Friday, August 24, 2012

From Shite House to White House

Hong Kong is an adventure. 

That seems like a painfully obvious statement, but hear me out. So here I am, sitting in my closet of a room at the Apple Hostel. Which isn't that bad, mind you. Granted, it smells like Indian food (my bad) and it's the same temperature as a sauna, but overall, not a bad place. I'd definitely stay there again- if I could get a reservation. But tonight, I couldn't. And the wifi wasn't working. So like any red-blooded American, I grab my laptop and go out in search of free internet. Pretty soon I find myself sipping a chai tea latte at a Starbucks right along the waterfront. Am I a white boy? Yes. Do I love it? Hell yeah.

Every hostel in Kowloon is booked, I kid you not. I even went door-to-door in the Chunging Mansions, scaled 14 stories (the elevator takes way too long), going into each hostel and asking if they had rooms. The only one that did has less than a 25% score on some of the hostel-rating sites. That's low, ya'll. Real low. Like, you may have an unexpected bed-mate low. But while I'm sitting in a coffee shop that I can find on every street corner in America, my dad says that he's booked me a hotel for my birthday. It was a friggin' lifesaver. Granted, a part of me is bummed that I couldn't handle the situation entirely on my own. I would have stayed at that crap house that had an available room. Or I could have wandered around Hong Kong all night. There are going to be many times that I find myself completely SOL and on my own, but I was glad that this was not one of them.

Now I'm just taking a breather before exploring Central Hong Kong and the Wan Chai district, across the bay from Kowloon. I'm stoked. In all my naivete, I already feel a little accustomed here. I can already find my way around, hop on a bus, grab a meal. I just need some buddies to do it with, but that'll be resolved tonight when I meet up with some SF kids.

Hong Kong is rocking my world.
Tune in next episode for Otter: Master Haggler. I'm buying me a camera.

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