A couple of quick things. I think I said something about having to step up to the bathroom in Japan. I can’t remember if I mentioned that it’s been like that everywhere I’ve gone in Asia, to a greater or lesser degree. I have yet to find a bathroom without some kind of impedance when entering the bathroom. In my hotel it’s a marble sill about two inches high. Just high enough to catch your toe when you stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And send you stumbling head-first into the shower wall.
All the bathrooms have a drain in the floor in addition to the one in the shower. Not only do they not expect all the water to stay in the shower, most of the time they don’t even try to keep it there. In my current digs, the lip along the edge of the shower stall is lower than the one in the doorway! Which means there is a small lake on the bathroom floor when I get out of the shower. If I don’t keep the mat far enough away from the shower, it’s soaked by the time I get out. The bathroom floor in my hotel room doesn’t slope toward the drain in all places. One area slopes toward the rear of the toilet. I have taken to using the bottom of the trash can as a sort of squeegee to scrape the water toward the drain when I get out of the shower to help drain the swamp. Oh, and lest I forget again, Asian beds are basically rocks with sheets. There is no “give” whatsoever. I’m just thankful that they have normal pillows instead of the actual stone or wood “pillows” that they used to use.
The other thing that is oh-so-common here are shops that sell everything your dearly departed family members need in the afterlife. It is a firm part of their belief system (we’re talking about non-Christians here, which covers the majority) that if you don’t provide properly for you dead relatives, they will haunt you. Not only haunt you, but make bad things happen. You want to get audited by the IRS? (or their version thereof), don’t send granny that beemer she always wanted before she died.
So, how do you get it to her? You go the the afterlife store (They don’t actually call it that). You can buy anything you can think of there, all very inexpensively, because it’s all made out of paper. Suit and tie? Check. Rolex? Check. Big fancy house complete with butler and maid and the BMW in the driveway? Check. The house will fold out like a doll house and everything those in the next life need to live there is already printed on the walls. Should the appliances that are printed on the house walls not be spiffy enough, you can buy paper versions of the top of the line stove, TV, computer etc.
But how to get it to them without actually crossing over yourself? Why, you set it on fire, of course! The smoke carries it to them. As for money, well you don’t want to set the real stuff on fire, so you take your money to the nearest temple and exchange it for fake money you can burn. The temple gets to keep the real stuff for its own upkeep. I don’t know what the going rate is for a million bucks, but it’s not a one-to-one ratio.
OK, enough for the small oddities department. Today I returned to Lantau Island. Not to ride the cable car again, but to go to another section of the island to see Tai O village. To change things up, I went by ferry to Lantau this time, then took a bus into Tai O. It was a pretty ride through the mountains, with stops at a few small towns along the way. We passed a reservoir that was really low. It had a shoreline that looked as bleak as Lake Mead’s, in the low-water department. The bus was passed by an ambulance, a couple of fire trucks and some police cars as we neared Tai O. Seems that a mountain got set on fire somehow and they were trying to get it under control while the police were busy questioning a couple of young men that could have reported it, or could have started it, who knows? But it was out within an hour of my arrival at the village.
Tai O is the Hong Kong equivalent of an American Indian reservation. There’s a small museum full of artifacts from the towns earlier days with specimens of the type of clothing the people used to wear, old fishing nets, household items and the like. Once you leave the museum, it’s stall after stall primarily of dried fish. But not all. Some people make bean paste in huge plastic casks, stirring it with a power drill to which a huge mixing blade has been attached. Others make and sell traditional teas, jewelry or resell items from mainland China. Whatever will make them a livelihood.
The inhabitants have lived in stilt houses on the tidal flats for eons. They have always been fishing folk. They just have bigger boats and nicer nets now. But most of them don’t fish anymore. They just dry and cook the fish to sell to the tourists who flock to the town. Or sell the fish fresh. Really fresh. As in still swimming around in a plastic tub when you pick out your dinner. I saw tubs with all different types of fish, plus crabs and one with lobsters climbing all over each other. A whole lot of antennas waving about in the air as the water wasn’t all that deep. While I was watching the lobster antics, I saw a tentacle flop over the edge from the next tub, grope about then withdraw. The octopi were restless, but that one apparently didn’t find what it was looking for.
If fishing isn’t lucrative enough, or too much like work, a villager may buy a small boat, put a few seats and life jackets in it and sell rides to the tourists. For $20 HK you can get a 20-25 minute ride that takes you a little ways up into the village so that you can see some of it from the water. Then the boats go out past the breakwater so the tourists can view a rock formation that’s called The Old Man’s Nose, or something like that. Then you cruise around the area aimlessly for a few minutes trying to spot some of the famous white dolphins, which are actually pink. (They have pictures of them, so they must exist, but I sure didn’t see any). The ride back into the harbor was a blast. The captain of our little vessel got into a race with another boat and we were flying! Jumping over the wakes of the other boats entering and leaving the harbor. Leaping into the air and whacking back down sending big sheets of spray off to the sides, while also rocking side-to-side. It was great.
