Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

So it’s been a few days since I’ve jumped onto the computer and the first thing I noticed is that some prick (probably Darren) changed my MSN name to some vulgar thing about my love for little boys in Manila.  All false obviously!!  He’s a bastard and I’ll get him back by the end of this trip.  He’ll pay dearly cause I’m vindictive and mean.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out there cause it pissed me off.  So we left Manila yesterday and it was kinda sad.  I had a really good time there and it was a great experience.  I know I definitely gained a few pounds considering all of our ’snacks’ were full blown meals.  We flew back on Cebu Air and they decided to play some games.  They’re supposed to be a ‘fun’ airline and I guess they try, but it’s not that fun.  The flight attendants got the passengers to play a speed game.  They would call out something and the first person to show it would win a prize.  So guess who ended up winning once?  Yours truely.  She wanted to see an airplane safety card and before she even finished her sentence I already whipped mine out.  That last line sounds a tad odd, but I’m gonna stick with it.  Wes claims that I barely beat him, but he was sitting next to me and I don’t think he even reached for it yet but the time I showed my safety card.  He’s slowww.  What did I win for my troubles?  A stupid bottle cooler thing to keep my beer cold.  Oh well.  I was still a winner.

HK is a totally different place from the Philippines.  It’s hot here too and I actually find the air worse here.  It’s smoggy all the time.  We haven’t done a whole lot here.  It’s definitely a slower pace here for some reason.  It’s almost too easy to get around here so maybe we just slow things down knowing we can get from one destination to another in a matter of minutes.  We sit around more and there’s less urgency to keep moving.  Like right now.  As I’m typing, Wes and Lisa are sitting next to me watching a movie (Thank You for Smoking is a fantastic movie by the way).

The other thing is that we’re a big group out here now.  Tams, Terry, Ron, Christina, James are here too as well as our friends and family.  Travelling in a large group makes decision making a bitch.  It hasn’t been to bad thus far, but it also slows things down too.  So for example, after deciding to go to Central, we were standing at the MTR station and we suddenly changed our minds and decided to go to Mongkok.  Overall, it was a good decision though.  The shopping was better and there was more to do there.  We went down a street that was similar to the Richmond Night Market.  The vendors there are hilarious.  If you ask them how much one of their items is, it’s safe to say that you can talk them down to about 40-60% of what they want.  It makes shopping pretty fun and the bargaining part is the best part.  If they say they want 160, tell them it’s too much and that you’ll give them 60 for it.  Or that the vendor down the street is selling it for 50.  Walk away and they almost always give in.  It’s great.  I think I’m buying stuff that I only partially want just because it’s cheap.  We’ve gotten to the point that we have to mind our luggage space now.  We’ve already bought too much stuff.

Speaking of space, this Hotel room is tiny.  I believe this will probably be the worse place we will be staying on this trip.  It’s so tiny.  We’ve crammed four people and all of our luggage and bags into a small room which feels like it’s about 400 sq feet.  The internet sux ass here and thus the lack of updates the past few nights.  We had the hotel come into our room and check into the problem with our internet service and there wasn’t anything they could do.  When they checked all of the local HK sites, they came up nice and fast.  When we checked web sites in North America, they would take forever to load.  Piece of crap!  That reminds me, the toilet is a piece of shit too, no pun intended!  It takes forever to flush and it takes about 5 min to re-fill the tank.  Not to mention it takes 4 flushes for us to completely empty the bowl.  Ackk..  I recommend never to stay at the Eaton Hotel here.

Last night we met up with Kelly.  I love that girl.  She hasn’t changed much in the last 6 years.  It’s too bad we don’t get to see her much any more.  We went out for Chinese food to eat goose.  It’s just like eating duck.  We went to a lounge for drinks in LKF and most of those places are a friggin rip off.  My martini was the equivalent of $20 cdn and the girls paid nearly $60 for a karafe of sangria.  Crazy.  It was fun hanging out though.  Dominique met up with us too.  To end the night, Lisa discovered she lost her bag of stuff.  I think Wes’ clumsiness is brushing off on her.

Ack, my memory is fading.  I don’t remember what’s happened the last few days.  Time to roll out..

~Anth

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.