Hong Kong: Asia For Beginners

 "Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." -Chinese Proverb

Air Temp: 84 degrees

Humidity: 81%

Léih hóu (Hello in Cantonese, pronounced “lay hoe”)

I have officially been in Hong Kong for three days. It feels forever ago. Our plane settled on the ground at the Chek Lap Kok Hong Kong International Airport a little after 1800pm on Sept 4th. I have to be honest and say that the mystery of the Hong Kong landing strip is no longer true. I had heard thru the grape vine that landing in Hong Kong was a night mare of an experience because the pilots had to careen thru various sky scrapers to set the planes down on the landing strip. Alas, that is no longer the case. Since 1998, the airport was rebuilt at Chek Lap Kok, allowing for pilots to land their planes with an ample landing strip. 

 I departed the plane unsure as to what I would face on the other side of that door. There was no turning back. Similar to my flight to Antarctica last fall, this was a sealed deal. I was here until December 5^th. The only way I would be boarding a return flight earlier than what was scheduled would either be due to a death or serious illness in the family. 

Thankfully, as the Lonely Planet guide book promised, the Hong Kong International airport was ridiculously easy to get around. Everything was in English and there was airport personnel stationed in strategic locations to point you in the correct direction if you needed. It was service with a smile. Everyone smiled at you. So I smiled back. 

I made it thru customs without a glitch, my passport stamped with a 90 day visitor visa. No questions asked. The man simply held my passport up and stared at my face for about a minute and then stamped it with a solid smack of finality. As if to say, you’re here to stay. 90 days. My backpack was awaiting me at the luggage carousal and finally it was time to make my one phone call. 

In the packet of information Dragonfly had sent me, I had been informed to look for the white phone on the wall after getting my luggage. The white phone was a courtesy phone and would allow me a free call to the staff housing so I could alert someone of my arrival. I spotted the white phone and made my call. I was greeted by a soft spoken man named Brandon who informed me that I would get on the blue Lantaou Taxi to be taken to Mui Wo (pronounced Moy Whoa) and be dropped at the Mui Wo Wet Market. Someone would meet me there and walk me to the staff flat where we would stay for the first few days of training. Initially the directions had been to be dropped at the Mui Wo McDonalds. Reading those directions reared my unruly imagination and had me fearing I was a part of some Hong Kong drug heist.

Get in the blue taxi, don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Look for the McDonalds on the street corner. If you don’t have 55,000 in Hong Kong dollars we’ll take your first born child. 

Yes, these are the things that sometimes go thru my mind. 

But, finally touching base with someone on the phone who directed me to a specific location, made it real. I was in Hong Kong and yes, there was indeed a company here called Dragonfly Outdoors.  I would soon get my first glimpse of Hong Kong. 

China. 

Asia. 

I walked out of the airport and was nearly knocked over by the heaviness of Hong Kong’s oxygen. It was heavy, hot, and dripping near 100% humidity. It was stifling. I wasn’t prepared for that first inhalation of Hong Kong and it definitely caught me off guard. I cringed at the thickness of it. What was that smell? That taste? Hong Kong is known for its air pollution. They weren’t joking. I was no longer being spoiled by the purity of Alaskan air. In Antarctica it had been 100% zero humidity, I was facing the near total opposite. My body’s system has been in complete shock over the last three days as I remember what it is like to function in sweltering heat. 

Once my lungs and breathing pattern had stabilized and become accustomed to the thickness of the air, I easily found the appropriate blue taxi that I needed to take. There are three types of taxis in Hong Kong, red, green, and blue. The red taxi is considered the “urban” taxi and will operate in most areas of Hong Kong. The green taxi is the “New Territories” taxi and mainly operates in the north-eastern and north-western parts of Hong Kong. The blue taxi is the Lantau Taxi and only operates on Lantau, one of the islands that makes up Hong Kong. 

I hopped in, stated where I need to go and we were off. I hadn’t even really thought about it, but I was slightly surprised that in Hong Kong you drove on the left as they had in New Zealand. Then it made sense because Hong Kong had once been under Britain rule as had New Zealand. We wheeled out of the airport and I was afforded my first glimpse of Hong Kong. 

I was not disappointed. 

