Hong Kong

Rain.

The dominant force in our lives since touching down two days ago. Sprinkling rain, pouring rain, drizzling rain, slanty spiky rain, and then, top it off, a class 8 typhoon. But more on that later.

Our flight was surprisingly easy (emergency exit row, thanks to Victor's last-minute manipulations) nonstop from Newark to Hong Kong. Our plane took the shortest distance between two points-- flying almost straight North over Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Circle and Siberia. Due to the time of the year, we followed the bright sun the whole way there, getting a great view at the top. We arrived after dusk in the bright-light, foggy city of Hong Kong.

We got into our modern if slightly out of the way hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island on Wednesday night. We later learned the building of our stay was the former Chinese Embassy before Hong Kong's transition to Chinese rule in '97. After a tip from the concierge, we grabbed a quick bite in Times Square in what JJ considered the HK version of Denny's - comfort food with a Chinese twist.

They have capitalism in Hong Kong. Victor is less than thrilled.

Our 25th floor hotel room has a great view of the southern hills and a Muslim cemetary carved into the hillside, as the southern 2/3 of Hong Kong Island is mountain hills with only minor development.

Our excurions today (before we learned of the typhoon) involved a ride up the 15+ story outside escalator that takes you to some of the nicest parts of the city (SOHO, where many ex-pats appear to reside). Antique shops, restaurants and hip bars abound. It also gives you a feel for how Hong Kong sticks its 7 million residents directly on top of one another...hence the skyscrapers of people living vertically in a 2 x 6 mile space.

Another way to get a feel for the number of people in this city is to join a few thousand of them jammed like sardines in their fine subway system beneath the city. Why would you do that, you ask? To avoid the oncoming class 8 typhoon about to strike, of course. On our way back down the mountain (they make you walk your way back down after the free ride up), an American woman pulled us aside to tell us about the oncoming typhoon, a class "8" (the highest level, we quickly learned, is "10"). Fortunate timing, as we could not have understood the weather reports on our own. A businessman with good english language skills (as opposed to the merely passable English of most HKers) also kindly adopted us on the way to the subway to explain these conditions. Everyone was let off work to go home to take cover which meant that sidewalks were wall to wall people, bus lines were enormous, and we had to push ourselves into stampede-like conditions on the subway. Fortunately many of our fellow captives were Buddhists. This is a very polite, very hygenic city. Victor's lack of enthusiasm for such sterilized city living quickly morphed into sincere appreciation under subterranean evacuation conditions.

The view from the Central MTR station - replicated on three sides of us.

The storm blew through without too much ado. We learned that the southern part of the island breaks the force of the storm, and generally typhoons don't gather speed and mass for days like US hurricanes. Anyway, we're glad to have gotten back to the hotel in time to try to decipher cryptic Cantonese newscasts and meterological analysis. Mostly we learned that the water was choppy and people look funny trying to hold umbrellas against typhoon winds.

That's the basic tale so far - we'll add some pics when we get to another computer.

Here's a vid of the skyline: