So I spent a whole day in Hong Kong and now I’m on a train, heading to Guangzhou. There are so many things that are different here. Really, it’s just lots of little things. In general, everyone that I talked to had pretty good english, but I stayed at the Ritz where they better speak great English and when you go to tourist areas, they are bound to speak fairly good English. Although I kind of got the feeling that if I were to stop a person on the street, that I wouldn’t do terribly well with communicating.

When looking for food, I generally had two requirements. The menu had to have an English translation and the food couldn’t look like it was still alive or look like it came from a body part or animal that I wasn’t willing to eat. Amazingly, it was rather difficult to find places to eat that satisfied these requirements. Actually, I also wasn’t too keen on eating hot dogs or hamburgers in China either.

Perhaps the worst thing looking for a suitable chinese restaurant is the sign-age. I was in the mindset of ‘looking for chinese restaurant’. I would look down every street and there were chinese characters in neon everywhere. Of course there are, I’m in Hong Kong. But subconciously, I’ve trained from the US to assume that any neon chinese sign signifies a chinese restaurant. So, every two seconds, I had to remind myself that all of those shops were not restaurants.

There are small differences that take a few seconds to get used to. For example, when a sign says ‘Subway’ it only means that it is a walkway underneath the street so that you can cross the street. It never refers to the popular moving vehicle under the streets, known here as the MTR. I don’t think that Subway sandwiches could ever survive here (probably for different reasons than this). Recipts are known as “advice”. That’s not such a big deal, except it’s odd when the ATM tells you to ‘take your advice’.

Everyone lives in huge skyscrapers. It’s a lot like the buildings you see when you drive into New York city, except they are everywhere and they are the only buildings that you see. Taking the train, I’ve seen some empty farm land. Everthing else has been huge skyscrapers. And most don’t look very good. Some have been evicted because they are about to fall down. It’s no wonder that China has so many people in the same size country as the US with this housing system.

Perhaps no one else notices this, but there is construction everywhere in Hong Kong and the rest of China that I have so far seen. The thing that boggles my mind is the scaffolding that they use for this construction. There is no steel to be seen. All of the scaffolding is constructed from bamboo and rope ties to keep it in place. Amazingly, this isn’t just the ghetto 4 story buildings that use this. The 50+ story skyscrapers have bamboo scaffolding all the way up. It’s surreal seeing these brand-new, hi tech buildings go up with bamboo around them.

Answer your effing phone. Sorry. Everyone has really annoying ringtones and I think they just enjoy having them ring. Maybe I’m weird… I like to keep my cell phone on low or vibrate because I don’t want to annoy anyone. My cell phone happens to be one of the best parts of my trip. It’s off! It actually had roaming service in Hong Kong, but I can’t even imagine what it would cost to call the US. It’s nice to take two weeks off from it anyway. Everyone should try it!

The train ride is actually quite pleasant. Every one has been warning me that trains in China are not the same as ones in the US/Europe. In the case of this train, everyone is wrong. The only think odd is that this is supposed to be a ‘high speed train’ and I don’t think that we’ve exceeded 50mph. I guess everything is relative. I could also be wrong about my estimate. The drink service consisted of water and Orange Sunkist. Then the train guys come through the aisles trying to sell you snacks, stamps, etc. I actually never even thought of sending letters or postcards. Maybe I’ll do that from China, although I don’t expect that I will have time. Why not just read my (not really) daily updates to my blog to find out what I’m doing? Update: the train seems to be going much faster now.

Observations:

• If you want to be rich in this country, you should be a banker/financial analyst. I guess that’s true for other countries too.
• I don’t think there are many clothes dryers
• ‘The Rail Monthly’ magazine comes out every two months. It notes that it is “The Only Free Copy for Guangzhou Kowloon Through Train.’ I’m not sure what that means.