Where the airport is located is away from the main “downtown” district of Hong Kong. The Hong Kong we all hear about back in the states. So I have yet to get a glimpse of that Hong Kong. Where I was, there were still a few sky scrapers, but it was not as densely populated. As we drove by I found myself staring at these tall buildings, a little dumbfounded. They just didn’t look real. They stood higher than anything else, lit up like Christmas trees in the quickly falling dusk, surrounded by palm trees. 

They didn’t look real, yet they were pretty in their own way and they had caught my curiosity. We sped away and I quickly found myself peering out into the darkness at narrow, winding roads as the taxi driver careened toward Mui Wo. It was a short twenty-thirty minute taxi ride to the Mui Wo Wet Market that cost me $136 in Hong Kong dollars which breaks down to roughly $17 U.S. dollars. 

The red star marks where I was dropped to start staff training

 I hopped out of the taxi and found myself standing on the street corner of a tiny little market like no other market I had ever seen. It was nearing 20:00pm at this point and the market had shut down for the evening, but I was intrigued by what I did see. Red Chinese lanterns dangled from the ceiling, the smell of fresh fish and sea food still wafted in the air. I later learned that a wet market means a market where you can find fresh fish and other ocean dwelling creatures that they will kill and cut up right there for you right along with fresh veggies and fresh fruit.  I stood on the street corner looking around. I had no idea where the staff member that was supposed to meet me would come from and I had no idea who it was going to be. I didn’t know where my friend Turk-A-Lurk was located at in Hong Kong. We had exchanged a few emails, but he hadn’t known if he would be able to meet me when I flew in. So I had no idea when I would see him. 

So I stood there, sweating profusely as I waited. I took in the sounds around me. I listened to the pitter patter of a few lasting rain drops from the sudden torrential downpour that had hit as we drove from the airport to Mui Wo, the sounds of the locals chatting in Cantonese as they rode by on their bikes, dinging their bells as they passed pedestrians on the street. I took in the smell of feral cattle standing a block away, chewing their cud, swishing their tails to stir a little breeze in the thick air. I watched the wild dogs wandering down the empty street corner looking for an easy meal in the trash bins sitting along the edge of the cobbled street. 

I was in Hong Kong, yet I wasn’t in downtown Hong Kong. I was in a small village on one of the neighboring islands making up Hong Kong. I hadn’t even set foot on the actual island of Hong Kong. I was getting to witness village life in Hong Kong and it was fascinating with just what little I could see standing there in the dark. 

I was dumbfounded over the fact that I had easily arrived in Hong Kong without a single glitch. It had been so easy, too easy. But there I was. 

Adventure commence.

Asia Bound

 “Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.” -L. Frank Baum

The last week and a half has been a whirlwind. Guiding, packing, cleaning, guiding, packing, cleaning, that has been my mantra. My last day of work was today and now here I sit in the Anchorage airport about to catch my first flight to Hong Kong. I left Seward a mere four hours earlier, but it already feels like forever ago. It’s all a blur. I dragged my feet for the last two weeks knowing that this day would soon arrive. I didn’t want to leave. I love Seward. I love this beautiful state Alaska. I love the kayak family I just said good-bye to. After three seasons of guiding there, I was brought to tears as I signed my end of season evaluation because of all the memories I was leaving behind me. It had been a good season. It had handed me a few ups and downs, but overall, amazing. It’s hard to walk away from all that and that’s not normally something I struggle with.

I arrive in Hong Kong on Sept 4^th at 6:50pm Hong Kong time and I start work at 08:00am Sept 5^th. I have sixteen hours of sitting on a plane to get my game face in order. Sixteen hours to put behind me four months of kayak guiding and to prepare for the experience of teaching ex-patriot children outdoor education in Hong Kong.  

Am I ready for this? I didn’t quite think I would find myself asking this question, but here I am asking it. I have no idea. For the past week as I have frantically guided, packed, cleaned, guided, packed, and cleaned many have asked: “Are you excited??” When I simply stared at them with a blank face because that was the only response I could muster, they just said, “Well, I’m excited for you!” 

Excited, yes, overwhelmed, yes, nervous, YES!!

