ferris wheel, had an ice cream cone, and hopped on the tram back to the other section of the park to visit the panda bears.  This went down almost as well as the dolphin excursion. One of the panda’s was pacing back and forth between two exit doors trying to get out. He would head-butt one wait for a minute and then try the other. He was clearly saying ‘hey I don’t want to be on display anymore I just want to go to bed, please can you let me have some privacy”. Well actually he was probably begging for freedom more so than privacy but I feel like he was a smart bear and he was just trying to be realistic about the situation. The other bear was asleep in the middle of the enclosure.  The red panda’s were a little livelier, and very cute, but the whole thing just made me sad.

Apparently I hadn’t seen enough animal torture so I made my way to the sea lion show. This show was not at all what I expected, they spent more time embarrassing small kids than they did displaying the sea lion and it took place on a stage and not in a pool which I thought was weird. This was probably the most positive animal experience I had in the park and it still wasn’t great.

This experience was getting depressing so I decided to call it a day. I made my way back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the night. Well almost all of it. I left for about half an hour to check out the light show on the harbour, which was mediocre at best.

Yesterday I didn’t have much planned. I wanted to go checkout the giant Buddha statue and spend the rest of the day relaxing. Little did I know this adventure would take roughly 6 hours. I had originally planned to try to do this and Disney in the same day so it’s probably a good thing my plans changed! I tried to get tickets beforehand but couldn’t find the place I was looking for and gave up. This was a huge mistake because the lineup for tickets was roughly 90 minutes long and then there was another wait for the cable-car ride after buying the tickets. Thankfully there was free Wi-Fi otherwise the wait would have been almost unbearable. Normally in that kind of situation I would try to make friends with the people around me in an effort to pass the time but I was surrounded by people who didn’t speak English so this wasn’t really an option. Although the wait was long I'm still glad I went. Once again I got to take in some great views on the way there and the statue itself and the nearby temple were both pretty cool. I spent a good hour or two exploring before making my way back home again.

A friend recently asked me if I have met any crazy people on my travels yet as I tend to attract them and he was surprised when my answer was no. To be fair I have been incredibly anti social for most of my trip unless I was with people I already knew so I decided to try and mix things up and meet some people. When I got back to the hostel I saw that they were having a bbq for dinner so I decided to sign up and that is when I met my first  (of what I’m sure will be many) crazy person of this trip.

Roy runs all of the social events for the hostel and Roy has a couple of screws loose. I actually met him a couple of days before when I bumped into him in the hallway. I'm not sure if he was hitting on me or just trying to impress me with his connections but he was telling me about how he could get free tickets to the world championship boxing match happening in Macau on Saturday night along with a free hotel room. I knew then that I did not like Roy but I did not know that he was completely insane. He cooked dinner for a small group of us and then the crazy came out. He ranted about a number of things over the course of the evening. Unfortunately we had all agreed to go to the night markets with him before we realized what a weirdo he was and were stuck with him much longer than we needed to be. He ranted about how Obama is going to get sick of black people getting killed and is going to arm them all before he is out of office. He claimed that he himself had lived through nuclear weapon testing and had been bombed repeatedly and it was insane that no one ever talked about it. He talked about challenging Prince Harry to a cage fight and was appalled when he did not receive a response. He also told us all about how he used to make $40,000 a week when he lived in the states but for some reason can’t go back there. He is a complete whack job, who also made myself and the other girl in our small group feel incredibly uncomfortable. He put his hand in the front pocket of my pants and it was all I could do not to punch him in the face. The only reason I didn’t is because Roy seemed like the kind of guy that would kick the shit out of a girl in front of witnesses because he thinks he is above persecution.

I managed to race ahead of him along with an English guy (I can’t remember his name because I’m a horrible person) and managed to find the fortunetellers from the other night. Since I wasn’t all by my lonesome I wasn’t afraid to interact with a gypsy and decided to have a tarot card reading done.

