Where I Am Meant to Be

When Barry greeted me on my arrival at Ascension House with "I think you are where you are not meant to be," he was so very right. I am now, in a small compact hotel room with an urban view and its very own bathroom. (I can't tell you how much I wanted to put those last three words in all caps.) And as Gerard Depardieu said in City of Ghosts, "There are no monkeys in my hotel."

I'm in the textile area, on Pleather Street, otherwise known as Tai Nan in Sham Shui Po. It's an area I always wanted to stay in and now here I am. Tomorrow I'll explore. This afternoon I'm wiped out from hauling my big suitcase up a series of staircases (Therese the co-manager, bless her, carried the other one), and then on a series of MTR escalators and trains. I have every respect now for the mainlanders with their rolling suitcases--they are working damned hard when they get their luggage/shopping carts on and off trains and down crowded streets and through the malls.

I did stop at a sweet little cafe on this street where I had a cold chocolate with lavender--heaven, I tell you. I took a photo of Bad Boy Recycling, complete with bad boy sitting at the entrance. I didn't get a photo of the two elderly gentlemen sitting near the curb, each with a very large beer at 1 in the afternoon, living large. I met a local laundryman, who will wash my clothes for a tiny fraction of the 80 dollars (US mind you) that my hotel would have charged. I am a happy old broad indeed.

Tomorrow I'll go out into the world and wander and enjoy the noise and clutter and delightfulness of this part of Kowloon. The flower market is waiting, along with things that I have no idea are there. But tonight I'm going to wallow in solitude--after weeks of communal living, damn, it does feel good.

This is Where I Came In

It's raining this morning, the day that I will leave Ascension House, the same sort of heavy drizzle that soaked through my suitcases when I came here almost a month ago. I'm drinking my second cup of strong coffee and trying to make out the silhouettes of hills through the fog, without any success. It should be good and muddy when I take my suitcases back up the hill to the Christian Center and call a taxi to take me to the MTR station. That's terrific--the mud on my suitcase wheels has just begun to flake away and I would hate to travel without it.

I am not a jungle-dweller, I've discovered. When faced with a monkey the size of an adult border collie, I turn back and take an alternate (longer) route. And then I book an urban hotel--I'm just that kind of girl.

Maybe because my formative years were filled with mud and mosquitos, I have a real aversion to those things. The hotel I'm going to later in the day will have small rooms, smaller bathrooms, and quite possibly noise from other occupants. Been there, done that, and I know it well. I like that.

And I did life in the wild kingdom for almost a month, a feat that I would be proud of if a large monkey, taking up the entire pathway hadn't cut my visit short by five days. On the other hand, there is sanity to be considered, and I treasure my tenuous grasp on mine. Five days in the midst of Kowloon, with excursions back to Shatin, Tai Po, and Sai Kung is just fine with me.

Another View

Last night I looked at hotels in Shatin online. There aren't many and two of them are named Hyatt and Marriott (cross those off the list.) The other two were separated by a difference of forty dollars--the least expensive is older and caters to tour groups from the mainland. The other is in the center of town and is more posh than any other place I've ever paid for. I weighed them both, their price difference, and the contrast offered between both and where I've been for the last three weeks. I took a deep breath and pushed the button that booked a room at the fancier one, the Royal Park for my last two nights in Shatin.

I think what I'm looking forward to most is coming home after nightfall, followed closely by no need to apply insect repellent as a bedtime ritual--oh, and a long luxurious soak in a bathtub. (I'm hoping for good toiletries and a white terrycloth bathrobe.)  A glass of wine while sitting at the floor-to-ceiling window will be very nice too. (Yesterday I drank Sangria at lunch with friends and felt incredibly decadent after my detox period at Ascension House.)

Except for my first trip, I've never stayed in a real hotel in Hong Kong. From what I've read, they can be as Spartan as my usual CKM accommodations, with tiny rooms and not enough hot water. When I have my one-night layover before returning to Seattle, that will probably be my lot. But not on next Saturday and Sunday--then I will be the barbarian at the gates.

Now if I can only manage to get the dried mud removed from the wheels of my suitcases...

Getting What I Need

Each morning when I take my shower I marvel at my good fortune in finding Ascension House. I stand in an honest-to-god shower stall, with a large spray nozzle, a (clean) curtain, and an infinite supply of hot water. I don't have to shower inches away from the toilet, which, I've discovered from online research, is common in many Hong Kong hostelries other than my old haunts in Chungking Mansions.

