I know I’m slow to blog, but I’m starting to wonder if there is any point at all in me spelling out in details what I have done in Hong Kong because fundamentally it is my own experience that has no need to be understood nor shared with other people. Furthermore, blogging in retrospect just isn’t my kind of thing. Even though I kept a daily travel journal that records stuff, I don’t know how to put everything down. Nonetheless I shall try to keep up with the narrative.
On my second day in Hong Kong, I went to the Wong Tai Sin Temple, despite being a non-believer. It was mainly for photo opportunities. On arrival at the Wong Tai Sin station, I was approached by this old lady was being “nice” and told me that I have to go up a staircase to get to the temple. Little did I know that this was a trap. The staircase was littered with other old women trying to peddle me incense, joss paper and talisman. The first one who approached, I thought I could be nice and bought some from her, despite not even knowing what to do with it. Then they became relentless and tried pushing for more money from me. I got quite fed up after a while I told them outright, in Cantonese, that I don’t believe and told them to take their stuff back and cheat other people for all I care. Seriously, if their religion teachings taught them to prey on hapless tourists for a living, then I don’t think I want to go to their form of Heaven.So when I got to the temple I told one of the staff about that and asked him kindly to see what they can do about it, and after a while I saw a couple of policemen patrolling the area, standing at the top of the staircase looking at these old women. Serve them right for taking advantage of my kindness.
Desperate cheating old women aside, the Temple is bigger than I thought it’d be. Part of the temple was closed for restoration, but I think the grand temple is already opened.

Entrance

All that glorified Chineseness.
I walked around breathing in all the incense and left after a while. The weather was unbearably warm, so I sought refuge at the nearby shopping complex, Festival Walk. That was where I updated my blog previously about Pacific Coffee being a marker of civilisation (or something along those lines). I went to the branch of H&M at Festival Walk and bought myself a pair of long pants. Just because it was on 50% discount, so I paid less than 20 Singapore dollars for it. I should have shopped more I suppose, like everyone expects me to. Yet somehow I didn’t have a lot of urge to buy things over there. Maybe I’m too used to online shopping so shopping in a physical shop doesn’t thrill me anymore.
After leaving Festival Walk, I went to meet my friend KL at her university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This university is built on a hill, so it’s climbing, climbing everywhere we go.

See that brown sculpture in the centre of the picture? It resembles an archway, and is supposedly the Chinese character for “door”. Rumour has it that if you walk through that archway, you would not be able to graduate from CUHK. So I just had to walk through it. Since I am not a student there, and I do not intend to pursue my graduate course there, the rumour doesn’t apply, right?
After having lunch in one of the campus canteens and sitting for a while in her dorm room, we went to Mong Kok for some shopping.

Ladies’ Street, I think.
There are many cheap things available, and being cheap, there just isn’t much quality to them. Perfect location for picking out cheap tourist t-shirts, but I didn’t get any because … I just didn’t feel like getting any. The area around Ladies’ Market is mayhem; shops that look the same, streets that look the same … we were walking blindly the entire afternoon, or at least it felt that way. I guess when poor students like me claim that they are going on shopping sprees in Hong Kong, it’s the Mongkok area, since all the shopping centres in Hong Kong carry only mid-range and high-end brands like Agnes B. (nearly broke and bought a wallet there, then realised after buying the wallet I wouldn’t have money to put in it anyway), Vivienne Westwood (fell in love with a bag that cost 5980HKD), Coach, Chanel … and since I’m not really for cheap low quality crap, didn’t exactly had a helluva time in Mong Kok like my peers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking down on cheap stuff (I love bargains, most of the time), but considering if I have limited wardrobe space, I’d rather fill it with something of good quality than something of bad quality. Hm. Not sure if I’m getting my point across, never mind that.
And so that’s about what I did on my second day there. Next up is my Ocean Park visit. Stay tuned.
(To be continued…)