While I don’t believe anything my new gypsy friend told me will actually come true it was still a really fun experience. She told me I would meet my future husband soon and we will have our first child this year but we won’t get married until I am 33. We will have three children in total and will be very rich. We will buy a second home when I am 48. My parents won’t give me any money but my children will. She also said last year I was poor but this year I will get a new job and will be rich. I was smiling and laughing through the whole experience. I loved that everything she told me was positive even though it was all a load of crap. I was in such a good mood until Roy caught up to us and tried to take away from my experience. He told me the lady was just messing with me and I shouldn’t get so worked up over things. Any time I mentioned my reading to anyone else in the group he would jump in with a negative comment. He should have jumped off a bridge instead.

Sick of Roy and his banana pants craziness I headed back to the hostel and called it a night. Later on tonight I leave for Africa so I’m just relaxing before heading to the airport. I’m incredibly excited about adventures in Africa but dreading the journey there. At least I’m flying with reputable airlines this time and will get food an entertainment along the way!

The Long Journey To Hong Kong

Shortly after waking up on Thursday morning I tried to check-in for my flight and received an error message saying online check-in was not available and I would need to check-in at the airport.  I didn’t really think much of this until I checked the Perth Airport departure list an hour before we planned to leave for the airport and my flight wasn’t listed, that’s when I started to completely freak out. I tried again to check-in online and now received an error message saying my booking could not be found.  My stress level immediately skyrocketed. I called Jet Star and their automated system told me that my flight had left the day before. Now I was stressed and pissed off. I waited online for a real person for what felt like forever before being told they were experience some technical difficulties and I had not missed my flight but they could not explain why my flight wasn’t showing up on the departure list at the airport, they did however assure me the flight did exist and I was booked onto it. This did little to calm my nerves and I was a giant ball of stress the whole way to the airport.

The drive to the airport was much shorter than the drive from the airport as there were no fires in the area so at least I didn’t have the added stress of thinking I might miss my flight, if it even existed. There was a bit of a detour thanks to some construction but we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Luckily the departures board at the airport had accurate information (unlike the online version) and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I checked in, dropped my bags, and sighed in relief, but the hard part wasn’t over yet, I still had to say goodbye to Jesse. We sat down in a café and chatted for a bit in attempt to delay the inevitable but eventually the time came and with tears in my eyes I gave him the biggest hug ever and said goodbye. Hopefully it won’t be our last goodbye and we can continue to visit each other in years to come.

I made it through security and immigration with no problems. I was on a streak! 5 trips through airport security without being randomly selected for additional screening! I normally always get picked for the weird residue check they do to see if you’ve been manufacturing drugs or bombs, I guess I just have one of those faces. Things went slightly downhill from here. I need to stop booking budget airlines to save a few dollars. Especially if it means taking an overnight flight on the most uncomfortable plane ever and being in transit for way longer than I needed to be. I’m getting too old for that shit!

The first leg of my journey was a 5-hour flight to Singapore with no meals and no in-flight entertainment. All of this would have been fine if I had been able to get some sleep but no luck there. I was actually falling asleep during taxi and a flight attendant woke me and told me I needed to move my pillow. Stupid jerk! After that I just couldn’t get comfortable. The plane was so ghetto it didn’t even have an adjustable headrest, which would have been super helpful. I spent the rest of that flight wishing I was a dolphin because they sleep in 30 second bursts through the day and somehow manage to function. However since I am not a dolphin I wanted to cry by the time I arrived at Singapore airport.

Singapore airport is meant to be one of the coolest airports around. It even has a butterfly conservatory! I had a 4-hour layover and before boarding the plan I was hoping to get enough sleep to be able to go exploring during that time but it just wasn’t in the cards. I found a row of chairs with no arm rests and curled up in a ball while spooning my backpack. It was magical. I got about two hours of sleep. I did wake up a fair few times during that two hours but it was still a million times better than the sleep I got on the plane.