A room with a view is another amazing feature. As I look up from my keyboard, I see city lights glowing through breaks in the greenery. My usual Hong Kong view in the past was straight into someone else's window.

Best of all, this place has broadened my outlook and made me aware that flexibility is a crucial part of staying alive. Sharing a bathroom with strangers, sharing a pathway with monkeys, remembering "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Or as my very dear friend Sak used to tell me, "You don't have to look at this that way."

And that upward path is getting easier every week--who needs a hotel fitness center?

At the end of next week, I will drag my suitcases up to the place where I originally came in, ask someone to call me a taxi, and go off to Shatin's nicest hotel. But as I wallow in comfort for two nights, I know I will look up at the green hill that I've lived on for the past month and feel grateful that I was allowed to stay there.

Monkey Business

This morning I strolled down the hill looking at the sides of the trail carefully and brandishing my monkey stick (aka old mop handle found on the sde of the road after my first monkey encounter). Suddenly in front of me were many, many little baby monkeys and I froze. Where were their mothers?

It was as though I was staring at a monkey nursery. I banged my stick against the iron railing and they didn't seem to hear. They continued their leisurely meander down the cement path and when I looked behind me, there were more. Some men passed me on their way up the hill. "Monkeys," one of them smiled. He seemed very calm about the whole thing and certainly he and his companion had passed through the merry throng, unassailed by worried mothers.

I started to continue my descent, preceded by many little monkeys. "Git along little dogies," I muttered but then one of the babies stopped and regarded me with great curiosity, which was not what I wanted to see at all.

Suddenly a young man appeared behind me, smiling and unconcerned. "I'm afraid," I admitted and he said, "They won't hurt you." He beckoned to me to walk with him, past the large monkey that was sitting on the railing. "Ignore them and they will ignore you," he told me, "but if you seem aggressive, they will be the same way." So through the kindness of Ben, who has co-existed with Shatin's monkeys all of his life, I've entered the world of Monkey 101, but I still feel apprehensive about that climb home tonight. Such a coward at heart!

Above It All

I've been perplexed by Shatin. There's a gorgeous park that runs along the riverside, one of the best museums I've ever explored, and malls loaded with international brands. The food within the malls ranges from Starbucks to Italian and it is a splurge to eat it.

There had to be more and I felt frustrated that I didn't see it. But when I was on the bus to another town, I saw something that looked like a market and yesterday I headed in that direction.

It is much smaller than the one in Tai Po, but the chickens sold in Shatin are the freshest I've ever seen, as in cages of live poultry, and the fish flopped about on counters. I went up to the last floor, looking for cooked food. Instead I found a network of streets above the almost empty thoroughfares on the ground.

Open-air sky bridges link massive apartment buildings and shopping malls of the humblest kind. The bridges are lined with restaurants that aren't fancy but are probably good--I plan to find out in the next two weeks. The bridges rest above parks with towering trees, schoolyards, and traffic. They catch the breeze and are really delightful to walk on.

It's another facet of a place I'm slowly getting to know. Now if I could only find a clean hotel for business people of moderate means in the town center...The monkey I met on the trail last night is making me rethink the pleasures of a rural residence.

I'd Rather Have a Plague of Locusts

At first I thought it was prickly heat, the series of red bumps on my upper arm and near my stomach. On the next night I saw a gnat flying through my room and decided that was the culprit until I realized it probably couldn't bite through my clothes. But my cold was absorbing most of my attention and it's impossible for me to concentrate on more than one misery at a time. I blamed that, combined with jet lag, for my sudden awakenings in the middle of the night, when I was jolted into complete consciousness.

On the fourth night I sat on my bed in a paroxym of itching. I always check the mattress in any room I happen to be in and this one was clean, but when I climbed up for a view of the top bunk bed, it was covered with dirt. I went to find the newly-anointed managers of Ascension House and they discovered ants. I was given a new room that was much larger and apparently clean.

When I began to move my clothes, I saw a multitude of very small black beetles in the wardrobe of the room I was vacating so I left the garments where they were and put them all in the dryer the next morning. There seemed to be none in my new room and I slept sounder that night than I had in a week.