Once we were back on land I wandered around the village and watched the various ways the natives make their living now. Yes, many of them do still fish, but it seemed that the majority sold stuff to tourists. I saw one house where the occupant was very into bonsai. He must have had 50 to 80 trees of various sizes and types in his front yard. They filled the whole yard, except for a small normal-sized tree that was doing double duty as a place to hang various guages of wire, some small rope and whatever else was needed in the bonsai dept. They also played mahjong. I think Tuesday must be mahjong day. Everywhere I went today, I saw people playing the game.. Since I hadn’t observed anyone doing so before this, I’m wondering if it’s a coincidence, or a Tuesday thing. I’ll never know…
When I had had my fill of Tai O, I went back to the bus stop to leave. Uh oh. The line for the bus back to the ferry dock was several blocks long. Literally. I just couldn’t deal with the thought of standing in another line for over an hour and possibly two. I started looking for another way back to my hotel. I found another ferry that would take me from Tai O to Tung Chung, where I could get the MRT back to Hong Kong. The only problem was that all the departures were full until 6:20 PM. And it was only 4:05. I was not a happy camper. But sitting on a bench by the ocean for two hours beat the thought of standing in line for the same amount of time, so I bought a ticket.
I passed the time wandering along a lengthy causeway over the tidal flats, watching the egrets soar, the little fishes flashing silver as they jumped out of the water and the water bubbling up through grates that allow the ocean to flow in and out as the tides change. The sun slowly set over the sea and I made my way back to the ferry dock to await my ride. I got back to the hotel a lot later than I would have liked, but at least I wasn’t standing in a line becoming more tired and frustrated by the moment. Instead I spent the time surrounded by the beauty of nature and inhaling that wonderful salt air.
I got back to my hotel with a plan to work on this post, then pack everything up so that I could leave the hotel early and ride the peak tram to Victoria Peak and walk around the park up there for awhile before I had to leave for the airport to return to Taiwan and begin the journey home. What actually happened was that I was so tired when I got back that I did very little work on the post, ate some instant oatmeal in lieu of dinner, took a long, hot shower and went to bed after setting my alarm for an early wake-up.
Unfortunately, when the alarm went off in the morning I was dead tired, had a sore throat and was aching all over. Great. My last day of the trip and I’m sick. Plus the one thing that every single tourist that comes to Hong Kong does without fail, I can’t do, unless I want to risk getting so sick that they might not let me on the plane.
They take their illness very seriously around here. You actually walk through an infrared scanner as you get off the plane. If you’re running a fever they pull you into a quarantine station. I don’t know what it takes to get out of there, but I’m sure it entails proving you don’t have some deadly disease. Which I have a feeling would mean missing your flight. Something I did NOT want to have happen. So I slept in. Packed my enormously multiplied “stuff” just in time for check out then rode the trolley one last time for giggles. After that I caught the shuttle to the airport. I paid the extra money for the direct shuttle rather than take the free transfer from the hotel to a shuttle station. My caution paid off. I made my flight and passed the infrared coming into Taiwan with flying colors. You can view yourself on the screen as you go through. It’s pretty easy to spot anyone who’s engine is running a little warm.
About that multiplied “stuff”. Next time I travel, I’m taking two changes of clothes, a dozen pair of socks and underwear and two empty (or mostly empty) suitcases. I just couldn’t help myself. Some things were just so cheap here that I did all my Christmas and birthday shopping for the next year! The deals were too good to pass up. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
This paragraph is just for the ladies, Japan has the best underwear. They are so comfy. They don’t ride up in the wrong place, or slide down to below the comfort zone. They fit like a glove that you never notice you have on, come in every color of the rainbow, and are cute as can be. I guess since Japanese women have to dress so conservatively at work, they like to have something on that’s frilly and pretty and nice, so they wear those things where they don’t show. I have never seen so many fancy bras, panties, slips, etc. in my life as in Japanese department stores. Lacy and racy, flowers and colors, feminine to the extreme. Of course some of the prices on those items where unbelievable, but I got a kick out of looking at the variety. Then I just bought the items that had me hooked on their sheer comfort. I guess that shows my age more than anything. The sexy stuff is cute to look at, but give me comfort every time. It’s some much more important to me these days.
I’m writing this from a hotel in Taoyoan, Taiwan. The Majesty Hotel. It’s older, like just about everything in Taiwan, but it seems very nice. Clean, good sized room, plenty of amenities, and they offer free taxi service back to the airport in the morning! That will save me $500 NT right there. Plus high-speed internet and free breakfast. Can’t ask for more. Night all! (Pictures to come later…)
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