I am about to set down into the epicenter of one of the largest cities in the world. This little country bumpkin of a novice world traveler is about to face some major culture shock in a mere few hours and the reality of that is just now hitting. 

The past year has been spent in some of the more remote locations a body could find. Four and a half months at the bottom of the world in Antarctica and four months at the top of the world in tiny Seward, AK with the majority of those four months spent with the simple peaceful crack and bang of a mile wide tide water glacier called Aialik. I have become a hermit.

McMurdo Station had a population of 1,100 people this past fall when I was down there. Seward, AK boasts a healthy 6,000 on a good day during the busy summer season. 6,000 versus 7 million people, I can feel my eyes crossing as I sit here on the floor in the Anchorage airport writing this staring at these numbers.

My customary excitement for the adventure and the unknown has abandoned me for once. I felt like I was on top of the world when it came to traveling to Antarctica. Eager, excited…ready…but not terrified. Not once was I terrified. 

I will openly admit I am terrified right now.  That’s not easy to say. I don’t feel ready for this venture and that is not exactly how I like to start a new journey. My thoughts are scattered, my belongings are scattered between here and the bottom of the world and now will soon be across the Pacific. I am still sans work visa for Hong Kong and I am not sure what that will mean when I go thru customs in Hong Kong. I am leaving 40 degree weather and about to drop into hot and humid sub tropical 80 degree weather. I have been living in an arctic climate since 2009. I own one tank top which I haven’t worn in years and one pair of shorts which also have barely seen the outside of my dresser drawer since moving to Alaska. I broke down and bought “summery clothing” but I am still concerned that I haven’t quite shaken off the cobwebs that living in Alaska’s cold environment has created. I have completely forgotten how to function in a warm climate. This was one of the questions in the job interview: how would I handle a warm climate after living in a cold climate for so long? I shrugged it off and said no big deal man! I used to live in the barren Sonoran Desert, heat and sweat is like an old friend, an old friend that has now forgotten that we once had something we called friendship.

All of this is not exactly how I had expected it to pan out as the summer season in Alaska wrapped up and I prepared myself for Hong Kong. I had hoped to have a little more time to just sit and decompress after a busy season here in the field and to mentally prepare myself for this adventure. That didn’t happen, so this is me decompressing at high speed.

My age is catching up to me and I do not like this revelation. I might look like a baby faced twenty-one year old, but the two white hairs I found in the last week are screaming something different at me full force. Two white hairs in one week?! Where did they come from? Not grey, but white…we skipped the middle ground and went straight for the end result of what we call: old age. No offense anyone, but that is just how I see it.

A few years back I could do this lightening speed transition from one thing to the next without a second’s hesitation.  I used to come straight out of the field from one contract job, take a shower, throw all my belongings into a backpack and catch the next flight for the next contract job with a different organization and go right into the field the next day and be out there for weeks on end to only come out and do it all over again. It never used to faze me. The stumbling transition that I have been faced with as I prep for Hong Kong is evidence that I am slowing down. My body is trying to tell me something that my brain and need for wanderlust are ignoring. I need to slow down, but how do I do that? I don’t know how…

On the other hand of things, I am sitting here mentally convincing myself that it is good for me to be a little impulsive. I mean, making the decision to go somewhere to work or to travel has always been spontaneous for me, anyone that knows me can attest to that. But the planning that has entailed after that impromptu decision has been anything but unplanned. That has always been thoroughly thought out and developed so I knew exactly where I was headed and what I was doing. This time around the control is not exactly there and that is what I don’t like about it. I have a plane ticket and the journey is half way over, but I do not know much beyond that. I do not know how many people I am working with. I do not know where I will be located in Hong Kong since it is comprised of several different islands. I do not know who my supervisor will be or what age group I will be working with. I do not even know the exact details of my job description. There has been little information provided. All I know is that I was hired as a Senior Instructor with the possibility of becoming a Program Coordinator and that is why I need to be in Hong Kong by Sept 5^th.

