Hong Kong is crazy. It's a big city, lots of people, and with none of the usual sign restrictions you might be used to; signs are hanging over you anywhere in the road, blocking each other, fighting to be seen. Most of them are neon, so this goes on all through the night.
I settled in at a guesthouse in Mirador Arcade, one of the big building complexes on the south end of Nathan Road (the Golden Mile, though I didn't hear anybody call it that). You may also have heard of Chungking Mansion; Nicki had, in terms of "don't walk around there at night". Mirador is basically next door.
Giddy with the excitement of a new country, and wanting some quieter space to myself on accout of a blossoming ear infection, I got a private room with my own bathroom (well, shower, no bath), where all the fixtures fit into, I'm not kidding, a square metre of floor space (I mean wall to wall, not excluding the toilet for example).
Wandering around, especially in this area, is an exercise is dodging touts and other solicitations. These are only a select few types. The dominant group would be those trying to get you into a tailors shop, of which there are a very many. Around Chungking at around dinnertime, you may be swarmed with brochures and membership cards to any number of Indian restaurants. At any time of day, there are men who will quietly (not too quietly, though) ask if you are interested in a watch; some say "watch?", some "Rolex?" and some the more straightforward "fake watch?". You will, so I am told by the vendors themselves, be assured of a good price on any of these items. My strategy next time will be either to wear a shirt proclaiming "NO TAILOR. NO WATCH. NO FOOD. Thank you." or the more provocative "I have SARS."
Last, but surely not least, as I learned on the first night (I forgot to change my clock from Thailand, so I was unknowingly out after 11pm looking for a snack), are a number of ladies of the evening, dressed for the most part in what I thought were pretty normal clothing (as opposed to, say, Their North American counterparts in such a section of town), which is what threw me off at first (my train of thought being, hey, that was a friendly person saying hi, oh hey, another one . . . and they are women . . . standing around . . . and it's kind of late . . . oh, ok, got it). Hey, give me a break, I'd had an early start in Bangkok that morning. Somehow I found my way to a food stand that sold me a skewer of tasty friend squid, a filling dinner on my reduced appetite.
Speaking of poor judgement, I was sucked in by one of the tailor shops. I had some pretty decent clothes made at reasonable (though I suspect, by HK standards, somewhat extortionate) prices. I blame my aquiescence at least in part on the drugs I was taking; I'd found a doctor by now for my feels-like-the-side-of-my-face-is-exploding ear infection.
I spent a lot of time in bed during the week, feeling a bit out of it courtesy of the pain killers. I certainly settled in early for the night, but my closet/room did have a tv. I caught up a bit on news and saw a particularly chilling British documentary on North Korea.
The tasks I did accomplish involved my impending trip to China. The plan was to get a visa and some kind of transportation up North, and that's just what I did. The PRC was kind enough to grant me a 30-day visa after a couple of days of taking care of my passport for me, and Nicki's friendly travel agent was able to dig up a pretty cheap flight to Beijing for the weekend.