Day 17 - Kowloon
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Our first afternoon was spent at Kowloon, a huge commercial district at the southern tip of China just north of HK island. The area was absolutely awash with people, a large percentage of them being tourists, shopping and eating in the thousands of shops crammed into every corner of the neighbourhood. Two things I got out of shopping there, it's more expensive than on the mainland and almost everybody speaks English.
But more importantly, you've gotta beware! I was looking for a digital camera and after looking around a bit set myself on the Canon Ti900. The lowest price I got was 1800HK$, 1000HK$ lower than anybody else. He tells me to come back the next day when he would have it in stock, so I do and he says he can't get it. The next store has it at 2600HK$ which I managed to bargain with a bunch of accesories included. Excited by this seemingly great and non-sketch deal, I sign my receipt; however this guy says it'll take a few minutes to get it from the warehouse to the store. Exhasperated by my huge lack of judgement, I begin to feel uneasy. The salesman then goes on for the next 30 minutes or so trying to sell me a Sanyo camera; he talks about all its superior qualities, how its worth the extra 50$, and generally does an excellent job of convincing me that it's a better camera. Of course, all sorts of alarm bells are ringing at this point. Where's my camera? Why didn't he try to sell me this before? Why did I sign my receipt? Throughout the half hour, he gets on his phone twice to (supposedly) ask where the camera is and lowers the price of the Sanyo by a few hundred HK$s. However I wasn't ready to spend another 50$ on a camera and the whole situation really had me wary. Finally he said to come back later and I told him I was leaving at 8am, he handed me back the unprocessed receipt, ripped it in half and let us go. SO sketch. However, nothing's gone through on my Mastercard, so all is good. In the end, I figure that the deal never existed and he had no intention of selling me the Canon for the price he quoted. He probably thought that once I had signed my receipt that I would be reluctant to back out of the transaction. I went around and asked at some other stores and the Sanyo was actually cheaper than the Canon and not more expensive, as he had said. |
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| At night, we walked down to the harbour to look at HK Island's skyline. It's BIG, it's BRIGHT, and it's just so much more incredibly dense than anything else I've ever seen. We somehow ended up on HK's Walk of Fame where we found my mispelled Star. I'll have to get that looked at.
In Hong Kong, we had to fend for ourselves in terms of food and entertainment as we didn't go for the pre-planned tour (an extra 50$). Our guide told us that eating in HK would be expensive - in the 30$-50$ range, but he was surely only talking about fancy-schmany restaurants. We lunched at a local noodle house for 30$ for 4 people. For dinner, we ate sushi at a place that had a long line up all day long and it cost about 15$ each for some of the best sushi I've ever had. It's said that the food in HK is some of the best on the planet, and having gone to just random little restaurants, I'm already inclined to agree. It makes me cry that after 3 weeks of very mass-produced food, a lot of our tour group were going to McDonald's or other familiar places and didn't get the chance to try out HK's very fine cuisine. |
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| Our hotel was located right at the heart of Kowloon. It was small but very, very hip as you can see by the above-counter sink and frosted glass sliding door to the bathroom. Many pictures were taken, most of them not work safe. Meanwhile, Etienne's Gwa Sha was turning from bright red to a nice shade of yellow/brown.
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| Previous | Wuzhen - Suzhou - Shanghai - Wuhan - Maoping - Xiling Shennong - Wanxian - Chongqing - Guilin Guangzhou - Kowloon - Hong Kong - Good Bye |
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