I am sitting here processing this and I am telling myself that I just need to sit back and let it all fall together. Let go of the control and see where it takes me. I took the train from Seward into Anchorage and ended up catching a cab with another individual who also needed to get to the airport so we agreed to split the cab fare. We settled into the cab and the young man sitting next to me asked me where I was flying. I said, “Hong Kong.” “Oh, wow,” was his response. I kind of laughed and just said, “Yeah…” I returned the small talk and his response was, “Bahrain.” “Oh, wow,” I said, echoing his own sentiments. Sitting in this cab were two individuals flying to extreme different locations of the world for very different reasons; I to Asia to teach children to be comfortable with sitting on the ground in the dirt and calling it outdoor education, he to Bahrain to serve a term of duty for our country. We rode the rest of the way to the airport in silence and when the cab pulled up the kid said, “I’ve got the cab fare.” I shook my head. “No, no…I can split it.” “Nah…I got it. It’s on me. I’m on government per diem and it’s just going to get reimbursed to me. I got it. Have a great flight.”

I sat there for a second staring at this kid. I finally smiled and nodded. “Thanks. That just made my night. Safe travels.” 

Sometimes you just gotta relinquish the control and let something happen. 

So Hong Kong, I’m relinquishing the control. I am nervous and intimidated by the massiveness that you present as a major world city, but I am entrusting my care into your loving arms. Please be kind to me as I attempt to get my wilderness savvy feet beneath me to explore your concrete urban jungle.

I Bid You Adieu Antarctica and Léih hóu Hong Kong

“Only dead fish swim with the sea.”  -German Proverb

Current Weather:

 56 degrees/Partly Cloudy

Wind N 13mph/Gusting 21 mph

62% humidity/43% dew point

10.0 mi visibility/29.75 in pressure and rising

It’s that time again, time to make a move. Summer is nearly over; my feet are beginning to itch for new territory, my eyes often intent on the far off distant horizon.  And move I shall. In just a mere ten days I will be boarding a flight in Anchorage, AK and some sixteen hours later I’ll be landing in downtown Hong Kong.  

Asia. Antarctica…eh, they both start with an “A”. It’s the same, right? Not…exactly. 

This blog, once known as “Antarctic Driven,” has taken a back seat since returning stateside in mid-March and much has occurred since that day I landed in the L.A. airport from Christchurch, NZ. I traveled, visited with friends and family, and remembered what it was like to live in a country that had variety. Antarctica had/has variety, but in the form of human variety, stateside has ecosystems. And well, I gloried in these ecosystems once I was back. I made my way back and forth across the US a few times, and eventually landed back in Seward, AK in early April to start my third season kayak guiding.

For a month or so, it was easy to forget Antarctica ever happened. It was surreal the day I left McMurdo in February and in some ways it is still surreal. It has been six months to the day that I left Antarctica and the first flight bringing fresh and new faces just arrived yesterday on the ice to start the beginning of another summer season down there.  The winter-overs will be relieved from their duties and will board a plane to a warmer climate after six months of dark isolation from the rest of the world.  A person who winter-overs in Antarctica should be classified as the official definition of “bad ass,” that is my vote anyhow. 

Seeing posts on the social network, face book, made by friends as they prep for their arrival to the ice has allowed for the reality of life in Antarctica to return to my awareness. Life does exist down there at the bottom of the world. I can attest to that first hand. Many friends are returning, but I am not. A myriad of feelings overwhelm me as I sit here in Alaska prepping for the next venture in my life. I find myself nostalgic for that life I left behind in Antarctica. My senses are sometimes still overwhelmed by the phantom essence of diesel fumes from the Deltas and the jarring, yet soothing sway of their behemoth mass lumbering down the Ice Runway. My skin sometimes longs for the biting lick of that Antarctic breeze. My eyes continue to search for that endless expanse of white ice that I was surrounded by for four and a half months, the surrealness of seeing penguins. 

It has been an amazing experience to be working in Seward, AK and to look out on the street from our kayak shop and smile as I occasionally see someone walking down the street who worked at McMurdo or at the South Pole. It is a big world, but it is small in the scheme of things. There was nothing more exciting than to be out guiding a multi-day trip in the fjords and hear someone shout “Shuttle Fran!” from the water taxi. To turn around and see my neighbor from McMurdo walking toward me waving their hands like crazy on the beach out in Aialik Bay, one of the remote fjords of the Kenai Fjords National Park. Yes, that happened this summer, several times. It is a small community that have worked in Antarctica, but for some reason many of them reside in Alaska because it works well with the seasons. They call these people “bi-polar.” I have been working in Seward for three summers and after one season in Antarctica; the number of people I know in this small town has tripled because of our connection to that icy continent. Many of them I didn’t know well, but we have one thing in common that seem to make us instant friends here in Alaska. We had all been to Antarctica together and we knew that the other would understand what we were talking about when we mentioned “the ice.” 