The managers found a nest of red ants in the room next to my old one, and quite a few in the room I'd formerly used. Spraying them with BioKill, they watched them die and we all felt happier. But I have to be grateful to the little devils--they gave me a bigger room, with much more light and a desk with a view. And their bites are beginning to fade away, so I think I'll stay at Ascension House.

The Bottle Overflows

The population of Hong Kong last year was figured at 7 million "usual residents," as opposed to "mobile residents." In July of this year, the number of visitors from mainland China, according to yesterday's SCMP, was 4.9 million for the month. This number is expected to dwindle to a mere 4 million visitors per month now that China's economy is cooling off a little.

That is, of course, a staggering number to someone who grew up in a state with a population that was far below a million people. It is even more staggering when I consider that more than half of the total population of all of Hong Kong (including Kowloon and the New Territories) floods into this area every month.

It explains a lot, including why I no longer enjoy Hong Kong as I used to. There are just too many people in places I used to love--Nathan Road, the Star Ferry, the core of Hong Kong Island, the train that travels between Kowloon and the Chinese border. Most of them have a wheeled suitcase to transport goods back over the border, which makes the crowding even more problematic.

When I first visited Hong Kong, almost seven years ago, it was far from underpopulated but it was navigable. Now it's a claustrophobe's nightmare and a shopping frenzy the likes of which I have never seen anywhere--and I am a survivor of Bangkok's Chatuchak Market. This is changing parts of the city that used to make me want to come and wander--luggage stores and currency exchanges are crowding out noodle shops near Nathan Road and fabric shops in Chungking Mansions. It makes me think of the disappearing grasslands in Wolf Totem and I realize this may be my last visit to Hong Kong.

Sweating in Shatin

                               
By the time I made it to the top of my hill today, sweat was rolling down my face, along with any cold germs that might think they're settling in, I hoped. I had a bag filled with essentials: bananas, a bottle of laundry detergent, a book, and four rolls of toilet paper, so I blame the moisture on heavy-hands exercise. When I finally leave Ascension House, I will be in fabulous physical condition, or at least better than I was when I came. It's such a pretty walk that I always look forward to it, through glades, past ravines, often in the company of butterflies. And at the top is a house where I can collapse in peace, on a little sofa, staring at small, dramatic almost-mountains. Nice, very nice. In previous trips to Hong Kong, I kept away from where I was staying for as long as I possibly could. Chungking Mansions was interesting in those days but it sure as hell wasn't a place to relax. I'd walk and explore until I could go no further, hoping exhaustion would soften the rather depressing ugliness of my Kowloon home. I went back to that neighborhood today because I wanted noodles from a hole-in-the-wall on Lock Road. It is gone, replaced by a shop that sells suitcases, an item beloved by many mainland Chinese who find they make dandy shopping carts. To ease the pain of its departure, I went to another favorite spot nearby, Swindon's bookstore. It now sells coloring books for adults and all of the Fifty Shades of Grey because that's what people want, a young clerk told me. Goodbye, Tsim Sha Tsui. I may never go back.
                         

Subsistence Living

              

My room at Ascension House isn't much larger than ones I've had at Chungking Mansions, but there's at least one crucial difference. I don't have to make my morning coffee two inches away from my bed. Here there's a kitchen, which I share with five pairs of shoes and an occasional sleepy Indonesian face passing through to use the bathroom. I don't drink that first cup of coffee on my bed either. I go out on the porch, sit on a white plastic chair, and listen to birds and crickets and the distant sound of a train that passes below the hill every once in a while.

When I'm alone in the house, I write at the kitchen table but now that I have company, I go to my room, turn on the air conditioner, and finish the last of my coffee. When I look up at my windows, all that I see are green leaves, and last night I came home to a baby gecko, frozen above my light switch. I'm glad to have this as my base for a few weeks, even though the smell of mildew is disconcerting. But when I open the windows, the same smell drifts in from outdoors, along with a strange hint of sour milk. The air conditioner is the only source of air without an odor.

Yesterday I roamed around Shatin for a while, discovering that its most commonly used thoroughfares are shopping malls, linked by skybridges. The mall that is connected to the subway and train system was as crowded as the Puyallup Fair, and possibly noisier. On the streets outside I've yet to find food that isn't franchised, so when my blood sugar went to absolute zero, I got on a train and went back to the area around Nathan Road. Sitting in a small congee joint, I ate comfort food and regained a decent world view again. This weekend, my goal is to find congee in Shatin that isn't in a shopping mall, and perhaps noodles too.