Personal Dork Assistant

22:30, Somewhere over the South China Sea

I'm not a fan of group tours, but mom found a 3-day, 2-night package with plane, hotel, and a short guided tour that left us with a day to ourselves for the price of the plane tickets alone. There were only about ten of us in the group. Nobody I particularly cared about (except Mom, of course), but mom can strike up a conversation with anyone.

We arrived at Hong Kong in the afternoon, and the tour guide immediately took us for a ride around town. The new highrises gleamed, the old apartment blocks didn't. Went to , with vastly overpriced real estate for folks who don't worry about prices. Our tour guide was quite the populist. As we passed by the fancy places, he liked to talk about the inequalities in this libertarian paradise.

Took a ride on the Star Ferry from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon. The terminal and the ferry were filled with Filipina maids. With a billion desperately poor Chinese people next door, they still import labor. Perhaps the different faces make the differences in status a little easier to justify. Aunt Dai is losing her Filipina maid since her work visa is expiring after three years, and just when she's getting properly trained, too. The prices for mass produced goods have been equalized by the global market, so it's almost pointless to go shopping for this stuff. Only the price of labor can still be arbitraged. Mom had the right idea, picking up some nice Chinese zodiac jewelry from a shop on the tour. The salesladies were like white on rice as soon as they figured out that she had money to spend, and we spent our time with one of the pit boss ladies instead of the pretty drones. At least the tour guide was honest about the kickback they were getting.

I would never go to these sort of place, but the tour included a trip to Hong Kong Ocean Park, and they had pandas. It's sad that I've spent all that time in San Diego and not bothered to go to the zoo and see their pandas, but the Ocean Park had a good environment for them and one of them was actually lively enough for some good photo ops. The rest of the park was kitschy, and not a fashionable kitschy, either. Went up to Victoria's Peak, but the harbor was just hazy enough to make the view not spectacular. It was the first day I really spent outside, and the heat and humidity was oppressive. Went around Mong Kok's warren of electronics and sports shops without anything striking my fancy, for reasons stated above. Searched for mom's favorite dried goods store and found it just in time to avoid a huge but brief downpour. The dried lizards and snakes didn't look to tasty, but the dozen varieties of dried scallops, shitakes, abalones, shark fins, shrimps, and on and on were impressive and very Chinese. Too bad I didn't have my camera. The dried abalone should make for some tasty soup.

There are really three Hong Kongs. There's the British Hong Kong, which is a bare veneer, really, but it's visible in the double-decker busses, driving on the other side of the road, and the street names of old Hong Kong (Nathan Road, Queensway, The Admiralty). Of course, there's the Cantonese Hong Kong, it's the dominant language and cuisine, and it reflects the British face through the Cantonese translations of the English names. Now there's the Mandarin Hong Kong, with People's Liberation Army Headquarters on the shores of the harbor and the hordes of Chinese tourists from the Mainland. We're not as bumpkin as the mainland tourists, but we don't speak Cantonese, so there's always a moment confusion when we speak with a local. Found that I had better luck with the hotel folks when I spoke English. Whatever works. Now combine wrong-side driving with Asian traffic and maybe I should just be glad to get away alive.