The next leg of the journey was pretty amazing even though it was still a crappy, uncomfortable plane. The reason it was so amazing, I had a whole row to myself! I almost screamed in delight when they closed the door and I knew for sure no one was sitting with me. As soon as the seatbelt sign got turned off I stretched out over the three seats and drifted off to sleep for about 3 hours. I woke up feeling refreshed but thirsty and since I wasn’t paying stupid amounts of money to buy a drink on the stupid plane that feeling lasted a while.

Getting from the airport to the hostel was surprisingly easy. I was expecting this to be the most challenging part of the journey but it wasn’t at all. The line up for immigration moved quickly and there was essentially no line at customs as long as you had nothing to declare. I collected my bag, grabbed some money from the ATM and made my way to the bus stop outside. The bus displayed which stop was coming up next, making me very happy. I’m always nervous about taking buses because if you don’t know where you are it is very easy to miss your stop so I usually try to take trains instead. I did have the option of taking a train but the bus was way cheaper so I was glad I didn’t end up regretting this decision. From the bus it was a two-minute walk and I was at the hostel. Fantastic because I was still pretty exhausted.

I made my way to the 14^th floor and rung the bell of the hostel. The receptionist let me and told me to put my bags down and have a seat in the lounge and he would be with me in a minute he just needed to get someone else checked in first. 20 minutes later I was still sat in the lounge waiting and growing impatient. I went back to reception and asked if he was ready for me yet and he admitted that he had completely forgotten about me. I was not overly surprised by this news but I was surprised when he offered me a free bottle of water as an apology. Thanks homie.

The rest of the night was pretty low-key and consisted of dinner and sleep. I had originally planned to spend my first full day in Hong Kong at Disney Land but I started to rethink that once I got here. It is the smallest Disney Park in the world and it is still pretty expensive. I didn’t want to go over budget like I did in Fiji and Australia so I decided to give it a miss.

It was raining when I woke up so I wasn’t in a real hurry to go anywhere. I grabbed some breakfast and started wandering aimlessly.  I ended up at the Avenue Of Stars, Hong Kong’s version of the Walk Of Fame. I didn’t see a single name I recognized, there were a lot of Asian tourists going pretty crazy over the whole thing though. From there I continued to walk along the waterfront until I got to the ferry port. I slowly made my way back to the hostel poking my head into any interesting looking shops I passed along the way.

 I had a bit of a nap when I got back to the hostel and when I woke up the rain had stopped. I checked the forecast and the next few days were not looking very promising as far as sunshine was concerned so I decided to start doing stuff I had been putting off due to the weather and made my way to Victoria Peak. This was a horrible plan. While things had started to clear up at sea level they weren’t so lovely up a mountain. Between the clouds and the pollution I couldn’t see a single thing and was pretty pissed at myself for wasting money.

I was not very happy with myself at this point and decided to take a walk through Hong Kong Park to try to cheer myself up a bit. The park was quite pretty but I ended up getting pretty lost.  I kept wandering and eventually ended up at a metro station, not the one I was looking for but I was able to get home from there so I was still happy to find it.

Later in the evening I made my way to the night markets on Temple Street. I love going to markets even though I never buy anything so I was pretty stoked to check this out. I was pretty disappointed when I got there though. No one was selling anything homemade or even unique really, and there was no real street food. Everyone was selling phone cases and chargers, or belts and bags. I always expect to see some of these stalls but usually the handmade stuff makes it worth it. There were quite a few fortunetellers around the outskirts of the market and I was tempted to have my fortune told but I decided letting a gypsy know that I was travelling solo probably wasn’t in my best interest. Plus while I don’t think they would have given me accurate information about my life if they told me anything negative it probably would have stressed me out and I’m trying to keep things light these days.

I tried to find some yummy dinner but Hong Kong is obsessed with seafood and I live on the very opposite end of that spectrum. If it came from the ocean I don’t want anything to do with it. A few restaurants had there seafood in buckets on the street, doesn’t that scream health code violation to you? So I ended up grabbing something at a grocery store and made my way back to the hostel for the night.

This post got long fast so I think I will wrap things up now and leave my adventures from today for my next post. Peace out boys and girls J