Episode 5: hong hau adventure

today i woke up, had lunch (which was terrible), then grabbed a minibus to the local village of hong hau (i think thats the name of it, ill have to check at some point to clarify). hong hau was cool, its small but very dense with these huge skyscraper condos and minimalls spread throughout. like most of the towns here, many buildings look somewhat delapidated (yet are starkly contrasted by ultra modern neighbors), but the streets are surprisingly clean.

first, a picture of my lunch. so far this has been the most unpleasant meal to date. it is "beef with sweet corn sauce". it wasnt necessarily that the taste was that bad but there was something about the texture that made me very uncomfortable eating it. i am going to leave it at that....

the best way to travel, when not traveling on the MTR subway, is with these little minibuses that hold about 12 people. hong kong has streamlined their public transportation system with something known as the octopus card, which is like the new blink debit card that you tap against a machine and it deducts from your balance. when riding the mtr, you tap once to enter, and once to leave and it deducts based on how far you traveled, hassel free. why we dont have this in NYC, i dont know.

there is nothing i enjoy more than seeing evidence of american corporate imperialism. here is a star bucks at the hong hau mall.

this i enjoyed immensely. because cars are coming from the opposite direction you may be used to, there are often friendly little reminders on the street to tell you which direction to look in order to avoid oncoming traffic. this particular one happened to have saved my life....

hong kong is riddled with these huge skyscraper condo communities. they often have minimalls at the base of them, and if they are close enough, these malls are connected with bridges that hang over the road.

and this is a darker closeup of one of these huge condos that riddle hong hau.