An Unexpected Visit
Dear Friends,
Welcome to our new blog. We are a little late in starting thanks to whole lot of jet lag and a missed connection in Hong Kong, which added half-a-day to what was already a day-long trip.
We spent so much time congratulating ourselves for escaping Thanksgiving this year we forgot we were departing on one of the busiest travel days of the year, when a sizable chunk of 50 million travelling Americans move through LAX. An 11:30 pm takeoff for Asia, we assumed, would not be affected. In fact, the whole airport was overburdened and behind schedule; we sat on the tarmac for more than an hour and, flying west, could not make up the time.
As it happened, this was a good thing. We had never been to Hong Kong and with an 8-hour layover we jumped at the chance to visit the City. The shiny airport express train made it completely doable. (24 minutes!) On the train we chatted with a Silicon Valley tech person and his wife, a former SV tech worker but now home with their adorable 3-year old son, all of whom were on their way to visit their parents in India and like us taking advantage of a long lay-over to slip into town. Asked if they would consider moving back to India, he gave it serious thought while she mouthed, “no never.”
We stepped into Central Hong Kong just around 9 am, well 9:30 by the time we found our way out of the train station. Most storefronts were still shuttered. We walked up and down steep stone stairs between streets, glimpsing the high hillsides above, the sea below.
Various small outdoor markets on skinny walking streets were open for business: a block of sewing supplies (snaps, zippers, or buttons, anyone?). A street of knock-offs and knickknacks (Christmas is coming!). In a small square, a busy outdoor market sold meat, live fish, and especially beautiful produce. As the city woke up, a kind of easy international air reminded us of downtown London.
A Hong Kong resident, seeing us consult a map, asked if we needed help; we did—it was late morning and we were hungry. He sent us to an old dim sum place Lok Yu Tea Room where doddery old waiters brought us bouncy shrimp-and-pork paste in shumai and then bouncy shrimp-only paste stuck onto canned button mushrooms. Oh well.
We ambled down to the harbor area with its panoramic view of the water and miles of shoreline edged in high rises. (Photographs and even films fail to do the enormity justice.) The day was beautiful, quiet, cool. A calm after a long storm. No, we did not see any unrest—just graffiti and the after-images of chalked slogans since scrubbed off walkways. We hope that somehow, Hong Kong reclaims its independence. We are definitely coming back.