I give you… Hong Kong.
You couldn’t tell from the weather on the day I left Seattle, which was sunny and inching toward 70 degrees over brilliantly red and orange trees and the wafting scent of pumpkin spice (pumped out by the metric ton by each of the several hundred Starbucks stores in the city this time of year), but it’s that time again: I hopped on a train to Vancouver and then onto a plane to Taipei and found myself, twenty-some hours later, sitting in a Starbucks (I just can’t quit ’em) in Hong Kong… where it’s raining.
So much for my plan to avoid the rains of the Pacific Northwest by jetting off to Southeast Asia for the winter again.
It’s a pretty pleasant rain, as far as it goes, though… it’s in the mid-70s here but not through-the-roof humid. It just feels like a regular ol’ Seattle summer rainstorm, apart from the street being covered with umbrellas and me being the only white guy in sight.
They even got the mocha right.
I’m in a fairly good mood because I had a good flight. Maybe the best trans-Pacific flight I’ve ever had, although I would never have guessed it was going to turn out that way at the beginning.
I woke up the morning of my departure feeling nauseous and light-headed. I didn’t know if I had eaten something that disagreed with me, or if it was prelude to the flu, or if something more nefarious was going on. I sure wasn’t looking forward to getting onto a bumpy 777 ride for twelve hours feeling like that, though. It ebbed and flowed through the day before I boarded the flight (at 2 a.m., in Vancouver… another strike).
And I hadn’t been able to get a good seat reserved when I booked, either. For a fairly full flight, mostly what was left was middle seats in three-seat blocks, a recipe for a terrible twelve hours in the air. The flight was with EVA, and since it was going to Taipei, the odds were good my seat mates would be ethnically Chinese, and therefore somewhat smaller than the average American. Still, it’s no fun being the big guy wedged in the middle.
But I checked one last time before check-in, and lo, a window seat had opened up. Seat Guru rated it poorly; it was at the end of a section, up against the heads, and they suggested that reclining would be limited and the incessant bathroom traffic annoying.
I don’t usually recline my seat even when I can, though, if anyone is behind me (and they always are on a full flight) on the general principle that I would prefer the person in front of me not to do so. So non-reclinability was a wash, and I was willing to put up with the bathroom traffic in order to not be in the middle.
In the event, the seat reclined further than I was used to, and my seat mates were two small and elderly Taiwanese, so I had the most comfortable accommodation I have experienced so far. Which meant I actually got some decent sleep this year. By the time I woke up for breakfast over Pusan, I was feeling pretty good again.
It’s a short hop to Hong Kong from Taipei and there were no glitches in the transfer. I got on the right bus to get to my hotel’s neighborhood in Kowloon, and got off at the right stop, and when the rain started I ducked into local restaurant and had some pretty decent BBQ pork and rice. I’d been craving noodles all day, but the rain seemed an omen and the restaurant was right there.
So far the food is not up to Bangkok standards, but it’s less expensive than I was led to believe and the portions are much closer to what you’d get in a Western restaurant.
There’s sort of a mythology that has built up around eating Asian food in local restaurants or at street vendors touting the authenticity and exotic flavor of the experience that I find overblown. It’s true that it’s often delicious, but the “authenticity” is hogwash: if you eat at a real local place, you basically get the same kind of stuff I would cook up as a starving college student in Seattle. A case in point is Sun Kee Cheesy Noodles in Tsim She Tsui.
The place is the epitome of the local hole-in-the wall restaurant, but it’s apparently pretty famous… pictures of local celebrities eating cheesy noodles plaster the walls inside.
But the stuff is just Top Ramen with Cheez Whiz and some sausages tossed in, with a poached egg on top if you’re in the mood for it. It’s great, I love that kind of thing, but it’s basically lazy bachelor style cuisine.
I get one night to appreciate that sort of thing and shake off my jet lag, then Monica flies in from Bangkok and there will be sights to be seen. Pictures to follow.