Sunday, January 2, 2011

Hong Kong Phooey or '2011' Rhymes with 'Heaven'

Fellow Earthlings,

You totally need to fly with Singapore Air at least once. Definitely going to recommend that one. Before take-off the stewardesses come around with warm towelettes to wipe your hands, and immediately following take-off they come by with your choice of orange juice, beer, or wine and a bag of crunchy snacks. Then they pass out the menus where you choose which meal you want, and you can drink Singapore Slings(cocktails) the whole way to your destination. No extra charge, this service is included with the flight. The TV allows you to choose which programs you want to watch, and there's a feature where you can build your own music playlist. Artist choices span all genres including Western artists, Japanese pop, Korean pop, Indian pop, and Chinese pop. After your meal they give you Haagen-Dazs. And this is all Economy class treatment. F to the yeah.

Sooo pretty much every day I've been in Singapore, I've gone shopping and gotten a Starbucks/Coffee Bean. Pretty standard for me, boring for you if you know me, we can skip it. It's okay. Unless you feel a particular need to know that I went to three different Top Shop stores in one day OH YES I DID. That place is dangerous, and you should not take your money into that establishment if you have any quaint notions about "saving" it.

Additionally, I have never wanted a piece of gum more in my life than when I'm walking around in Singapore. The irony of this statement is that chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore. Not allowed! So, bringing chewing gum into this country is considered smuggling. Sigh, we always want what we can't have. 

Anyway, I'm off track. My New Year's was epically unexpected. I really had nothing to do with how things panned out per se; only that it was my idea to go to Hong Kong in the first place. Other than that it was out of my hands (and really not as exciting as this little preface would lead you to believe).

My travel buddy, Elle, had a friend living in Hong Kong who we met up with for dinner. She took us to a private kitchen restaurant that specialized in cooking with Sichuan peppers. From what I gather a "private kitchen" is a restaurant with only a few tables/limited seating that you must make a reservation to enter - walk-ins not permitted. There was also a sign as we entered that said "Members Only" but none of us was a Member...well, that we knew of. Whatever. The food itself was quite tasty but they did in fact use a large amount of Sichuan peppers. The only way I can think of to describe the spiciness of the pepper is, like, if the little pepper seeds decided to do a tiny, spicy ballet dance on your tongue. THAT would be what it's like. We literally had heaps of peppers left over from the meal, and I started trying to devise a way to use the remaining bits as an alternative source of energy because otherwise it was just a waste.

Okay so that was dinner and fun. After that we went to meet some of Hong Kong Friend's other friends to go ring in the new year. So we met up with them and went off to a gigantic club with a rockin' DJ and tons of other glamorous people. We toasted with champagne at midnight and danced the night away.

Is what Elle and I had been imagining. Oh, aren't we cute.

Here's what really happened. We took a metro to the end of the line, then got on a double-decker trolley and took that almost to the end of the line, met up with Hong Friend's other friends and then walked for another ten minutes to (drum roll) ... the harbor. One guy was carrying a hot water container, which we thought was strange, so Elle asked him if he was actually carting around a hot water container. He informed us it was full of mulled wine. Hello, new friend!

So we followed them down the road to an area with a wall running along the left side, and then followed them through a break in the wall onto a huge ship dock. We're talking with guard dogs in certain areas, large metal shipping containers, and old wooden palettes piled in places. Elle and I looked around and then proceeded to do the only logical thing: a photo shoot. Duh. Yeah, hopefully I'll be getting copies of those photos soon.

Then we got some mulled wine and tuned into a radio broadcast via tiny, portable stereo provided by Random-We-Just-Met-20-Minutes-Ago #3. That was how we listened to the countdown. I say "listened" in a really loose sense, because the countdown was in Chinese. They could have been listing chemical compounds for all I knew, but all the Chinese-speakers seemed to think the radio was saying numbers so I played along.

-Warning this next part contains a vulgar joke (sorry Mom! Please be assured that I, shockingly, was not the one to make the joke)-

We hit zero and saw, from a distance, one building explode with fireworks. They shot fireworks from the roof, and one of the Hong Kong Friends remarked (with affection) that "awww our building is ejaculating". Now, I didn't notice this until she said it (I don't know HOW I missed it), but here's a picture of the building with fireworks for you. Take a look. It's the big one in the middle (that's what she said).

http://media.monstersandcritics.com/galleries/996207/0121145550085.jpg

Elle and I stuck around for a tiny bit after the display, but then had to make our way back to our hotel all the way across town because we were flying back to Singapore the next day. When we arrived at our gate in the airport the following day, we were just in time to catch the live broadcast from Times Square in New York with Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin. Yaaaay. We watched the ball drop and then boarded our flight.

And that's the story of New Year's in Hong Kong. Totally unexpected, but I'm okay with that.

Now to enjoy a couple more days of sun and warmth before heading back to the Japanland (which just got half a meter of snow). Sending you warm thoughts from the equator!   

2 comments:

  1. Is it bad that I knew about the Singapore gum ban from Legally Blond the Musical? (yes).

    And I thought the ejaculating building was another mistake of language translating. Like "look at the exciting building!" or "look at the evacuation from that building!"

    Nope. Penis building made a "firework special."

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  2. I mean, really. That's not even a stretch--it's not like it's a vulgar joke that anyone had to TRY AT. :)

    Hearts! We sat around making fun of Dick Clark's countdown (Logan can do a particularly merciless imitation of it on command) and then feeling shame because of it. :)

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