What seems different living here? It’s not some of the more obvious things - that most everyone looks and speaks Chinese - or that they drive on the left and use different currency. It’s the little things - like buying bread in packages of four slices.
Here we use public transportation, in fact our lives revolve around the ferry schedules. The buses and subway trains run every few minutes, but there are sometimes three or four hours between ferries, and the last ferry from Aberdeen direct to where we live in Pak Kok leaves at 10:00PM. There are ferries from Central to Yung Shue Wan at 10:30, 11:30, and 12:30PM, but then we have to walk home, about 20 minutes over two big hills.
We talk on Skype with Oran in the mornings, evening for him. He told us that his dog found a big dead dried up rat in the back yard and brought it into the house. “Was he proud?” I asked. “No, he was dead,” he answered. We miss hugging Oran, and holding Asa.
The density of people in Hong Kong is hard to get used to. At crosswalks it seems that a thousand people cross at once, and getting off the subway and getting onto the escalator reminds me of watching schools of fish swimming in unison. Luckily people here are generally kind and polite and I haven’t seen outbursts of anger that are so common in the US. And when we get home it is delightfully quiet and tranquil, without any crowds.
It didn’t take us long to get used to the stunning views of the ocean from our windows, and there is always something to see: a small boat with a fisherman, a ferry, a huge container ship, a police boat, a small fishing boat, a kayak, a barge, a dredge, a sailboat, and lots of birds. On a clear day we can see the bridge to Lantau Island, a beautiful suspension bridge, and lots of high rise apartment buildings near Aberdeen.
The first week I was here, before Nonnie arrived, I ate a lot of peanut butter toast and instant ramen noodles. Then Nonnie arrived, and so did Ed and Terry, and we ate great for two weeks - either at restaurants or home cooked meals with Ed’s family. We had so many great meals, mostly different styles of Chinese, and one wonderful Korean meal. Now that Ed and Terry have gone homeour eating has definitely become more basic, less interesting, more irregular. Yesterday we went to some street markets in Mong Kok, and stopped at Kitchen One Cafe for dinner, a hole in the wall cafe with mediterranean tile tables serving a fusion of western and Chinese food. I had stone grilled chicken with rice. When we got home we had a bottle of Tsing Tao beer and cold boiled peanuts for dessert. The day before we went to Stanley and had dinner outside on the waterfront at an Italian cafe. I had linguini with clams, and a cold beer. The weather was great and it was a delightful meal.
Fresh seafood is really fresh here, kept alive in tanks until you chose it for your dinner. One meal we had with Ed and his family was at a restaurant where you went outside into the walking alley and picked out your seafood from big tanks - the alley was lined with them - and then we gave the seafood to the people in the restaurant who cookedand served it. It was one of the best meals I ever ate - razor clams, big prawns, oysters, calamari, a whole grouper, geoduck sashimi; every bit of it delicious!
I’ve taken lots of pictures here. Everything is interesting, but the feeling is not so easy to capture. My pictures look frenetic, too busy, too empty, or nothing is happening - but if I take enough some of them should be good. Or so I tell myself.