Wednesday, June 27, 2007

the pearl of the orient

so for some mother-daughter bonding time, me and mum went to Hong Kong, the pearl of the orient (was it really called that? i remembered learning this in primary school...) for some h serious girl downtime namely shopping and eating, two of the things that are certified aphrodisiacs. but i digress...

and the VERY first thing that i noticed when i touched down was HK people do everything in excess, most expecially length or height wise. check out the above picture and just look at how many towering buildings HK city has!! each building including flats are at least a devastating scary 30 storeys high!! i counted!! and the buses there are also stretched out in height wise, all of them are double deckers!! how cool is that?? it's like their country motto "Height is gooood!!"

and the city area was crazy chocked full of people and cars, like good ole Malaysia or Singapore. but somehow, it felt steamier in HK. i was perpetually swathed in a sheen of sweat and goodness knows how many baths i had in just one day. and the shopping was not so bad but the freaking travel bouchure forget to mention that by "a shopping paradise", it meant that HK is good for travellers with a good sizeable amount of dough!! sure, the streets were full of every brand name imaginable. Paris Hilton would be in heaven there. Gucci, Prada, Guess, Ferragamo and French brands i can barely pronounce, let alone spell. heck, i am a girl that appreciates brands and the money and human effort gone into producing a handmade calfskin Chloe bag with 24k gold plates but i think i would be able to appreciate it more and stop gawking at the windows and actually go in and buy something from the smugly-attired sales person in there with perfect straight white teeth.

but that isn't to say that i didn't have fun on the trip. hey, i don't go for shopping when i travel man! i did go all the way to Victoria's Peak and went for the HK's Madame Tussaud's Wax Musuem. and boy, was that fun! and here are the pics to show that.

oooh, everyone's favourite villain that.. Hitler...

Rembrandt and me. was quite surprised to see this great European artist in the HK wax Musuem
Pablo Picasso, the very master himself in the...err, wax.... he looked incredibly lifelike Albert Einstein and his famous groundbreaking formulae...ooh just love his white shock-like hair
the iconic Miss Marilyn Monroe and the legendary airvent scene. and on my side, the wind was blowing up too and my skirt almost flew up. thank goodness though....
was hoping that i could be the girl silhoette in the background but it was not meant to be, Mr Bond...

my fave action hero of all time, Indiana Jones. i'm in love with Temple of Doom!! but in this, he just looks disporpotionate!!oooh, i just absolutely love his brooding looks... yums...
Wacko Jacko pre-baby-dangling-and-child-molestation... why oh why did you do the skin grafting, Mr Jackson??!!and this was on the Avenue of Stars, HK version of Hollywood Walk of Fame. i don't watch many HK movies, so Stephan Chow's star was the only one i took picture with...

and now the complaints and gripes that i had on this trip. no trip is ever perfect with a few whines and complaints here and there. and the major gripe i have is that the HK people haven't been exactly educated on manners. but i do like to stress that these are the people that i met in the city and not the HK friends that i have in trinity or in Melb Uni. heck, my HK friends are sooo much nicer that when i went to HK, i was utterly shocked at the sometimes-uncivilised behaviors of the people there. the taxi drivers that i met were uber rude in their words to their countrymen and even to us tourists and they were also money-hungry. maybe it was the fact that we are tourists, but we are Chinese tourists hailing from the lands of Malaysia and not white and posh Brit-speaking. but oh well, even though so, it sort of made the trip less enjoyable especially for me, a non-Canto speaking Chinese. i would just be standing there smiling dumbly while the hawker might be cursing my family in Canto to my ignorance.

so i have decided to MASTER Canto and learn to curse in Canto in 7 different ways before i go back to Hong Kong, the pearl of the Orient.

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