I left the ice in February knowing I was not finished with that continent and I still carry that feeling with me. But life takes us in different directions for a reason. For some reason, my path is supposed to veer toward warmer climes this time around or at least for the time being. If I am supposed to return to that icy, yet heartwarming continent, it will happen when it is supposed to happen. 

New Contractors operating the United States Antarctic Program resulted in cut positions which resulted in many of us being put on the alternate list, myself included. But that didn’t mean the adventure had to stop, the world is a giant globe and there is much to see. I am like a hound on a scent trail…this scent trail being sweet, pure, adventure; I always manage to seek it out somehow, somewhere. I promised myself last spring on my long drive up to Alaska from Minnesota that I would do something epic every year for the rest of my life. I was determined to stay true to that promise. 

Antarctica had been a good way to introduce that tradition. Antarctica had given me a taste for international travel but had also left me thirsting for more. If I couldn’t make it back down to Antarctica to travel afterward, I knew that I at least had to get somewhere international somehow, some way.  That was the only goal I had.

Therefore, Hong Kong is this season’s Antarctica.  So, why Hong Kong you might ask?

A good and dear friend of mine who is known by many in the Seward community as Turkey, Turk-A-Lurk, Turkey Tetrazzini, (yes, we will keep his identity to one of these handles) used to guide here at Kayak Adventures Worldwide and was drawn to Hong Kong last fall to teach outdoor education with this outdoor company called Dragonfly Outdoors. 

Turk-A-Lurk (the name I have decided to stick with for the duration of this blog entry) is like the brother I have always wished to have. I look up to him, I respect him, he is a great co-worker, and dear friend, I poke fun at him every chance I get, and vice versa, he returns the favor every opportunity he gets as well. He loved his experience in Hong Kong so much he decided to sign on for an entire year after his fall/winter contract was up. While in Antarctica we had maintained correspondence and I knew that his company hired for all of fall and some of winter. It seemed like a good fit since it would allow me to return to the world of outdoor education and it would allow me to travel and see more of the world since Antarctica had to be put on the back burner. 

The Turk-A-Lurk

So after some extensive grilling on Turk-A-Lurk as to the functioning of this company he worked for, I decided to go for it. I had heard that it was most likely looking like I would be offered an alternate position for Antarctica so I knew that getting down there pretty much wasn’t an option any more.  The submittal of my application, job interview and acceptance of the position with Dragonfly all occurred in the last month. All quite recently and needless to say, it has been a bit of a whirlwind. I was offered a position as a Senior Instructor with the possibility of being a Program Coordinator with Dragonfly Outdoors. A week after accepting the position I had to get all my paperwork in to get the ball rolling to obtain the Hong Kong work visa. In the midst of all that, I was guiding multi-day sea kayak trips here in Alaska as well as having to purchase a round trip ticket to Hong Kong that same week. A little bit stressful. But all managed some way or another.

So here I sit, a round trip ticket to Hong Kong purchased, and a work visa still MIA, but not the biggest deal. Apparently I can receive it once I arrive in Hong Kong. Only ten days until I land in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, a wee bit of an intimidating concept for me right now. Hong Kong has a population of seven million people. I don’t even know how to conceptualize that. Hong Kong is a tiny little island off the mainland of China. It is a mere dot in the mass we call Asia. 

That red star indicates the size of Hong Kong in the mass of Asia

Seven million people here??

Seven million people live on that island??? I have one question: Where do they put them all? I will soon find out. 

I’ll be honest, I know very little of Asia as a whole or of Hong Kong as a mere entity of this continent. This is me going in blind. 

Welcome to the “La Aventura Escrita.” Translation: “The Written Adventure.” 

Happy reading.