Dried fish skin is sold everywhere presumably because its cheaper than the fresh fish it came from. We walked around for about an hour, past the squatter huts where everyone shared the local public bathroom and past the school where rows and rows of computers sat in the classroom with the hope of educating the next generation although they’ll end up leaving the village in search of jobs in the city.
Often you read stories of how local people in depressed places have a plucky spirit and a cheerful disposition but I couldn’t detect any here. Tai O was where the original Chinese came to the Hong Kong islands centuries ago but it didn’t appear if things had really improved since then.
Travelling is all about learning and the nice girl in the tourist office must have picked up on that because we learnt that not all the world is a tourist destination yet everywhere has something to show us.
(For a little photo essay go to our photo galleries)

1. Fashion: Hong Kong women are *very* fashion forward. I mean, they are pushing the fashion envelope hard. Some things work, some really really don’t but they are not scared. And they are raging on white leather knee high boots. they’re everywhere on every age. you haven’t seen cute until you’ve seen an 8 year old in knee high white leather boots. I’m telling you, this city is crazy. which brings me to:

2. Shopping: Seriously, the thought crossed our minds and came out of our mouths that a week long trip to Hong Kong just to go shoppping isn’t such a bad idea. I’ve never seen shopping malls as large as what they have here. And all top name brands, very very cool. We saw a Louis Vitton on every corner but, mercifully, not one Gap. And with an exchange rate of $7.6 HK dollar to $1 US dollar, book your tickets now.

3. Food: There are many, many different kinds of hum bow, not just the bbq you get at home. We had a red bean and some kind green tea one for breakie on our first morning. we would never eat this at home – it’s a white bun with a sugar puree inside, people. but somehow, it felt right in HK. Watch out for the donuts that look like cinnamon sugar, though. they could be curry flavor. Now, you can get any kind of cuisine you want from western looking restaurants in which you’d feel very comfy and I must admit that on our 3rd night we went to Pizza Express. But on nights 1 & 2, we went total local Chinese fare and it was awesome. No one spoke English and we were the only Westerners. The 2nd night we were taken to their upstairs seating area which was a little weird at first because I think we were actually eating in what used to be an apartment turned extra restaurant seating area and it was kind of back alley but it turned out awesome and we were very proud to have gone there instead of the “chain” Chinese place we almost went to. eexperiences, all experiences. speaking of apartments…..

4. HK housing: David says he read that HK only has 4.9M residents. shocking when you see the housing situation on HK island. Imagine apartment blocks rising up 50 or more floors that house 15,000-50,000 people. They’re built in pods all over the entire island – even out in the middle of nowhere. Some are flat buildings bundled together in communities and some are shaped like four-leaf clovers that form weird 1970’s-yet-space age concrete pods. Either way, they are oppressive but amazing at the same time and to see people hanging their clothes out to dry 50 floors up is….well strange. aren’t they afraid they’ll lose something off the hanger??

5. Pollution: we are definitley not the only country contributing to global warming. our eyes and noses were burning the entire time. Oddly, though, it’s a very clean city in just about every other regard. Not a single scrap of garbage on the ground anywhere – or gum. so clean yet so dirty at the same.
Those are my notations. HK was meant to warm us up on being backpackers again and I think it did the job perfectly. We flew to Hanoi this morning on Vietnam Airlines – what a nice airline, btw!! The flight attendants where the lovliest long silk dresses over silk pants and you’re served dim sum for breakie. We’re here in our hotel now and everything is going great but I’ll save that for another installment. Stay tuned!

So, 90 minutes late leaving Seattle for Vancouver. No problem because we had 180 minutes between landing in Vancouver and transfering to our Hong Kong flight and now we have 90. Like I say, no problem. However, avid readers of our travel journels may wish to cast their minds back to our New Zealand jaunt when we were also delayed leaving Seattle and made our connecting flight with literally only minutes spare and then had to suffer through lost luggage syndrome at the other end. History repeats itself, its a fact – your reading another of our travel blogs detailing delayed flights from SeaTac only confirms this fact. You know, we know it – there’s a good chance this isn’t going to work out well.

I now start a new paragraph to build suspense and for further dramatic effect will tell you that upon our arrival in Canada we waited for nearly thirty of those precious ninety minutes for our bags to ascend triumphantly from the bowels of baggage handling hell and spin in exhaulted glory on the carousel of hope. But they didn’t and time waits for no man or woman so off we trot to the nice people who track lost bags. They say its OK because our bags are “ramp loaded” all the way to Hong Kong. This means we didn’t need to wait and they are already on the plane. Fine – not what we were told at Seattle but… But, before I could finish that last sentance the nice lost baggage lady informs us we’ve missed our Hong Kong flight anyway. I splutter, Sarah warms up her finest snarl and History comes wandering over to tap us on the shoulder and exclaim how nice it is to see us again and how we must stop meeting like this whilst waiting to catch connecting international flights. But out the corner of my eye I notice History swerve to his right and head towards another couple that look just like us but I’m sure are heading to somewhere more difficult to make up for than Hong Kong. The nice baggage lady has since realized the flight has been delayed and everything is going to be fine. Great, wonderful. We head to the gate remarking in a cheery manner that its now nearly 3am, six hours since we arrived at SeaTac and we could have driven to Vancourver and back again in the time it’s taken us to get this far.

The flight to Hong Kong is LOOOOng. 13 earth hours whaich at 37000 feet is 130 flight hours, I slept nearly 7 (or 70)Â of those 130 (I sleep well sitting up; I had lots of practice at school). On Cathy Pacific flights they think Ramen Noodles in a cup is a great mid-flight snack. Lots of people ate them too. I tried to multiply the milligrams of sodium in each foam cup by the number of consumers (a 747 holds about 360 people) to get an idea of how much salt that is. I then pontificated if there was enough weight of salt to effect the fuel efficiency of the aircraft. Between that and a rather entertaining crossword (11 across was GoodyTwoShoes), I managed to use up the remainging 123 flight hours.

So – Here we and our bags are in Hong Kong. We’ll tell you all about that in another thrilling installment because its time for me to sleep. I’ve been up since Monday (it’s now Wednesday) and I’m quite tired. Besides, you’ve managed to reach the end of this long and erratic post so you could probably do with a nap too.