Who Knew?

There are no foreign lands.  It is the traveler only who is foreign. - Robert Louis Stevenson

I tried to write the last two evenings, and my body completely shut down with exhaustion before I could get a paragraph down.  It's wonderful.

Before noon today, I had already taken care of two errands at SCAD; written 3 postcards, bought stamps and mailed them; tootled around Sham Shui Po's fashion district, where I bought a top for about three U.S. dollars; and discovered a fantastic bakery within walking distance from SCAD, where I had brunch for about one U.S. dollar.  We all have jet lag such that we naturally wake up at 6:30 in the morning, wide awake, which promotes early morning productivity.

This weekend was filled with spontaneous adventure, cultural lessons learned, and the beginnings of some really cool relationships.  On Saturday, a friend and I spent the day in Macau — another SAR, so technically part of China but basically independent — where we came across everything from ancient ruins to a dragon dance performance to delicious egg custard tarts.  After an hour-long ferry ride across the South China Sea, we began wandering the peninsula past an absurd number of casinos when we finally whipped out the Macau guide books and — gasp! — looked at a map.  It was then that we realized how distorted our senses of geographic scale are after living in the States.  We were covering ground faster than we could keep up with on a map and were dumbfounded when we realized that we had nearly reached the other side of the peninsula before we figured out where we were.  Once we got past the casinos and trotted down Avenida do Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues until we reached civilization (which, to us, meant street food), we found an old fortress (Monte Fort) and the gorgeous facade of what was once the Church of St. Paul.

Ruins of the Church of St. Paul

Just as we were headed to see a temple up the hill, we heard a drum show begin and ran down to catch a dragon dance going on right in front of the facade!  I wasn't expecting to see this at all while I was here, and I was thrilled to be up front, video recording the whole thing.

Dragon dance in Macau

On Rua de São Paulo, we had bubble tea and a Portuguese lunch of delicious pork sandwiches and egg custard tarts called pastéis de nata.  We took a different route back to the ferry and somehow ended up on the top of a hill, where the only way down was to take the cable cars down to where we'd been fifteen minutes before.  To our delight, it costs about twenty-five cents to ride the cable cars, and we finished our long day with a gorgeous aerial view of Macau.

Click here to see photos from Macau.

• • •

Yesterday, on my way to lunch near my flat, I discovered an artists' market filled with pastry-themed trinkets, genuine leather and ivory products, jewelry, and the tiniest, most intricate doll house accessories I've ever seen in my life:

The size of a small matchbox, this tea set was among furniture, shoes, chandeliers, pastry cabinets, and telephones.

I bought a ring and a necklace and left to catch the SCAD shuttle, where there were two other students, one of whom I had met at orientation, and the other whom I had not met, but turned out to be one of the girls in the apartment I was originally assigned before they switched me to a higher floor in a different building.  I had originally planned to spend the afternoon window-shopping in the IFC mall, which contains a two-story Apple store and dozens of couture designer brands, but Augusta, my could-have-been roommate, was headed to a stationery store and the fashion district, which suddenly seemed like a much better idea.  The three of us resolved to conquer Sham Shui Po together, and we spent the afternoon shopping, drinking bubble tea, and having dinner at a Pizza Hut that puts America to shame.

Breadsticks? Please. Try the bruschetta topped with tuna and mozzarella.

It took me ages to scan the menu of fruity drinks, tropical salads, bread-bowl soups, bruschetta, seafood pasta, and yes, pizza.  I finally ordered a dish of premium seafood on rice, covered in a white cheese sauce.  It was fantastic and at least half as expensive as it would have been in the States.

Hello, squid.

Click here to see more photos from the artists' market and Pizza Hut.

• • •

lessons learned  If everything's bigger in Texas, everything is definitely smaller in Hong Kong. • Peel off your visa, stick it in your passport, and have it stamped at Immigration, not Customs.  This was not apparent to those of us who had never traveled before. • It is considered an offense to talk to a bus driver while the vehicle is in motion. • Most of the shops in the fashion district sell wholesale; if you want to buy something, you can choose from the items in the sale bins at the front of the store. • When you get off the ferry at Macau, walk north, not south, unless you are in fact there to gamble. • Here, we use A4 paper with two holes, not letter-sized with three.  The Chinese find American printers to be a pain in the rear for this reason. • Paper weight is measured in grams here, not pounds. • If you have an all-in-one adapter/converter, make sure you're on the right setting when you use a hairdryer; however, if you do blow out the power, maintenance will take care of it right away. • Cab drivers don't necessarily know where the Gold Coast Hotel is; better take the 52X home.

Here's to finding out the hard way.

eb