- Hello new friend!
One of the other students, also in my Santa Clara - Hong Kong program, flew in yesterday. After some emails and phone calls, we had decided to meet up. The plan was to grab a bite and some drinks.
He had checked out a room from the hotel "Butterfly on the Prat" in the Tsim Sha Tsui district (尖沙咀), and because his area was more "touristy," we decided it would be a safer bet to meet at his location over mine. (No, I do not live in the ghetto...well, not completely ghetto).
Getting down there was the first tricky part. Not only is HK's public transportation vast and complicated, limited ability to read the language also makes it difficult to navigate the streets. Yes, I could have taken a taxi, but learning the public transportation was a necessity and worthwhile experience. (Hello Mr. Budget!) After typing in Google "hong kong public transportation routes" some very complex internet research, I managed to figure out the bus route to take and where to get off.
- I can't tell if I like this better or San Francisco's 511.org
I was suppose to get off at stop #17, Mody Road Tsim Sha Tsui. Perhaps not all too surprisingly, I got off at New World Centre by mistake. This was not a complete mistake, since it gave me the chance to catch the harbor view of Hong Kong at night.
- Damn you crappy Blackberry camera
When we finally met up, finding a place to eat was more troublesome than we expected. Somehow, in our ill-fated excursion, we had wandered into the thick of the shopping district instead of the eating area. There were occasional restaurants, but they were definitely catered towards the more affluent crowd. (I'm not paying $30 for a sandwich!) I also saw more electronic stores in the span of 3 minutes than I could have seen at an electronics conference and symposium.
After eating, our attempt to find a local bar commenced. We somehow ended up in the wedding district instead though. (What is a wedding district? Imagine a bajillion wedding dress shops, tailors, cakes, etc. lined up along one street). As of that moment, I have officially walked more than the past 2 days than I have ever done so before in my life. We finally managed to find a pretty relaxing corner bar, along with American music blaring over crowded tables, and decided to go go in.
- I refused to get a beer like Tsingtao while in HK!
We bar hopped around for a little bit, went into some of the establishments nearby, grabbed a little more food and just let the time fly by. The sordid details of the night need not be fully chronicled, they would obviously be way too boring!
This brings us to the title of this post and why I have implicitly referred to my new friend as Mr. MoneyBag. (No, he was not super rich and he did not pay for everything). While wandering the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, every merchant you could possibly imagine flocked towards him, and only him, to hawk their goods at him. (I was a little jealous! No one flocking to me the night before was understandable, but that night I had on more than a tank top and basketball shorts! I did not look like a hobo!) Watches, clothes, food, beverages and even foot massages (with the illicit connotation thrown in), were tossed at him as if he was a walking bag of money. After some discussion about this, he revealed that he had expected as much. He was a tall, Caucasian male dressed in decent attire and, as such, he had expected to receive a type of treatment which was similar to how he had been treated in other Asian countries. The idea that foreigners tip extremely well and splurge with their money was culturally infused into the commercial mind-set of many residents of Hong Kong. However, given the rate of rejection he doled out, instead of a money bag, this might have been a more appropriate caricature of who he was:
- A more appropriate analogy right?
